ERode — Roleplayer Guild

It was something of an affliction.

What were they getting themselves into?

Harriet tried not to focus on that, Emu was driving their van towards Lougham. The small fleet of vehicles that she had, had most of the people she had ‘power’ over. Other than Von and Nyk, who were back at the house with Calem.

Haast was grinning at the weapons they had been given by the Midnight Man. She wasn’t expecting to be actually in control of a real, intact bazooka.
”They’re not gonna know what hit them!” Haast said with a manic grin on her face.
Harriet stayed silent, but gave a glance towards Tyran, who was sitting in the back of the van, sharpening his teeth with a file slightly.

She was expecting to lose people today. Just, hopefully it won’t be her family unit.
Harriet didn’t want to think she could expend those teens that came to her earlier that week, but they needed everyone that could use a gun…
And everyone who was in a way expendable.
She closed her eyes momentarily to pray for the teens, they were just kids. What was she thinking, sending everyone up into the face of death?

As Harriet and her crew pulled up, they would spot the twenty-foot monster right away - before it got pelted with a small RPG.

And Cyril was leveling a hot stare across the street as a woman with silver appeared - literally out of thin air. 

”You're outta luck, the Order's sent me to deal with you.” She said, watching smugly as the monster conjured crumpled into ash.

Cyril merely stared with a deadened expression. And as he stared, between them, out crawled a new monster from the pavement. It looked like a mummy, except with scissor-like claws. Phade saw this new beast, and the color drained from her face.

”How-...”

As it charged, Phade aimed her gun at it, only to receive gunfire from Cyril's men, forcing her to phase herself. 

The beast swiped. Phade barked out a laugh. It wouldn't be able to touch her. Nothing could, when she was phased like this.

Except, when the scissor claws reached her, they connected. The metal had just started to dig into her flesh-

Quickly, Phade teleported out of the beast's range. She stared in confusion, left and right, there was no beast- until it teleported right in front of her and slashed with its phased claws, delivering a blow that cut open her chest and had her flat out on the pavement.

From a district or two away, Matthias let out a deep sigh. What was it about overconfidence again? For someone who had lived in Nocturnia her whole life, for someone who lived in a city where over half the mob bosses possessed some mind-related ability, Phade just couldn’t help but drink from the teat of Gyft-induced delusion.

He had told her too. Stay hidden, wait for an opportunity, and take down the person, not the monster. Instead, what does she do? Grab one of the very few RPG launchers the Order have, run up for a dynamic entrance, and…

The Lodestar drew in a breath.

“Group A, run and gun. Suppressive fire, targeting Gyft A.”

It was nothing but rush jobs these days. A heavy-duty truck roared out from a neighbouring avenue, thick metal plates welded onto the side. It almost toppled over from the sharp turn it took as it drove parallel to Cyril’s group, as the occupants on the truck’s bed switched off safeties and opened fire indiscriminately. If they could hit the monster-summoner, that would be lovely. If they could at least force him to redirect his attentions to protecting himself rather than ripping Phade into intangible ribbons, that would be all they could hope for. If they could run a distraction for the gangsters, then…

“Drone Team, send two packages above and be prepared.”

Amidst the deafening rat-tat-tat of semi-automatic rifles wrested from the hands of Merryland’s imposter-cops, the whining of drones in flight were masked as they positioned themselves above the invading force.

Cyril and the Dark Aces took cover behind their vehicles as the onslaught of bullets hailed down. The distraction worked - the monster ripping into Phade dematerialized. And, landing heavy on two massive feet, a fifteen-foot clown with a chainsaw began slashing at the men. One of the men shrieked, evidently seeing something from his worst nightmares. And, peeking out from behind cover, the Dark Aces with Cyril returned fire.

Meanwhile, on the rooftops, a Dark Ace with binoculars spotted the drones. He touched his comms. ”Reverers, drones in the sky, shoot them down and flank the truck - kill ‘em all.”

Dark Ace’s moved on their objective. The truck turned technical was the anchor of the defence, a force multiplier that kept the defenders in the fight. If they could destroy it the flow of battle would surely begin to cascade in the attackers favor. Motivated men maneuvered into positions to eliminate the asset. As the first stood to complete their mission he found himself cut down, followed shortly by a distant crack.

The men reassessed. Heads turning, spinning for the threat. Another pink mist. Another crack reverberating through the sky. Another dead Dark Ace. A third ran to the truck hoping against hope to fulfill the mission. He fell, screaming, his leg nearly torn in half. Another crack. One tried to help him, rushing forward to drag him back. As he reached down his head split in two. Crack. The rest of the men sat in cover watching their comrade plead for help. Another splash, his arm this time. The screaming muffling the sound of far off sniper fire.

Master Sergeant Luthin laid deep within a building a kilometer away, silent. Staring down the scope of an anti-material rifle from a pre established cache of military weapons. Using his Gyft he watched the glow of life radiating from the rats he settled on exterminating, darting about for cover as the glow faded in those where his shots landed true. The glowing bodies seemed to be falling back. Shame. He’d hoped for more practice.

He picked up his radio, tuning in to Matthias’s frequency. “You don’t know me, but I know you. You have some of my people, some of them important to me.” He adjusted the gun ever so minutely. Another shot exploding from the barrel. “I have assets and assistance I could offer you. All I ask is that we might have a civilised conversation in person.” Martin used his free hand to drop the magazine out of the gun, sliding another in.

The bolt racked with a chunky slam, Martin spoke on. “Don’t worry about trying to find me.” Another shot. “I’ll find you first.”

He killed the line. Martin turned the weapon further now. Eye focussed down the scope he spotted what looked like a raptor leading an army of children. Sights settling on one of the chaff he adjusted for the new angle and windage. Handing weapons to children. This city was a fucking cess pit. The sight rested ready to delete the target. He doubted they were disciplined fighters, once they witnessed the horror of war, they’d likely balk and run. Martin suppressed a scoff.

This would be too easy.

They mainly stayed either in or behind their vehicles as everything went on, Haast yelling to T.Rex that this wasn’t what they were made for, all while Harriet had disappeared into the sky above them all.
“What the fuck have we gotten ourselves into?” Haast asked after a moment, looking down at the RPG in her hands.
”War my dear.” T.Rex said with a grin before he moved to spring off the footing from the van and charged towards the truck as offered.

”Emu, Haast; flank the truck. Boys, follow the others. I’ll take the drones.” Harriet spoke through her comms to her men, moving quickly to dive out of the shadows and clouds she was hiding within, slamming her feet into a drone before she quickly spun to shoot a pistol at another one. She landed on the ground with her wings flattened out before she sprung straight back into the sky again.

T.rex ran towards the truck now that it had stopped, he could hear the bullets shoot past him as he continued to get closer to it; leaping up off the ground towards one of the gunners and grabbed their rifle in his mouth to toss it aside with a wide grin on his face.

Emu ran to join Cyrils’ men, shooting his rifle as he ran along before he got up beside them and reloaded his gun. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He thought to himself, he glanced up towards Harriet as she was striking towards the drones, before he looked back to Haast.
Haast readied herself as she shot the bazooka towards one of the buildings holding their adversaries, grinning almost manically as she was barely pushed back by the recoil; her training was definitely coming into play here.

Martin watched T.Rex rush and board the truck, threatening to overwhelm it. A part of him was impressed with their physical prowess, but capacity in strength was nothing without mental discipline. He lined up a younger one behind him. “Decision time. The mission or the kid.”

The shot flew, sailing through the air to commit its terrible sin. Impact. Even in the chaos of the fight, there was no way the one boarding the truck wouldn’t hear the screams.

Well, what the fuck was Matthias to say about that? The Lodestar stared at the footage of a few Dark Aces getting sniped by some military-sound fellow (Del Guarde v2, no doubt), then promptly moved on, because there was a lot to say.

The crux of which was…why the fuck was Harriet here? Though he hadn’t heard much of The Aviary, it had given him the impression that it was run for street kids and orphans, the same way that Omakase did. Kids looking out for each other, helmed by another young boss that served as their surrogate mother or older sister. That kinda thing. And they were far off too, so why the hell were they there? Forced into action, the same way Ezra forced Poppy away?

His knuckles tightened over the armrest as the Winged Blade dove out of the sky, talons collapsing upon one of the drones while a bullet clipped the wings of another.

He didn’t want to do this, but at this point? There was nothing to be done about it.

The drones had been carrying one grenade each. Originally to be dropped upon the Dark Aces, but now?

Harriet’s feet slammed into the ground. She did not get to take flight before the grenade exploded underfoot, shrapnel bursting out in time with the explosive blast.
Harriet was thrown aside, letting out a yell as she slammed into the ground from the grenade. She moved to try and roll onto her front and get to cover somewhere, but as she tried to get back up onto her feet, pain had flooded through her body.

Shrapnel had dug heavily into her leg, she’d survive, but fuck it hurt. She fanned her wings out, in a way to hide herself from the world as she tried to quickly do a recap over her body.
Legs? Damaged. Arms? Bruised, possibly a sprain on her wrist. Wings?
She glanced up as she noticed small red droplets dripped from her wings. Bleeding, cut; hopefully no flight features damaged.

The truck itself stalled only for a moment, before the driver slammed his feet upon the pedal once more. Run-and-gun against giant monsters that could be summoned out of the ether? What was more useless than that? The gunmen in the truck bed were similarly occupied, two of them already bleeding out from the chainsaw slash that mortally wounded them, while the third had only survived the nightmare clown’s cleaving stroke due to the chainsaw getting caught on the welded walls. But now there was another bastard climbing aboard; the truck was so compromised that there was nothing for it!

Was it the cold calculation of a cost-benefit analysis?

Or was it the desire to do something to be remembered by, even if only by the Lodestar, even if only to take down a couple more Irrationals with them?

The truck changed directions. While the T-rex and clown cleared out the truckbed of its occupants, five tons of steel careened towards the Dark Aces’ barricade, its driver closing his eyes moments before impact.

And Matthias continued to give his orders.

“Group B, move in now! Drone Operators, send two in every cardinal direction, low altitude!”

The roar of motorcycle engines, the gleam of visors. Kevlar vests went over their motorcycle suits, granting an extra heft to their outfit already. In the echoes of the truck’s collision, three members of Akula’s Crew, first stained by Antonio’s influence and now granted a second lease by the Lodestar’s Gyft, charged into the fray, wielding not guns nor blades, but…fire extinguishers?

Turns out, all you needed to do to improvise a flamethrower was to empty out a fire extinguisher, fill it with gasoline, mix it with soap, and pressurize it properly. Add a barbecue lighter to the nozzle, and you were golden.

Plumes of flame scarred the atmosphere, and stuck to all who were unlucky enough to be caught in the spray.

Emu glanced up from where he was behind Cyrils’ men as he noticed the explosion go off and Harriet not get back into the air.
”FUCK” he called out before he moved quickly, heading over who where Harriet was; wrapping his arms around her body as he moved to try and lift her up to carry her out of the fray.
”I know we’re being paid to be in this war.” Emu said to Harriet as she tried to struggle out of the mans grip, ”But fuck this. Let’s head out, back to Nyk, back to Calem, back to norm-.”

Harriets’ eyes widened as Emu’s words were cut off, a single bullet straight through his head as his grip gave way, collapsing onto the ground and basically dropping Harriet.
”NO!” Both Harriet and Haast screamed at the same time, the Winged Talon fanning her wings out to attempt to get back into the air. She heard footsteps behind her, before a rocket suddenly zoomed right past her, to the men who had the makeshift flamethrowers.

Harriet was ready to die here, one of her top men- Fuck, no, one of her best friends was just killed in front of her. She was about to burst forward into the fray before Haast grabbed her and used her strength to pull her directly back to the Van.
”I’m not fucking losing you!” Haast said through choked tears, moving to plonk her into the back of the van before she hopped into the drivers seat.

Fuck this, fuck the Order, fuck the Dark Aces, and fuck Tyran; he had been the reason that Harriet was fully committed to this, she was on the fence after that stupid fucking call - and now? Haast had lost her fucking husband.
She started the car, peeling away from the flames and drove away from all the bullshit, wanting to take the fastest route to Harriets’ home, but she knew there’d be roadblocks.

Tyran heard the girls yell out, moving to pull himself out of the truck before he noticed the flamethrowers. If he was in the right mind, he’d be afraid and just run away; but Tyran wasn’t someone of sound mind.
He grabbed a rifle from the ground as he kept himself away from the flames, moving to shoot at the flamethrower wielders, not to kill them; but to explode their makeshift weapons.

He could hear the van peel off, Weaklings he thought to himself, but he couldn’t see Harriet anywhere. Had she been injured? He shook his head, he couldn’t get distracted; otherwise he’d be wounded or worse.

Martin watched through the scope who he thought to be the leader of the child army withdraw in a rush, bolting away from the battle. A grunt. Least that meant no more children turned soldier should die today. The rifle nudged around again to find the truck finally out of commission, Tyran overwhelming it despite his allies falling back. Impressive.

Martin hummed. “You’d make one hell of a specimen.” He began packing up his rifle. It was time to leave before anyone located his position. “Hopefully we’ll have our day sooner or later.”

Fuck.

Cyril watched the truck careen towards his cover behind the vehicles. Where the few remaining Dark Aces remained. There was little time to react - he stepped back on a manifested, super-sized leaf that sprung him into the air, narrowly avoiding the truck. His local men, however, were lost. 

No worries.

The leaf disappeared as he sprouted wings, retreated to a nearby roof. As the wings disappeared, he surveyed the mess below. T.Rex was still active. The ground was marred with bodies of Dark Aces - one in his local squad had survived. A few kids as well. The Reverers were nowhere to be seen. Cyril only made a face at that, and moved on. That left the wayward Akulas with their… flamethrowers that T.Rex was shooting at.

He pressed his comms. ”Delta, flank the Akulas.”

Cars roared to life in a three-long convoy, pulling up to a nearby building, stepping out, and trying to gun down the Akulsa while hiding behind the building as cover.

Meanwhile, Cyril looked towards the location of where that mysterious sniper had dropped their shots from. Too far out, else he’d have sent cars in that direction. He’d have to leave it as it was, though he loathed it. But he could take out his anger on this situation. There was still a crumpled Phade on the ground, now phased to her physical form. 

So, he did the next best logical thing - manifesting a massive iron spike, and letting it fall on Phade.

What was the crew worth, if they couldn’t even maneuver out of the way of gunfire? Kicking up the gear, the Akulas rode low, skidding away from the bullets and splitting up. One of them hurled a makeshift flamethrower towards the T-Rex; they had been emptied out within less than half a minute and had only served as a distraction, but if caused there to be a pause, then it was worth it.
T-Rex moved to dodge the flamethrower, popping back up with a snarl before he looked around.
Probably a good idea to get out of here. He thought to himself as he looked around for a safe way to get out of the fray.

The other two rode for the unconscious Phade. A lucky bullet from the newly arrived convoy struck one of the men on the shoulder, the force of the shot jolting him and causing him to veer away before he forced himself into an alleyway to avoid further fire. The other barely made it in time, his gloved fingers curling over Phade’s collar and pulling her off the ground…only for the descending metal spike to smash into the rear tire of his motorcycle, causing rider and mercenary to be flung off from the sudden halt. They tumbled, the Akula gunman absorbing as much as the fall as he could for the unprotected Gyft user, before collapsing into a heap.

It would have been a lethal moment; they were both sitting ducks for Dark Aces that had been called in.

“Drop them.”

The drones that Matthias had called in arrived. Flying at a low-altitude had slowed them down but had kept them out of the view of the rooftop spotters the Dark Aces employed. Swooping in just overhead of the focused gunmen, they dropped their payload of grenades right as the Akula and Phade crashed into the wrecked remains of a car.

Explosions erupted, hopefully maiming and killing enough of the men that the remaining Akula with a bike could retrieve the other two. If they couldn’t…well, Matthias tried. He did his due diligence. There were other things to focus on.

“Gyft A has landed on a rooftop. Riflemen, prepare to sight the target. Group R, you have permission to unload.”

The scream of rockets sounded through the air, flying in a spiraling pattern towards Cyril. It was only two rockets, really, because Phade had wasted one. But for a flesh-and-blood human whose power laid largely in summoning what Matthias had to assume were psychic constructs?

It would be better to evade than to block, for even the shockwave would be enough to scramble one’s insides.

And when he busted out that spring-pad again, Matthias’s gunmen would be ready to fire at a completely exposed target.

Little did they expect for Cyril to pull out a third option, not a shield or a spring pad, but a portal. With the fall and decimation of his convoy, and the withdrawal of the Reverers, his next move was evident.

Damage mitigation.

He disappeared into the portal as the rockets were about to close in, reappearing only to drag T.Rex into a portal.

”Dark Aces, back home.”

And all became quiet.

Mathias: P -5, Ezra P -7Lougham has been reduced to Poor for two rounds
“Alex, there's no one here.” Said a voice on the radio. One of the men inside the church stepped deeper into the dusty, shot-riddled room.

”What do you mean, soldier? What do you see?” Alex said on the rooftop, pressing his comms and shooting Jack a worried look.

”Just mannequins and a- Oh f-”

Alex's eyes widened. He put two and two together, already manifesting a large black hole above him, and little ones below him. He reached out for Jack as an inferno melted away the roofing. Jack snagged just out of reach, looking up at Alex with an agape face as he disappeared into the flames.

In the next instance, Alex was shot across the next couple of streets, spiraling in the sky. He could feel burns on his legs, but he tried to think around it, instead focusing on landing safely on a random rooftop by stringing along a few black holes.

Once standing on his feet again, he growled into his comms. ”Jack? Jack?!”

Silence. 

Alex clenched his teeth, fist raising up to land pitifully against his skull. Jack… He was literally standing right there.

With a groan, Alex forced himself to focus. ”Everyone still alive, I need you to fan out. Patrol the area, the district. Find where the Order is. I want the Akulas to do their own search from where they're supposedly best at, underground. And I need a gun team on my location. I’m… On the roof of Mark's and Sons.”

It was thirty seconds later men scaled the roof to cover Alex, dragging down into the safety of the alley. And the fifty or so remaining Thorned Roses began their patrol.

Below the streets men received the order. No words were spoken, only a hand from a leader fell from above to begin clearing the tunnels.

They moved in file formation, splitting off at the intersections. Guns raised ready for any disturbance, reconvening with weapons lowered before visually acquiring each other. No need for call outs, no need for confirmations. The men moved in perfect synchronicity despite being separated below the earth.

Two passed another corner, one facing left, the other right. A gunshot. The man with his back to the threat took it in the arm. Red mist puffed out his sleeve as the ready Akula acquired the target as if he were the one shot. Three cracks. Two in the body. One in the head. The member of the Order fell into the canal with a splash. The wounded Akula stood and took point as if nothing had happened, the killer Akula following right behind.

The Akula men throughout the underground continued to move in silence, broken only by the sounds of death, cold and calculated, unfeeling, unnatural. Like antibodies circling and purging foreign bodies that dared take refuge in their terrain despite their culture demanding that such a place should provide safety for all. That didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered now.

Only the Order and their orders to deal with such.

The Doctor was ready, he had been working until the very early hours of the morning; he failed to keep his scientists awake and alive. A shame, really; but they would still help the Black Web in ways that they had never believed they could.

He had a disciple slowly push him into Riverbend in a wheelchair; onlookers would think he was alone with the disciple, but he wasn’t alone. He had his horrors with him.
The Doctor lifted his left hand slowly, the citrine coloured gem in his carbon fibre glove glimmered in the sunlight.
Forward. He thought to the beasts through the gem; the ground rumbled slightly.

They just started to appear, leaping from what could be thought from shadows; but instead it was the tunnels that the cult used to get through the city.
There were many, easily above 50, possibly above 100, twisted creatures appearing and moving towards the Doctors’ position.

The horrors were all twisted humans, well; they were humans some time ago. They all had glowing citrine eyes, most had more than two eyes; three eyes, five eyes, six eyes - All eyes glimmered in hunger and rage.
A few of the ‘horrors’ were horribly large behemoths of what used to be human; twisted legs of many fused together, large flesh rendered arms with bone claws with a much too small, twisted human head sitting on the mountainous shoulders. More arms reached out from the beasts back, and citrine-coloured gem spires crackled down their neck and spines, twisted and split mouths open, ready to bite down on an enemy of the cult.

Other notable horrors were those twisted in ways that were similar to insects, arthopods and the like; added arms that were split from the Radius and Ulna, the hand bones split in half so there were two fingers on each ‘arm’. A few of them had been spliced together to crudely resemble a large centipede; torso’s connected to hips and splayed arms trying to grip at the ground feebly as the main torso looked around with it’s two stitched together heads.
Some of them had enhanced legs, ready to leap into battle quite literally.
They varied in size, shape, colour and how twisted they were; but they all had an emotionless look on their faces, their eyes glimmering as they seemed to be waiting.

Other than the twisted horrors, the Doctor had taken what Antonio had given him; twisted metal suits that attached to the bones of the person. Each body seemed to writhe in pain silently as they stepped along, occasionally the expressionless face would show a sign of pain before disappearing.
Some of the suits looked similar to a strange exo-skeleton, but the springlocks within them slammed into the flesh and bones of the feeble bodies, rust and blood covering the metal. Some of them convulsed occasionally, sometimes their eyes showed a moment of fear.

Were these horrors still alive? Were the men in the suits still conscious?
Not even the Doctor really knew, all he knew is they were under his command; and he was going to raise hell.

Fuck, What did he get himself into?
He could feel Bard rearing to go, clawing at the edges of his mind as Glade stayed pressed against the building he was stationed at.

He breathed in heavily, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to focus on control.
Fuck off, we have a job to do.
Come on I want bloodshed, I haven’t stretched this body in ages! Let me get out there, we have knives on us Glade, you know how much I love Knives!
Just… Fucking focus on getting into the cameras, I can’t use my Gyft while you’re being so jumpy.
Come on pleaaaaase, I wanna snap some bones, cut some tendons; promise me I’ll get to attack shit once we’re done!
Look, I don’t know if I can! I don’t even know if we’re supposed to even be IN the fight.
You’re no fun, you know that? You’re a fucking killjoy. You get this, I get the next night to myself; deal?

Glade groaned to himself as he kept his eyes closed, he needed to focus on his mind; but he really needed to get into the mainframe for Ezra.
”Sorry Ez, Bards’ being a dick.” He spoke into the earpiece, before he begrudgingly agreed to Bards’ words before he felt his brain relax as Bard took a step back and stopped trying to take control.

”Okay.” He sighed, closing his eyes before he moved to focus his energy into the mainframe in front of him. He felt the electricity flood through his body before his vision suddenly went dark.
A line of code slowly flashed into view, he was slowly getting into the systems.
”What am I looking for? Just where the Orders men are?” Glade asked through the ear piece.

The response was quick through the comms. ”Exactly.” 

A pause, before there was a curious lilt in Ezra's voice. ”Do this well and I'll see about your counterpart seeing some action.”

“Jesus Christ.” Darian looked at the monitors, a mish-mash connection that really only revealed a few of the main streets as well as the cramped pathways of the underground sewer. “We’re kinda fucked, Glyde. Even with that stunt. Didn’t take out the black-hole fuck.”

The Sergeant let out a low whistle, rolling his mechanical wrists back and forth. It clicked as if clockwork, each digit locking and unlocking. “Gunteams in the sewers, mobsters on the streets, and even actual monsters gathering up. Kinda B-movie, isn’t it?”

Darian folded his arms. “Got a plan?”

“Yeah, a couple air strikes on their main force.”

“Anything better?”

Glyde stood up, one hand smoothing back a strand of hair from his face. He had magical bullets and robot hands, but in the end, his success would be decided by a single bullet. As for Darian, though? “I’ve got the makings of a plan. But you’re not going to like it.”

The big man sighed. “So long as I’m not stuck in a cocktail mixer with the ladies again.”

The Akulas swept the sewers methodically; Darian and the three Order cultists that accompanied him moved swiftly instead. Time was of the essence for this operation, especially while the monsters and mobsters above surface hadn’t spread out far enough through the city yet. Keeping a low profile and sticking to side streets that wouldn’t easily accommodate a vehicle, the squad reached the river before a quarter of an hour. There were three entrances to the underground sewer from here, blocked off by thick grates that were welded shut. Too small for a human to make it through, but for water?

Along the riverside, explosives were primed on the entrances downriver. A message from radio sounded, giving Darian the timing of…

Three.

Two.

One.

The bombs erupted, destabilizing the surrounding earth and burying two of the entrances in heavy dirt and stone. Standing at the only open entrance left, Darian tensed his muscles, then his mind, and erected a translucent, golden wall, diagonally bisecting the flowing river. It buckled from the weight of the water rushing against it briefly, but water was water. If there were an easier path, it would flow elsewhere.

And in this case?

Rather than continue downstream, it would flood the underground, and either flush or drown the mindless rats beneath.

Darian just hoped he could stave off the headache until that happened.

And though he wouldn’t know it, happened it did.

Swept up in the sudden torrent most gunmen found themselves either pinned in the tunnels or taken deeper under the earth. Regardless of whether they drowned or washed away for their bodies to be repurposed, all that mattered was that the strike from below had been blunted. All that remained were the few who managed to claw their way to the surface somehow, hardly the force of reckoning they once were in this fight.

“Glyde, is it done?!”

“I can’t tell, just do it as long as you can.”

The roaring of the river was the roaring of his mind. Even as the water flow diverted in a way that was somewhat more comfortable, it was still taxing for Darian to simply maintain this artificial flood. Sweat seeped out of his pores, stinging his eyes. He found the muscles in his body tensing up, though the task itself was entirely mental. He grit his teeth together, until he realized his teeth were chattering instead, tremors rocking his entire body.

Finally, something warm, sticky, and salty leaked out from his nose and splattered upon the ground, and the man decided to call it quits, collapsing upon the dirt on all fours. The Order zealots that accompanied him rushed towards him, pulling him up and stuffing a tissue in his nose before they relocated to an abandoned housing complex.

Two Advils and a thermos of tea wasn’t gonna fix this, that was for sure. But knowing his taskmaster of a sergeant, Glyde was probably gonna need him to bail his pasty ass out in another ten minutes anyways.

Glyde opted for harassment tactics, guerilla warfare.

In the suburban jungle, clusters of Order zealots worked together to use whatever they could to annoy, distract, and exhaust the enemy. At times, a window in a house would be smashed from the inside, and a full clip would be emptied out on the mobsters beneath. At other times, an old car, its pedal weighed down by a brick and its steering wheel affixed with tape, would roar to life and go careening down a hill towards the monsters, a bowling ball against humanoid pins. If the invading force clustered up too much, the grenades at the Order’s disposal would be used to make them think it was a bad idea. If they spread out too far, it was easier to pick them off one by one.

Just harassment. Just annoyances, really. Matthias hadn’t given Glyde enough men to set up a proper line of defense, to meet the enemy head on, but the Sergeant didn’t mind it anyways. He was a military man, but back in his youth, he played Terrorist in Counterstrike. Wire traps, molotovs, hit and run. Picking off the weak, while exhausting the strong. Asymmetric warfare, the mantra of any boy who dreamed of being a Navy SEAL.

Hell, if that Black Hole Guy would just get pissed and start tossing black holes every which direction, if he actually went through the effort of exhaustively flattening the landscape? Well, one, it was Matthias’s money and infrastructure he was burning. And two, it opened up a wealth of line-of-sights for the members of the Order that fancied themselves to be riflemen.

Now, the only problem would be…how would those armored behemoths handle it?

Alex bit the inside of his check in annoyance, reports pouring in from his men and from down below. The Akulas were essentially wiped out. Thorned Roses and the Doctor's monsters were getting whittled down. And their enemy were cowards, not preferring a direct fight. 

He pressed his comms. ”Glade, it's Alex. We’re fighting blind here; you got the locations of their men yet?”

The corpses in metal cages shambled forward. Armoured, but slow. A prototype of which the full vision was yet to be realised and perfected. Regardless of their own efficiency the few corrupted Akula’s left who escaped being disposed of below advanced behind the human shield.

Grenades hurled and launchers thumping all along the way. Rifles readied the moment their targets appeared at the flanks. Taking hits and remaining as unresponsive as the shield of meat and metal intertwined advanced without self-preservation. A walking wall of death.

Glade almost flinched as another voice came through the earpiece, which got a laugh from Bard in the back of his mind.
”Sorry.” He immediately started as he moved to tap his comms on so Alex could hear him as he spoke. ”Give me a second, flicking through some Cameras now.” He continued as he narrowed his eyes.

”They’re above ground for the most part.” Glade started again, ”Fuck it’s flooding underground, shit thats a lot of water.” He shook his head, taking a breath as he flicked through more cameras.
”They’re making roadblocks, there aren’t many on the main streets and I can’t see any of them on the side streets either. Holy fuck I hope those are on our side, WHY DOES THAT GUY HAVE TWO HEADS.” Glade held himself back from flinching away from the camera feed, doing so would snap their connection.

”Ezra please tell me those freaky fucks are on our side?” Glade asked through comms again before shuddering, ”I’m glad I’m not actually down there.”
I wanna kick one.
DUDE.
What? They look like they’d fall over.
Focus on the camera feed.
Pot, kettle.

The car careened into the horde of the Doctors monsters, the Doctor only just managing to get out of the way of the car with his wheelchair, the cultist that he had with him however was easily taken out by the vehicle.
The Behemoths seemed to move out of the way faster than their smaller companions, the orange gems glimmering as they turned towards the Doctor before turning back to where the car came from.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, moving to pull out a walkie talkie.
”Mia?” He spoke through the phone, ”How are things going?” There was static on the other side, he narrowed his eyes slightly; had someone taken his daughter?
The Doctor clenched his hand with the glove, the gem glimmering brighter before the Behemoths all paused in their movements before they moved to charge the nearest Order personnel they saw.

For the smaller ones who were knocked down and demolished by the car, their gems glimmered before becoming dull; the beasts that it attached to were dead. But there were more, more of the same sort of smaller variants suddenly clambered from their hiding spots; buildings, sewers, these ones seemed to be more bloodthirsty than the last - they clambered over their fallen brethren, some of them even stopping to pull off bits of flesh from those fallen.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes as he smiled under his mask, his gem glimmering as the new horde of small beasts charged forward.

It was a choice then. It was always a choice, for a military man who had been granted more power than any one man ought to have.

Reports came in, and Glyde knew now that the monsters were being helmed by another. One of the members of the Order had spotted the Plague Doctor that had been in the Jolly Jalopy with the others, and it was clear now that there was no purpose in a wheelchair-bound man to be present if they weren’t somehow responsible for the horde of monsters flooding Riverbend’s streets. What did the Lodestar call it? The Dragon Dynasty?

This had to be the Monster Factory.

The Sergeant licked his dry lips. The situation was promising, but could devolve quickly. Armored supermen marched in like tanks (thankfully without cannons) that covered for the advance of gunmen who were so disciplined that it made Vincent’s mafiosos look like amateurs. The smaller monsters could still be caught and smashed by their automobile traps, but it was paradoxically the larger of them that moved swiftly, that presented the deadlier threats. If Sylvia were here, he could get her to sneak in through the back of the horde and slit the Plague Doctor’s throat. If Snow wasn’t in the state she was in, that Black Asshole (huh, would Darian get pissed about that?) wouldn’t stand a chance. If Phade were here, she could pull all those behemoths into the dirt, and they’d be helpless to stop her.

But he only had himself now. It was a choice then.

Stay behind and lead, or move up front to act. So many people could only do one of the two effectively. The Lodestar was the former, the Lion was the latter. Asterion? He was both.

And so was he.

Glyde issued his final commands and then left someone else to maintain it.

The Walking Sarcophagi marched unimpeded through the small arms fire that the Order had in stock, serving as moving shields for the gunmen behind them. Grenades knocked them off their feet, caused them to stumble, but for the living dead, it was no concern, so long as the shrapnel and shockwave didn’t affect those behind them.

The Doctor’s Monsters too, possessed the suicidal tendencies that made hit-and-run tactics all the more difficult to pull off. Only freaks without any sense of self-preservation would run towards certain death, after all, all so those behind it could climb over its corpse and chase down the Order members they had spotted.

And so, when the dead walked and the monsters feasted, what did humanity possess to chase away the darkness?

Did Antonio’s thralls recognize the smell of gasoline? Did the monsters know what substance they ran on with their padded feet? Did they realize that, even as the Order’s guerillas ran away, they ran uphill, on a doomed path where their legs would exhaust faster? Where they had no hope at all of escaping the four-legged fiends behind them?

One screamed, his faith-cultivated mind lost as the reality of a frothing monster splitting his right leg in half sank in as deeply as the fangs of another.

One raged, turning around in a desperate attempt to blast out one of the heart-gems of those unnatural creatures, only for his gun to click empty.

One wept, wondering how a single night could destroy the peace and the possibilities, the future that had looked so bright just twelve hours ago.

One stumbled, collapsed. Looked up towards the sky, which was so unfairly blue, not a single cloud in sight. In Nocturnia, the heavens never wept over the blood shed in the name of conquest and profit. In Nocturnia, there was a single commonality that united them all.

“Burn it away.” Rivers of black flowed from the top of the hill, barrels of oil expelled. “And show her the New Age, Lodestar.”

One lit the match, and a horde of monsters turned to a river of flames.

In Nocturnia, in death, there were no graves to be dug.

Only ashes to be scattered.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes as he watched his beloved beasts get shot at, beaten down and killed; but he was glad he at least took out some of the men. He paused as he could smell the gasoline in the air, ”Bad.” He said with narrowing eyes, moving to pull up his walkie talkie. ”Mia, now.”
He waited for a moment before his Daughter suddenly appeared behind him, grabbing his shoulders before suddenly warping away to somewhere safe, leaving the wheelchair on the ground to burn.

With the doctor gone, the Hunger Gems were too far away from each other. The power from the Doctor no longer flooded through the beasts, the gems slowly lost their shine - similar to the ones who had been killed - before they all seemed to stop moving; just as the flames spread around.

The flames would kill them, but they were basically already dead by now. The Doctor had abandoned his creations. This would be remembered.

“Holy FUCK.” Glade said before he was forcefully ejected from the mainframe, queasiness flooding through his body; the fire and the fighting had damaged the mainframe, and he wasn’t strong enough to stay online for that long.
”Fuck.” He said, moving to press his comms as a headache started to creep into his mind; it wasn’t Bard taking over, this was worse. He had over done his Gyft, he always had to suffer if he over did it. ”I’m sorry Ez, I’m practically blind here.” He said as he placed his hands onto the wall as his vision wavered properly. ”Shit, possibly actually blind.”

”Let’s get you evacuated, then.” Came the calm voice of Ezra over the comms. About thirty seconds later, the doors blasted open, and five Thorned Roses surrounded the man. One threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and they departed towards Pennystakes.

Alex saw the river of fire. And he did the only logical thing after. He muttered into his comms, ”Let’s use Plan B, boys.”

Drones took to the air and some men devoted themselves to scaling buildings to the rooftops, using infrared vision to target anyone on the street. Thorned Roses would then move to that location, avoiding roadblocks, confirm they weren't civilians, and shoot them dead. This was replicated quickly over the next several minutes, trying to drive a point home - the Order and their rats couldn’t hide.

On the streets turned rivers of flame the mechanical suits continued to advance, gunfire slowly dying out behind them. They seemed inattentive to the fires consuming them until one's chest just popped. Slowly the shambling whirring died out as the corrupt Akula’s behind them did. Some tipping over, others popping in spectacular fashion, a few just going still as their occupants melted away. That was it. Not a body left to press the advance.

The monsters were burned and now, there were only men left. The heat of the street-length fire sapped at the energy of those that fought in the district, cooking them in their heavy bullet-proof vests and their belts of ammunition. The smoke rose, then spread, black plumes that stung the eyes and choked out those that traversed from the rooftops. It was a dull comfort for those of the Order: even if these invaders escaped the judgment of the Lodestar today, they would still die of lung cancer or other related health complications in the coming years.

Not that the average life expectancy of a gangster was ever high enough for them to die of disease.

It was a miserable environment for the Order as well. With the streets rendered ever-more dangerous due to the surveillance drones, they stuck to camping out in buildings instead, settling into a lengthier wait.

Waiting for…

Glyde moved quick, his training making adverse environments bearable even as sweat soaked his own inner shirt. His breath came in deep hisses from the gas mask he wore, but his targets were easy to pin down, having confined themselves to the roofs of buildings. The Winchester rifle in his hands was more of a vintage than anything else, but with consideration to his Gyft, it would do well enough. Due to the way the flames split the district in half, the surveillance teams were isolated from each other, forced to be positioned on either side of the fire. Alex himself had to choose a side too, so, of course, Glyde chose to move upon the side that the Black Asshole wasn’t at.

Any building that these untrained thugs could scale, after all, he could too.

And when one was focused on the feed of the drone…they had a tendency of forgetting their surroundings.

Magic Bullets whizzed silently through the air, and before the bodies fell, Glyde caught the men, then maintained their drone’s flight patterns as he began to give false orders to the Thorned Roses on the ground, leading them to the killzones he had designated beforehand.

With any luck, he would be able to clear out at least a couple of squads before Alex’s suspicions were roused and Glyde would have to go back into hiding.

Alex, on the other side of the fire, was attempting to get contact with teams he didn't know had been wiped out. He gritted his teeth. The amount of squads that weren't responding was troubling. On top of that, there was a distinct lack of monsters and machined men.

Alex was down to his own men, and even then, they were getting hunted down.

Alex pressed a hand through his hair, growling to himself, before he decided to mitigate damages. He barked into the comms. ”All remaining men, retreat.”

He too, took the men with him in one of the convoys, and attempted to retreat from the district.

[For like, after the big battle ends and stuff]
Mia didn’t know where she teleported them to, only collapsing to the ground afterwards and moved to vomit heavily; her entire body convulsing as she did so.
The Doctor was able to weakly stand, looking over to the smoke that rose from Riverbend. All those years for those monsters, wasted.

”You didn’t come when I originally called.” He said as he turned to his daughter, as she continued to vomit before she finally stopped; there was blood in there now.
Mia didn’t speak to her father, she struggled to even sit up now. The shadows around her moved to help her stand up; but the tender touch of her father wasn’t within the shadows anymore.

He was mad at her.

”Why did you hesitate?” He sneered, Mia hiccuped and felt her body want to dry heave. She hadn’t done… Whatever that was before; she’d been able to get around with herself with ease - of course, the queasiness was low with herself. But whatever her father had given her, a Gyft… Enhancer? Made her able to be able to ‘jump’ with someone else, but holy fuck she felt sick.

As the fire slowly lowered down to embers, and as everyone had either died or left; Crows descended on the streets of Riverbend, to start with almost silently; before they started to sing.
Their calls echoed through the streets of Riverbend as more crows seemed to appear and land on the corpses - Side of the war didn’t matter, the mouths were hungry.

The crows all started to pick at charred remains, the ones hopping over to the Doctors monsters making sure to not consume the little amber crystals; they picked at the flesh around it before they moved to pick up the crystals themselves, before fluttering away.

The others still fed, and more crows seemed to appear when others seemed to fly off.

Mathias: P -10, Vincent: P -12Riverbend has been reduced to Poor for two rounds
“Jack, Alex, do you copy?!”

Reports of the explosion in Riverbend spread fast. Men who survived the explosion were abuzz on the comms. But the supervisor standing in the middle of the floor of the Solaris Eye in the Arakasa Tower only cared about two things: the status of Vincent's capos, and what other surprises the Order had for them.

He sighed, shaking his head at the static from the men's comm line, before directing his attention back at the defenses of the Arakasa Tower. It was on complete lock down, with black shields over all the windows, and the front and back ground entrances locked and shielded. Suits patrolled every floor, ensuring the integrity and safety of the tower. 

And the supervisor, along with the employees on the Solaris Eye floor kept a careful eye on the reports the machine spat out, looking for any intrusion beyond the cops in Laterdale.

It always surprised Sylvia, just how quickly things were built in Nocturnia. One could say that they would ignore things such as employees’ rights or building regulations, and there were certainly at least a few Gyfts out there that could accelerate the process of construction, but still. Within Nocturnia, the speed at which infrastructure developed and technology improved was enough to boggle the mind. The Solaris Eye was a greater surveillance system than what one would have in Washington; it was something out of a spy movie. The Arakasa Tower itself was somehow built within just a few years, yet possessed lockdown functionality that would make the Pentagon weep.

Honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if Vincent would even install cameras in his employees’ bedrooms. He struck her as the Big Brother type. Pity then, that for all his efforts, he still couldn’t prevent an invisible rat from slipping in.

It had been a bit of a rush job, a call from that cultist leader late at night, but she had taken it either way; the special operative was no stranger to working with criminals for the purpose of taking down other criminals. She had snuck into the Tower before it closed, dodged what physical barriers there were by simply following in after others, and now, she stood in the corner of a corridor. Her cloaking field rendered her invisible, but she had been up for the last 28 hours now, 12 of which was spent inside the Tower, weaving around patrols of thugs, tracking their movements and their rotations. On occasion, she stepped into the monitoring rooms themselves, the wave of information washing over her as she eavesdropped on the movements of Vincent’s own men, of the swarm of monsters they somehow had at their beck and call.

What a fucked up City.

Well, whatever.

All she needed to do was to find a way to disable the lockdown. Or failing that, break open at least one of the windows.

That monster nun, apparently, would handle the rest.

As Bella and her team snuck up to the back entrance of the tower, something strange happened. The blast shields would quiver for a moment, before dropping. And if they tried the door, it would be unlocked. Once within, there was a long, narrow hallway, and a door to the stairwell. They would find every door in the stairwell going up locked, except for floor 48…

Isabella went rigid.

This wasn’t right. None of it was.

She wasn’t a fool—far from it. A snare laid in plain sight was still a snare, and yet… the doors gaped wide, an invitation inked in silence.Why?

“…Thoughts?” Bella murmured.

“Smells off.” Emilia’s voice was low, clipped. “Too easy. No heat signatures close by, but…doesn't mean they aren't watching.”

“Don’t look at me, Iron Rose,” Siena chimed, rocking on her heels. “I'm just thrilled we’re being welcomed like honoured guests! Maybe there’s champagne at the top.”

Bella didn’t smile. Instead, she flexed her fingers, rolling her wrist.

“Stick to the plan, then,” she said finally. “Control the environment.”

Emilia nodded once, already moving with Bella following close behind. Siena trailed behind, hands clasped behind her back like a schoolgirl on a field trip to Hell.

A breath in. A breath out. Then Isabella ascended.

Up, up—Floor 48 looming like the throat of a beast.

To Mathieu.

Or to whatever brand of hell Vincent had waiting for her.

As she ascended and pushed open the door to floor 48, she and her team would be greeted by frosted glass on either side, and a long hallway illuminated by overhead lights. All of the doors in the hall were frosted over and locked. Except… for the door nearest the closed laboratory doors. Bella wouldn't know it, but this room would be the same one that Mathieu had his meal in and lived in for the past fourteen hours. 

Now? She had a direct line of sight in. The door was unlocked. There was no sign of Mathieu, only the sound of soft weeping. It wasn't Mathieu's voice. And it emanated from the closed bedroom door. 

Bella’s fingers flexed at her sides, instinct prickling at the back of her skull.

“Emilia.” She didn’t need to say more.

Emilia’s gaze sharpened. Her head tilted slightly, reading the space, scanning for movement, body heat, and anything that didn’t belong.

“One inside the room. No visible weapon. No signs of a struggle.” Emilia exhaled slowly, then frowned deeper. “Mathieu was here as well. Recently. But… he’s gone.”

Gone.

Bella’s jaw clenched, but her posture didn’t shift. Of course, he was gone.

Siena clicked her tongue. “A lost lamb, maybe? Tucked in for safekeeping?” Her voice lilted. “Or a wolf waiting to play?”

“No blood.” Emilia added. “No sign of struggle.” A beat. “Someone took him, and they didn’t need force to do it.”

Bella paused at the threshold of the unlocked room, scanning for any sign of Mathieu herself—a message, a misplaced item, something. Then, slowly, she turned her head toward the closed bedroom door where the weeping continued, moving toward it. 

“Stay sharp.” Bella murmured, turning the knob.

As she opened the door, the smell of blood would immediately hit her. There was a tarp laid out on the bedroom floor, one light on. And, suspended from the ceiling by chains, was a man hanging upside down. His dress shirt was in shreds, red lacerations and open wounds of a whip criss-crossed along his back.

Emilia would recognize him right away. It was Willy, cheeks wet with tears.

As this realization sank in, there was a crackle of a voice over the intercom. It was a voice Bella knew too well. ”Looking for someone, Miss Delacroix?”

A chuckle as Willy visibly flinched. ”The reason you're seeing Willy before you alive, and not dead on the floor, is because he scurried back home to tell me all that transpired between him and Miss Castiglione. So, fair's fair, yes?”

A pause, Vincent's tone dropping a note, softer, barely hiding the smile. ”I know why you're here, Miss Delacroix. Tell me, and be honest, why should I give you back Mathieu?”

Bella’s face remained an impassive mask, sculpted from something colder than stone, harder than steel. But inside—inside, something smouldered. A slow, seething burn, the kind that turned coal into diamonds or cities into ash.

Fair.

The word nearly made her laugh. A jagged, mirthless thing that scraped at the back of her throat but never made it past her lips. 

Vincent speaking of fairness was akin to a vulture lecturing on mercy.

She tilted her head,  her gaze moving toward the intercom. When she finally spoke, her voice was ice over an open flame—controlled and tempered in something harsher than rage.

“Because he’s my family.”

The simplicity of the phrase masked its depth, a distillation of everything she held dear. 

“Which is something you’ve probably never understood, though I’m sure you pretend to.”

The words were not a dagger meant to wound; they were something far worse—a truth. 

Vincent collected people like artifacts—acquired, displayed, stripped of autonomy. Power, wealth, territory—these were things he could hoard, chain, and ledger. 

But family? Family and love were not possessions. They could not be bought, bartered, or bound.

Her voice dipped lower, colder.

“Because when you took him, you made this a matter of principle.”

She took a slow step forward. 

“You. made. me. come. here.”

Then, softer, deadlier—a promise draped in silk and steel.

“And you don’t want to find out what happens next if you make me stay. So where is he, Vincent?”

Another chuckle. ”My dear, are you really threatening me? When you don't know if I hold a blade to your brother's throat this very moment?”

He tutted. ”As appealing as it would be to keep you, again, I have a different idea in mind. Why don't you leave Willy to his reverie and come join me in the laboratory? Doors at the end of the hall, just to your right.”

Bella exhaled slowly.

Not a sigh. Not frustration. Something more like a release.

“No, Vincent.” Her voice was still silken and steady. “If you were going to kill him, you’d have done it already.” 

A pause.

“And you would have made sure I watched.”

Because that was what he did, wasn’t it? Wielded suffering like a maestro wielded a baton, orchestrating agony into art. A collector, always—power first, people second, pain third. A trinity of possession, each feeding into the next, a cycle without end.

And yet.

By now, Bella understood that Vincent needed Mathieu. Whatever twisted game he was playing, her brother was still on the board. Still necessary. Still breathing, despite her defiance. That, more than anything, told her Vincent wasn’t finished with him yet.

“But fine…let’s play it your way.”

A flick of her gaze to Emilia. To Siena. No words spoken, none needed. Command given, command received.

Then, she moved. 

Toward the door. Toward the lab. And toward whatever game the manipulative man was about to set in motion. As she pulled on the door, it gave easily, allowing her into the gray and sterile lab. There were scientists in their white coats clutching their clipboards, looking at the group anxiously. Along the wall and by the door, there were armed Roses, pistols held carefully in their lowered grasp. And near the center of the room, a chair and a gurney. 

Vincent sat in the chair, finishing injecting a vial of purple fluid into Mathieu’s arm. Mathieu laid in the half-raised gurney, looking no worse for wear.

Vincent removed the needle, placing a cotton swab on Mathieu's arm. ”Hold on to that for me, will you, Mr. Delacroix?”

Before he swiveled in his seat a little, half-facing Bella and her team as he pulled off blue gloves. ”You're right on time.”

Bella stepped inside, crimson eyes sweeping the lab.

She had walked into too many rooms like this before. The details blurred together—white coats crisp as bleached bones, clipboards held like gospel, men with guns standing at attention, their eyes flat, vacant, already ghosts in their own skin. The air here was always the same too: sterile, artificial, and tinged with the faint metallic smell of blood. A place where life was measured in vials and syringes, where the human body was not a vessel but an archive of raw materials.

And she had learned, long ago, what it meant to be watched. To be unravelled by men who never so much as laid a hand on her, to be studied in ways that left no bruises but carved deep all the same. To them, blood was currency. Potential. A thing to be siphoned, cataloged, controlled.

Vincent, it seemed, was no different.

Her gaze flicked to Mathieu, to the faint trace of the needle just withdrawn from his skin. Her fingers, though clasped behind her back, tightened to suppress her rage.

“Bells.”

The name was quiet, but it cut through the tension like a blade. It was grounding and familiar, the same way it always had.

Her attention snapped to Mathieu fully now, searching—assessing. He looked unharmed as he held the cotton swab as requested.  No visible pain, face neutral as he looked back at her. 

But that meant nothing to Bella. Not the lack of pain in his face, nor—she noted with mild surprise—the fact that all his fingers remained intact.

Her gaze slid back to Vincent, her voice a low venomous hiss.

“What have you done?”

Vincent merely held that pleasant smile as he appraised Bella, standing in front of him in the flesh. ”What do you think I've done?”

She was a locked box, concealing her thoughts and feelings. She just stared, the sharp lines of her face giving away nothing.

Bella could hear the satisfaction in his voice, the invitation for her to play along. But Bella wasn’t interested in playing.

Instead, she glanced at Mathieu again—at his steady grip on the cotton swab, the way he looked fine but felt off. His expression was composed, but there was something unreadable behind his eyes. Something that wasn’t fear.

Something worse.

Then, quietly, Mathieu exhaled.

“Bells…” His hesitation was telling. Her stare pressed into him, searching for wounds unseen. “It’s… not as bad as you think.”

“Tiens donc!Maybe next time he’ll put a leash on you too, and you’ll tell me it’s ‘not as bad as I think.” Bella’s tone was edged with disbelief, but her attention was already shifting, snapping back to Vincent. “You don’t get to tinker with him like he’s one of your fucking collectibles, Vincent.”

Mathieu, ever the peacemaker, exhaled. “ Belly-”

“Ta gueule, Mat.” She silenced him, her voice not a hammer blow but a definitive closing of his part in the conversation.

She pivoted back to Vincent, closing the space between them a fraction. 

“I’ll ask one more time. What did you do?”

Meanwhile, behind Bella, Siena rocked back on her heels, clearly unbothered by the mounting tension. “Can I at least touch something? Or is everything in here some kind of—”

“Don’t touch anything.” Emilia’s voice was flat, her attention still on Vincent and the guards.

Siena's lips formed a petulant pout. “Oh, come on,  that’s, like, everything interesting in this room.”

Bella didn’t acknowledge either of them. Her focus remained locked on Vincent.

Waiting.

Vincent's smile widened slightly, clearly enjoying this. ”You should be grateful to me, Miss. Delacroix. I've given our dear Mathieu more control over his life.

“In about 24 hours, he'll show such finesse over his gyft that he could assist in performing open heart surgery and the patient would have a 100% success rate.”

He then tore off a bit of tape, gently laid it against the cotton ball and affixed it to Mathieu's skin. He then gave the man a comforting pat on his shoulder. 

”That's everything, Mr. Delacroix. Like I promised, the power to leave is in your hands now. You can go with your sister. I won't stop you.

“Just remember, I look forward to seeing you in a day or so.”

Bella's fingers had clenched so tightly behind her back earlier that she felt the sting of her own nails breaking skin. It was distant, irrelevant at the time—just a physical outlet for the rage simmering beneath her carefully controlled exterior.

But now? Now, that anger was something tangible.

Vincent’s smirk. His unearned arrogance. The way he spoke of her brother as if he were nothing more than a specimen pinned beneath glass, a curiosity to be dissected. It fanned the embers inside her, turned them into something raw, blistering, ravenous.

Her hands relaxed, slipping free from where they had been hidden behind her. The sting of broken skin, the slick warmth of her own blood between her fingers—it grounded her, fueled her.

She didn’t think.

Didn’t need to.

Her body moved before thought could catch up, her arm tensing, ready to strike—

And then it hit her.

A preternatural frigidity blossomed within Bella’s veins, climbing her arm like a creeping glacier. It was not pain, yet it was profoundly amiss; A desolation—as if, in a single heartbeat, something vital had been drained from her.

Her breath hitched, a strangled gasp while her fingers, mere inches from constricting into a devastating fist, refused the command. Her gaze darted towards the culprit, and there he stood—Mathieu. His hand had caught her wrist, grip firm but not what stopped her.

It was him.

A subtle flex of his fingers, a minute shift in his posture—and the sensation deepened, her arm feeling impossibly light, as though the blood had simply… stopped moving. 

Bella knew what his Gyft could do. Had spent years fearing it—not for herself, but for him, for what it meant, for what it would make of him.

But this—this was something else. 

Mathieu, whose power had always been erratic, dangerous, and uncontrollable, had just stopped her with a thought.

And worst of all? He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t afraid.

He looked tired.

“Bells…it’s been a long day already. For the both of us.”

And, just as swiftly as it had begun, the numbness unravelled. Warmth surged back into her fingers. Her blood stirred, reclaiming what had been momentarily stolen.

He released her.

Bella didn’t step back. Didn’t even blink. 

But she felt it. The phantom weight of his control, lingering not only in her arm but in her very psyche. 

This was not the brother she had spent years protecting, but the master of his own dominion. He had stopped her effortlessly. Her eyes, once windows to a well-governed soul, now bore into him, but Mathieu only held it in a way she wasn’t accustomed to. Then, he finally spoke without even glancing at the man who bore witness to their private drama.

“I’ll see you then. A day or so.”

Sylvia would find, in the main security room on the 20th floor, there was a button requiring a key labeled ‘Lockdown Override’. An emergency button in the event the lockdown even needed to be forced off. The key to it, however, would be a bit difficult to locate. There were several guards sitting in the security room, watching the feeds, and all of them had a ring of keys, all nondescript and none screaming ‘lockdown override key’.

If Sylvia decided it was too much hassle, going into any of the conference rooms on the 10th or 19th floor provided fire extinguishers that could possibly be heavy enough to break through the glass and metal covering of the windows. 

If only she had a convenient Gyft like opening doors or reading minds. Or the super strength to make bludgeoning open windows and metal actually viable before she got shot in the back by half a dozen security guards. Could she knock one of them out and take their place, then just test out the keys rapidly? Could she risk masking her presence and then simply picking the key, seeing that it was analog rather than digital? Or…

The chances of the Solaris Eye being run on the cloud was low. There had to be a server room somewhere, where the AI actually dwelt. In the absence of being able to let that monster nun loose inside the tower, perhaps she could figure out how to enter that place instead. She had a block of C4 and a few detonators with her, as well as a handgun with two clips and a combat knife in case things got desperate. Not enough to clear out a room, but enough to force her way into the server room. Which meant then, that she would have to puzzle out where that was.

There was nowhere above ground that was safer than below ground.

Sylvia pulled on her gloves, restrained the desire to sigh, and prepared to slip into the elevator shaft for a long climb down into the depths of the Tower. She descended for a long time, until the air felt different. Cooler. There were actually several basement floors, most notable of them being the prison floor where hostages were kept, and the server floor. 

Were Sylvia to enter the floor filled with servers, she would find an armed guard sitting in the hallway, a locked door, and a wide room filled with servers beyond that. The locked door had a card reader - she would need someone with clearance to get into the server room, and swipe their card. Unfortunately, the guard sitting at the door didn't have clearance. Sylvia would want IT, which were on an office floor and twenty floors up. Or, she could try to blow up the servers through the door, and risk not being able to hit all of it.

She gave herself three minutes to observe her surroundings and recover from the downwards climb. Didn’t want to think about the upwards climb after as well. The heavy hum of the servers, like a hornet’s nest, sounded through the doors, and the walls that covered them were likely tougher than even that. Only one armed guard sat by the door, but only one was necessary when there was a camera present that was probably AI-trained to send a small army down when it came to it.

Sylvia would have to be fast, then. Every second, starting from when she sprung into action, would count.

She prepared the first nub of C4, gauging by sight alone how much it would take to blow apart the door’s lock. She drew the knife out from her sheathe, placing the tip of her finger against its point to feel for its sharpness. She inhaled, exhaled, envisioned exactly what her movements would be.

Time to begin.

Completely invisible, Sylvia strode right up to the armed guard and jammed her knife up the underside of his jaw in one swift, practiced motion. He let out a wet gasp, his life ended before he could take another breath, and she grabbed the corpse by the collar. On her other hand laid a wad of C4 with a detonator inserted. She slapped the plastic explosive against the knob of the door, propped the corpse over it to contain and focus the blast, and then ran ten meters away, before pressing the switch.

A muffled explosion sounded, masking the sound of human flesh being torn apart and metal being blasted beyond functionality. If they didn’t notice the guard dying through the feed, they’d certainly notice the bomb going off, but the door was open now, and from there laid the server room itself, a throbbing, heated room filled by racks upon racks of machinery. Tech wasn’t Sylvia’s speciality, but saboteuring was. And in this case, what did she need to do?

First step was to destroy the air conditioning: with the still-bloodied and brain-covered knife, she sliced open and tore apart the conditioner hoses that drew air into the AC units. The (dead) guard was kind enough to provide her with more firepower; his semi-automatic made a crisp, percussive sound as she fired into the units to break them down further.

Without cooling, it would only be a short while before the servers overheated…but in case Vincent had a person with an air conditioning Gyft, it was better to speed along the process. Power sources were plentiful here, and she exposed the electrical wiring of one of them. Drawing over the hoses that she had savaged, Sylvia took the torn fabrics, bundled them up, and then drew out an electrical spark from the exposed wiring using the conductivity of her knife. It sparked, ignited, and then, after a few slightly desperate huffs and puffs, a fire was lit beneath one of the servers.

In time, the room would be heated up too, by a flame that would catch, which left only one last thing to do: make sure no one could enter in time to stop the fire.

What remained of her C4 was pressed against the ceiling close to the door. The subsequent detonation would cause rubble from the second floor to bury the entrance to the first.

It had only been a few frenetic moments, but the worst was yet to come.

“Haven’t done this since I was 18…”

For a fully-grown woman, there was only one way for her to shimmy up into and then through an air duct: by dislocating her shoulders and submitting herself to the slog of worming her way through a place that probably hasn’t been cleaned since the inception of the Tower.

”Shit.” Was all the supervisor could mutter under his breath as he watched the feed in the control room containing the output for the Solaris Eye. Already, the server room was highlighted on the screen, marked in red with a warning beside it. Several reports poured in: the AC unit being offline, the heat increase in the server room, the fire beginning to destroy some of the servers. And beyond that, an invisible shape tearing off the cover to the vents, and, assumingly, shimmying into it.

He made a call. ”Boss, we got an intruder sabotaging the servers, already have one death on our hands.”

Vincent's voice responded. ”I've seen it. Section off the vents, initiate protocol Sleeper. Shut down the Eye, have the employees focus their eyes around the tower. I'll send our dear Joker down to deal with the fire.”

The supervisor nodded. ”Got it, sir.”

And soon enough, the vent in the server room was sectioned off, sleeping gas pumped into the vent where Sylvia and her gasping lungs would be. The Eye went offline, reduced to hundreds of camera feeds and cellphone tracking within the district, without an interpreter.

And, stepping out of the elevator on the server floor a few minutes later was none other than Joker, a fire extinguisher and a bag casually held in his grip, cigarette between his teeth, and laid back eyes taking in the wreckage, more particularly, the broken remains of the guard.

”Ah. Billy was a good guy.” He sighed, before summoning three small dragons, one green, one orange, and one pink, with shimmering scales and noble eyes. Two began working on picking up the rubble, clearing the way to the server room. The last began gently picking up the remains of Billy, placing them in the bag Joker freely gave.

It would take time to clear, but the lockdown was still in effect. They had a somewhat shielded position to weather this assumed Order attack.

After about ten minutes, enough rubble was cleared for Joker to enter the server room, hosing down the growing fire with the fire extinguisher. He pressed his comms. ”About 25% of the servers are destroyed. The AC is shot. But it's contained, boss.”

”Good work. Now, collect our little mouse from the vents and bring her to me.” Said Vincent over the comms, almost amused.

Joker gave an affirmative, and turned his gaze towards the vent.

The hissing sound of a released gas was so ridiculous that Sylvia wanted to scream at the absurdity of it. Who installed gas dispensers inside air ducts? Why would you have such a neurotic defense, but only leave a single guard to watch over your server room with your super AI? 

Did she seriously dislocate both her shoulders just for this?

Sylvia felt her mind fade away, and the last thing she did was fumble for something hidden on the inside of her waistband. The job was done. Now, it was simply…

A few moments later, the dark-haired woman fell out of the air duct, landed on the air conditioner she used as a stepping stool, and promptly hit the ground with a dull thud. If she woke up, she’d have a headache, but at least she didn’t break her neck.

Joker clicked his tongue, seeing the scene unfold. He carefully scooped up the woman in a princess carry, moving back towards the elevator. He clicked his tongue again, noticing the state of her shoulders. She'd need to be brought to the medics after this…

The two dragons who moved the rubble were de-summoned, while the third followed Joker into the elevator, carrying the bag with the remains of Billy in its teeth. Jokers ID card was scanned by the reader, and they ascended to the 48th floor. Joker entered the floor, earning a flinch from the guards nearest the elevator in the hallway, but beyond that he had no trouble crossing the hall to the laboratory on the other side.

Within, Vincent was discussing with his scientists, before turning to Joker. One scientist took the remains of Billy, while Vincent moved to stand over Sylvia, inspecting her sleeping face.

Vincent shook his head. ”She was clever to pass our defenses. I should have installed infrared cameras and motion detectors… Alas.”

Pink wisps swirled around Sylvia as Vincent entered her unguarded mind, looking to glean any plans of the Order.

And what opened to him was a memory.

Dark streets, and a starless sky. Vincent stepped through it, looking towards the spire in the distance, the tower that held the Solaris Eye. His target, as it were.

“Yo.”

The fear and mistrust spiked through Vincent’s mind, as a carmine eye lit up in the darkness. Even as the woman that called out to her stepped out of the shadows, they seemed to cling to her still, tendrils of it sticking to her nun’s habit. She smiled towards him, like a butcher would a nice slab of meat.

“So the Lodestar’s sending you in first, mm?”

“What’s it to you?” Vincent responded. His arms tensed, restraining himself from the instinct of drawing his hands closer to the weapons hidden on his person.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Can’t I wish a partner good luck?” The nun raised out a clenched fist. “Either you’re the mole on the inside digging out, or you’re the stone that pokes out the giant’s eye. Gonna have a big impact so long as you do it right.”

He stared at the fist. He did not respond to the gesture. “If that’s all, I’m leaving.”

“Sheesh, so cold~ Not my fault that your types are so fragile.”

The heat rose up his neck. A memory within a memory spawned, of bugs in a box, shaken by a malevolent child. He whipped around, about to deliver a sharp insult back, to drive out the trepidation he had for every moment he spent in this monster’s presence.

And he found himself face-to-face with her instead, their noses almost touching, that one eye like a blood moon, as two hands clasped either side of Vincent’s head, holding him there, the pressure increasing ever so slightly.

“Hi Vincent. I do hope this message reaches you. Please don’t surrender tomorrow. It would be far too boring if you did.” Her head tilted off to the side in a manner that was almost girlish. “And I would recommend you not go too much further into dear Sylvia’s mind. She’s pretty much as in the dark as I am about ol’ Matty’s plans!”

He pushed her away. She let him go. His ears were still flush from the force applied, and the dread that accompanied almost threatened to suffocate him. It would be as easy as crushing a grape. And this woman before him would do it as an afterthought.

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” He snarled.

“Hey, don’t worry, Sylvia. Just bundling a message in the bottle. If you’re as good as Matthias thinks you are, it’ll never reach the shore it’s meant for!”

Vincent took the memory in stride, pure satisfaction rolling off him as he added one teensy, tiny little command in Sylvia's head. Return, Disarm. In a few days, Sylvia would feel compelled to seek him out again, and she wouldn't be armed when she did.

With that done, Vincent exited Sylvia’s mind, the woman still as motionless as a doll. He glanced over her once before glancing to Joker. ”Place her on the gurney. I’ll have them look at her shoulders.”

Joked raised an eyebrow,moving toward the gurney. ”What did ya see, boss?”

Vincent merely smiled. ”Our dear Mr. FitzClarence decided to stroke my ego. That woman held a message in a bottle, one I happily read.”

He turned back to his scientists,some of which were already looking over Sylvia. ”I'm expecting company, Joker. Give ‘em hell.”

He turned back to half-glance at Joker. ”Don't die, yes?”

Joker gave a nod, before slowly turning from the room, and exiting out the way he came, doors closing and locking behind him.

It had come at last!

A true battle, a clash of brute violence and incompatible egos! Within the fifteen minutes that had elapsed since Sylvia had sent out her signals, Lenore and her borrowed troops had rushed forth to wreck havoc. This was no Merryland, where they cosplayed as special operatives, traversing unseen to perform a decapitation mission on the enemy’s command center. This was no Yellow Brick, floating like vultures before swooping down to claim wounded, defeated prey. This was no Lougham, a disappointment in the making!

This was a rampage for the Saint. She had heard of the explosions in Nickel, the lovely work that a bomb-flinging girl accomplished there, and she had stuck it in her mind that she would do even better!

She caught up to a retreating car and ripped it in two halves with her hands, hurling each end like a boomerang into the next barricade of Thorned Roses. She kicked away grenades thrown towards her, embedding them deep into concrete walls before they exploded and tore holes through buildings. She ran head-first into the fray, not a single drop of blood or rivulet of flesh gracing the sledgehammer on her back as she tore through squads of mundane soldiers before they could even retreat.

This was what battle was in Nocturnia! This was what it meant to have a Gyft! The privilege to sin, to indulge, to take off the mask of humanity, to reduce the world to rubble and remake it in your image! The Heavens did not cry, because the Heavens approved!

Perhaps she could’ve have given those Thorned gangsters some time. Some time to recognize what threat she presented, some opportunity to decide to take in Sugarcrush. But what challenge would an immature Gyft user present, when it came down to it? It was a child with a weapon they did not know how to use.

Blood painted new paths upon White Pine’s roads, a pink hue gracing patches of asphalt. Two blocks away, the Machine-Augmented moved to finish off the disorderly scraps that Lenore left in her wake, left in her path to challenge the one thing in White Pine that was worthwhile.

What could be better for a Holy Woman, after all, than the King of Dragons?

There was the unmistakable sound of footsteps, unhurried, even thoughtful. Eyes cast themselves over the scene as Joker took in the destruction of the woman before him. Each broken body on the ground, he knew them by name.

A shudder entered his body. Pain.

Before his gaze focused on the woman. ”You must be Lenore. Must say, you know you could have just called if you wanted to visit.”

His face darkened. ”You have a lot to answer for.”

Before ten dragons of rippling, pearlescent colors manifested around him, each about the size of a car. He mounted the black one as each took to the sky, circling around Lenore like vultures around meat.

Then, fire rained down in torrential bursts from three of the dragons’ maws, aiming for her location, and then where she might run to.

“What? Are we pretending that these aren’t gangsters now?”

Lenore picked a head off the ground, tossing it up and down in a flagrant display of mockery. Ten dragons alone did not a Dynasty make, but they were certainly beautiful, thoughtless creatures, weren’t they? Where else but in Nocturnia could you see such excitement? Where else but here would myths become real?

As heat bubbled up the throats of three of the dragons, the nun responded by hurling a head towards the centermost beast. An adult human head weighed roughly the same as a bowling ball, and though it was softer by far, it still reached speeds tremendous enough to snap one of the dragon’s heads away. One jet of flame went awry, searing the top of a building and leaving a gap between the other two streams for Lenore to charge through.

And like that, she was in close quarters with a den of dragons, her sledgehammer wielded for the first time as she swung it with superhuman strength towards the closest lizard’s chest. It connected, and one dragon evaporated. The others responded by taking themselves higher in the air, to about the third to fourth-story level. 

Joker made note of where the head landed, knowing it would need to be retrieved later for a proper burial. Whatever dignity Lenore stripped of his family, of This Thing of Ours, he would return it.

With a thought, five of the remaining dragons opened their maws. And, in a flash of light, electricity touched the ground around Lenore in a snap. Like a streak of lightning flashing across the sky, the electrical bursts aimed to touch her, and around her. More this time, and much faster than before. If it struck, it was like raw nature - potent, and hopefully lethal enough.

One swing passed through, and she twisted her body as she fell, delivering the second swing straight down into the ground. It was a seismic impact, one that shook nearby buildings, as chunks of asphalt burst up out from the ground at the force. Lightning scarred the skies, some shattering the chunks, others passing through, but Lenore did not need to dodge lightning.

She only needed to track the position of eight creatures.

The nun’s legs bulged as she kicked off the ground, lightning singeing her shoulder as she leapt into the air. Within this dilated time frame, chunks of asphalt rose and fell in slow motion, and she sped along them, utilizing them as aerial footholds to propel her past the dragon’s breath. She ascended to the lowest-flying dragon, her hand reaching to grab its dangling tail before she used it to swing ever-higher, kneeing another dragon in the jaw in her flight.

Two more ‘footholds’, and she’d reach Joker.

Joker had just enough reaction timing to de-summon the remaining dragons, all except the one he rode, thereby eliminating the footholds Lenore needed. The black beast he rode soared higher, to about the tenth-story level, while below him, at the seventh-story, one dragon manifested. Brilliant gold scales, a size of about a one-story building, glimmering, sharp eyes, and claws. Its furious eyes locked on Lenore, and its maw opened.

It glowed in its mouth briefly, a burning light, before a massive beam of pure energy shot itself at Lenore, melting the asphalt below her.

“Finally! The headliner!”

Golden and massive, glorious as the sun itself! A one-story building perhaps wasn’t even so large as some construction vehicles out there, but when compared to animals? It dwarfed even elephants, a rippling mass of violence, power, and muscle, possessing all the fury and arrogance of a true monster.

Lenore reached out towards it with her hand, as if she could could grasp it in her hand.

But she fell instead, as resplendence traced alongside every gap between the dragon’s scales, and a radiant judgment spewed out from its maw. Ah, it was a beautiful thing, wasn’t it? It was enough to make one believe in God. That there was something righteous about the world, that even the worst sins could be cleansed in a light that expelled no heat.

She narrowed her one eye, her gaze venomous.

And then, Lenore leveraged the only foothold she had left: her hammer.

Her boots braced against the shaft as she kicked off against it, the force propelling the sledgehammer one direction and herself a different direction. She landed an instant before the beam could strike her, immediately bursting into a sprint as the blast continued to trace her. At a distance of 25 meters into the air, it was an opponent that she couldn’t reach in a single bound, an opponent that could one-sidedly keep her at a range while their master stayed even further beyond. So what was a girl to do?

Lenore continued to run, a blur of black, like a shadow escaping the rising of the sun, beams of destruction tracing her wake. If there was no way for her to reach the Dragon Dynasty with her fists, then she only had one other recourse: drag it down to her level.

Arakasa Tower was just a few blocks away. At her speed, it would be seconds before the Saint brought this fight indoors.

Joker immediately pressed his comms, his two dragons giving chase. She was heading for the Tower! Was he an idiot, or what?

”Need some air support here!” He roared.

”We see her, standby.”

And, dropping down from above was a black helicopter, falling until it intercepted Lenore’s trajectory. Bullets tore through the air as its mounted machine gun sprayed rapid-fire bullets at Lenore, hoping to at least stop her, slow her down, anything.

If she were a masochist, she would charge forth relentlessly, enduring the storm of steel. She could weather the storm, even if the bruises from the bullets would paint her pale flesh a tapestry of purples and reds.

But gosh, helicopters with machine guns? It seemed like everyone had those these days! If she wanted that kind of blood, Lenore would look for blue blood instead!

She ran diagonally, extending her arrival to the Tower by precious seconds as bullets whizzed past her, hand dragging a concrete divider to gather her own ammunition. It was like pulling apart styrofoam, the way it crumbled. But the heft of it was real, and in the hands of some whose physical strength was absurd, whose mania was kept in check by the ‘leash’ of the Lodestar?

It was like a shotgun blast. Concrete shards smashed into the side of the helicopter, catching all those inside. Perhaps if they wore helmets, body armor, a facemask, they’d survive, for stone was still not as frightening as steel. But in the moment that the gunner flinched, there was time enough for Lenore to enter, a line of blood tracing the shallow cut on her cheek, two new welts forming on her arm as bullets fell off them.

Her gaze turned towards the men seated, narrowing. Wes would like it if a helicopter, with all its fancy weapons and machinery, remained intact, hm?

“Quick!” She slapped a fist against an open palm. “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”

Then men inside the helicopter were all but finished, two on the floor, one barely hanging on to the gun. The gunner, blood seeping from his head, stared at her white in the face. But before he could consider jumping with his remaining strength, Joker made a move without thinking.

Joker and his black dragon shot through the opening of the helicopter, hoping to sweep Lenore off her feet with its teeth and claws and smash her into the blast shields of the Tower.

”You're gonna regret hurting them!

“You’re the one who called them in!”

Superhuman as she was, Lenore was still mostly human in terms of physical mass. Struck head-on by the black drake, she flew out the helicopter and her back slammed into the blast shields, breath escaping her lungs as a derisive bark of a laugh, even as her hands forced the dragon’s maw open, preventing it from clamping down on her. Its breath, warm, moist, but entirely devoid of life, spilled upon her.

It would be too easy now, if she just powered through this. She could split Joker’s pet apart from its jaws and reach him in another moment after.

It would be too boring.

Lenore slammed its jaw closed instead, fragments of teeth flying out as she reached for its horns. Grasped it tight.

And with its head as a battering ram, the nun used it to break open the wall beside her, for as long as Joker was willing to keep his phantasms tangible. Upon impact, there was a great boom and the sound of breaking metal and glass. And when the dust cleared, there was Joker, covered in cuts and bruises, clutching his side on the floor within the Tower.

His hand raised, and in a last-ditch effort to bar her entrance, five dragons manifested around the hole, the streams of energy from their maws creating an angled criss-cross over the hole. She'd have to pass through the energy beams to get inside, and Joker would be damned if he let that happen.

But that wasn’t a problem for her, not when Lenore was already right at the entrance. A side step, a quick roll, and she bypassed the dragons with a languid fluidity. In another bound, her hand reached his throat. It was a grip so solid that it didn’t even feel like his muscles could spasm underneath. Her thumb lined his jaw, her single eye staring in his own.

There was nothing loving about this gesture. There was only a passing, morbid thought: to flick his head off his neck like a coin, and see if it landed on the crown or the stump.

Her gaze lifted up, at the staff who were a step too slow to evacuate, at the elevator stuck in stasis. Through the concrete, she could hear a hundred footsteps pound down the stairwell, soles slapping against concrete. In another few moments, flies clad in Kevlar would come in and sour the meal further, fodder in high supply. Sculptures in the sand, toppled by a light touch.

Lenore sighed.

“Let’s run it back.”

And without hesitation, she drew the Gyft Enhancer Matthias entrusted her with and jammed it into the Dragon Dynasty’s carotid artery. A pink fluid traced down his veins; she tossed him out the hole she just entered.

“Joker. Kill me. If you don’t, I will let you, and only you, live.”

There was no longer any lunatic merriment, only the fatigue of someone who had been met with disappointment after disappointment after disappointment.

“Give it your best shot, please.”

Joker choked as he fell from the hole, the gravity of her words hitting him like a brick. He wouldn't let it happen, couldn't let her kill the faithful men of the Thorned Roses. So, as he sailed towards the ground, his eyes opened, determined.

There was a brilliant flash of light, before three massive dragons the size of ten-stories, absolute monsters, soared up, rageful roars escaping their maws. Joker wasn't outside this time, he was within one of the colossal dragons. And, as the three dragons took positions around the Tower, eyes on every side and fixed on the floor Lenore was on, other, smaller dragons manifested. About twenty of them, melting the blast shields with their breath and tearing into the building. Joker knew Vincent was on the 48th floor, and the dragons evacuated it and whoever else they could find, taking Vincent and his scientists, collection, and whatever men to the sky before Joker intended to do something drastic.

The three colossal dragons drew in long, long breaths, muscles coiling and diaphragms expanding. Light grew in their mouths. Though, this time, it wasn't the light of before. No. This was a cero that was forming, an exceptionally powerful beam of light.

A beat of silence.

Then, three ceros of pure blue exploded onto the Tower, at Lenore’s location, at least three stories in size. In an instant, three stories of the Tower disappeared, melted from existence. The Tower sunk, upper floors smashing into the lower ones, before fifty floors of the Tower began to lean…

…And descend, sailing almost in slow motion as it met the asphalt with a thunderous roar, kicking up dust and debris that quickly caught up into the sky, blurry the vision of the dragons.

The time limit began.

Not a time limit that considered how long she had before the effects of the drug ran out, but the time limit that considered how much she could have all this fun to herself, before Wes spoiled everything.

No.

Lenore was perhaps thinking about this the wrong way.

The time limit didn’t matter if she died first.

An incomprehensible physical capability alongside an undisturbed human intelligence versus the majesty of dragons, drawn to ever greater heights by the blessing of that Great Thing. It was almost comedic, the difference in sheer physical mass. A true mythos, a crucible to refine or to eradicate the self against. Her stomach burned with a hungering heat. Her eye ached with memories that seemed to be just on the verge of bubbling upon the surface! Such chaos, such indulgence!

Lenore erupted, tearing through ceilings like paper mache, ascending just as the space beneath her turned into emptiness. Three stories, six stories, twelve stories! The Tower leaned, the Solaris Eye blinded by heavenly scorn towards the heathen nun, and she tore out from its side, racing its own destruction. There were no other buildings in White Pine nearly so tall as Arakasa Tower, no bridge so convenient as this one! She tore off the spire as she leapt off it, for the first time at a height where she could look down upon these glorious, beautiful monsters!

An image bloomed within her mind.

St. George of the Golden Legend.

She fell like a shooting star towards the leftmost dragon, gambling everything on a single strike.

Because if she missed? There was no way to climb back up.

Instead of moving, the Dragon had its sights on Lenore as Lenore raced towards it. Its maw opened once more, and a blue cero burst forth. With Lenore in the air, she would have no obvious way to change her trajectory to dodge this. 

And so, the cero angled upward attempted to encompass her as it scorched the sky, tearing a hole in the low clouds.

She didn’t need to dodge it. Not when she could prevent it.

As the dragon’s head turned upwards towards her, Lenore drew her own arm back mid-descent, hefting the upper spire of Arakasa Tower as a spear. It was clear what it would do. It was only a matter then, of how much of a ‘beast’ this creature truly was.

Light built up and the spire flew down to intercept the cero before it left the dragon’s mouth, its mass combined with Lenore’s raw strength driving it like a spear down deep. Would it gag? Would it explode? Would nothing happen at all? The numbers continued to spin, the dice continued to roll, Death prepared to collect its grim debts on either end.

Indeed, as the spire made its home in the gullet of the dragon, the cero was cast, and the dragon burst in a brilliant display of light. As it faded, the dragon still stood there, stunned. Part of its face had been blown off, and there was a massive hole in its throat.

And then it demanifested.

Two dragons left.

As Lenore continued her descent to the ground, the other dragons shifted to gain a line of sight, and two ceros went off, hoping to engulf her.

There was no spire to protect her this time.

But she wasn’t descending either.

Lenore’s strength far outsized her physical mass. It was an absurdity generated by the nature of Gyfts, and it was the same absurdity that saw her shoot skywards in counterbalance to the spire that she threw downwards. Somersaulting to re-orientate herself, the heathen nun touched her feet against the underside of the falling tower as the remaining members of the Dynasty let out their terrible glow once more, that incandescent eradication that erased even the sky itself.

Could she take a second? Could she gamble further? Could she have asked Wes to build her wings? Could she have expected Joker to treat his Dragons as artillery, rather than as physical powerhouses?

So long as she stayed in the sky, she could reach the dragons and they could reach her. But once she returned to the ground, there wouldn’t be any satisfaction on either end.

“Well!”

There was no helping it!

A chunk of wall was torn off and Lenore hurled herself off the underside of the building, diving beneath the two cero beams that consumed the remainders of the Tower so completely that there wasn’t even a sound left behind. Decidedly beneath the dragons now, Lenore placed her ‘platform’ beneath her boots, sighted her target, and kicked up, a surface-to-air missile of a madwoman, concrete dust blooming beneath her as she reached and reached and reached!

Reached for the underbelly of the central dragon, so she may earn the right to challenge this Goliath once more.

Its eyes were set on her, furious. If she really wanted to play that way, it could play that way. As she reached for the dragon, it raised a massive paw, side stepping her trajectory and swatting, hoping to knock her into the building across the street. If it was successful, it fully intended to swing its tail upon the building, and crush her more. Flatten the building if it had to.

”Just die already!”

The first pawstrike eclipsed her vision, and Lenore couldn’t even hope to have held on as she was struck with the force of a ten story building. Before her heightened senses could register it, she found herself skipping like a stone across the street, three hundred meters crossed before she cratered against a storefront.

A flower shop, as it were. Roses and tulips, carnations and lilies, their petals all scattering around her. One blossom fell on her mouth. It tasted more bitter than sweet, but she was surprised that she could even still taste anything beyond the blood in her mouth.

And, without even a moment to rest, the air stirred, the harbinger of a great mass descending upon her. A bludgeoning tail, to crush an entire block flat and lay waste to even more of White Pine. Beyond that, the roar of a vengeful Dragon King, furiously desperate to protect what remained of family and hearth.

So Gyft Enhancers were this powerful.

One dose alone could empower you thirty times over.

The tail slammed down.

You’d have to be a cockroach to survive it.

Joker watched in earnest from the eyes of the dragon. Finally. Was this finally over…?

“Enough.”

It was a voice without any power, any gravitas. It barely qualified for a voice, in truth, when it was more of a deathly wheeze, a gasp given meaning by the constriction and modulation of air expelled through pipes and pumps.

But its inhuman quality only lent to the threat that it presented.

In the chaos and frenzy of Lenore’s suicidal self-indulgence, Wes had flown up to the altitude of the Dragon Dynasty’s smaller brethren. Those who could stop him did not notice him. Those who noticed him could not stop him. And there, he stood, his massive metallic frame dwarfing Vincent, a gun pointed behind the man’s head.

“Fighting. Meaningless.” It was an empty threat, that gun, but only because from his back, far more weapons extracted themselves, an entire array pointed at the remainder of the Thorned Roses. “Pyrrhic.”

Vincent half-turned his head, catching a glance of Wes. A man with a gun for a head. There wasn't a lot Vincent could do when there was no brain to manipulate. 

A sigh, before he glanced over at his men. There were Thorned Roses. There were his scientists and his collection. Luckily, the Red Roses got out, along with Mathieu, before the battle outside took a turn for the worse. So, he was here, alone, with his most precious assets.

He couldn't very well risk them, could he?

Slowly, Vincent's hands raised, and his chin jerked, urging the rest of them to follow suit.

He side-glanced at Wes behind him. ”You have me at a disadvantage. I don't know the name of the man who has me.”

A pause. ”You want me, yes? I won't put up a fuss, just let my people go. We have some staff here and others that won't cause you any grief if let loose.”

Joker watched from below, his heart sinking as he watched Vincent surrender. All his effort, and the destruction and lost lives– was it for nothing?

With a fury directed at himself, Joker cursed under his breath, and dispelled the two colossal dragons, depositing himself on a nearby rooftop.

Down below, at the stump of the Arakasa Tower, a unit of Thorned Roses attempted to extract Elara from the Tower. However, their way out was blocked.

“Not. My. Decision.”

Who to spare, who to kill. But Wes didn’t pull the trigger, nor did he choose now to riddle a defenceless Joker full of holes and nip the threat at the bud. He stood there instead, standing behind Vincent until the dragons descended upon the wreckage that was White Pine.

“Gather. People.” The weapons expanding from the cyborg’s back collapsed, folding themselves into his frame once more. “Not. Present. Remain. Enemies.”

And just like that, the dragons dispersed, leaving Vincent and the rest in a dusty street, staring at his once glorious tower.

A sigh.

He slowly raised a hand to his comms. ”I’ll need all surviving crews on my location, in front of the Tower in White Pine. You're all to stand down, and let the Order do their work.”

There was a rumble of static, before Alex cut through. ”We’re on the edge of White Pine, ETA ten minutes.”

Another voice cut in, ”Laterdale is compromised, Eric’s in custody. And hospitalized.”

And one more voice, among the other capos and crews reporting in, ”We’re stuck under the Tower’s rubble with Kairo’s girl. We will need a rescue.”

Out of all of the reports, there was a distinct lack of communication from one sole Matteo. Vincent didn't make a comment on it, wondering how well Wes knew his men. If Matteo could escape this… Well, maybe the Thorned Roses still had a shot.

Vincent responded over the comms. ”I will negotiate getting you out, basement team, standby.”

Before Vincent turned to Wes. ”Everyone should arrive in about ten minutes. Though I have a favour to ask. I have men, and a girl from Nickel stuck under the Tower. They will need a rescue.”

There was an impassive silence, but only for a few moments. The span of a quick call, rendered entirely in radio waves.

“Lodestar. Agrees.”

After about ten minutes, Joker and Alex joined Vincent in front of the remains of the Tower. Alex with his few remaining men, Joker with his back up crews. Crews that had been left to patrol White Pine gathered. In total, there were about a hundred men that had either survived the Tower or had been far enough away to mitigate damages. In total, there were about a hundred men killed in the collapse of the Tower, and fifty men in custody from Laterdale. That left fifty men unaccounted for.

There was no accounting for civilian lives lost in the crossfire.

But no doubt, there would be plenty to populate the news cycle. Wes’s gaze was fixed on the emptiness that was once occupied by Arakasa Tower, before turning to towards the growing group before him.

“The Order. Uncovers. Buried.” Already, there were those amongst the Order’s strike force who had approached the piles of rubble, their mechanical prosthetics enabling them to pull away larger pieces of stone.

“Vincent. Joker. Alex. Handed To. Lion.” It was a relief, perhaps, to all involved, that there would be no extrajudicial executions. Only imprisonment, for people whose crimes and whose potential for destruction greatly outstripped what prisons were meant to hold. Though perhaps, if the Lodestar were truly cold, he would have chosen a bullet before a trial.

“Others. May. Leave.” A motley crew of gangsters. Some unlicensed doctors and scientists may have been drawn in to the utility of fresh flesh, but Wes held no such interests. “Send message. Will Send. Buried.”

Vincent looked at Wes. Really looked at him. ”You’re dealing with us very honourably.” He glanced at Joker and Alex, who both shrugged. Being arrested was far better than what both were thinking.

Vincent turned back to Wes. ”Very well. Though I have just one more request, if you would entertain me. The… dead, in Lougham and Riverbend. Both Dark Aces and Roses. Reverers. As well as the dead here in White Pine. It would be very helpful, if they were returned to Highpoint to be given their rights for a proper burial.”

"If. Any. Remain."

Above, flocks of crows continued to converge, blemishing the blue sky that even now seemed to revel in the destruction brought forth by two individuals. If the Lodestar had not bequeathed that Enhancer to Lenore, would things have settled down more peacefully? In his unseen eyes, what had the purpose of indulging that mad dog been? Who, in fact, had he been sending such a message to?

What did he seek to prove?

Ah.

How was she to feel about this?

A pile of rubble shook, then crumbled apart as Lenore sat up, her hair a fizzy mess, her skin more bruises than complexion, her one good eye almost shut closed by the blood crusting over it. Her left arm was snapped in three separate places, but she used it anyways, fingers wrapped tight around her right arm, which had been almost completely disconnected when she withstood the shockwave of the tail's impact. The tendons on her right leg had burst, her left knee was bent backwards, and she didn't even want to know what happened to her insides.

By all accounts, the pain had to be enough to drop her straight into unconsciousness. By all accounts, it was a miracle that she survived. By all accounts, could there even be anything in Nocturnia, anything in the world that could hold out against the Dragon Dynasty in that state?

Unlikely.

But she was still unsatisfied.

In the moment, it had played out more like a puzzle than anything else. Throwing every idea she had to stay in the air, while her opponent flew further away. No delicious explosions of gore because the dragons just disappeared rather than remained. Not even a particularly interesting 'personality' from her opponent, so caught up as he was in avenging a bunch of nobodies. It was like fighting a sniper or an airplane. Kinda interesting and kinda engaging, but with little of the back-and-forth and none of the soul.

The holy woman let out a another deep sigh, blood dribbling out from her mouth.

Her pilgrimage would continue then, until that warmonger who pretended to be a priest would lead her to a hill worth dying on.

"Mmm."

It was delightful.

If it wasn't for his current allegiances, Elijah would have come more often. No other cafe made almond croissants quite the way he liked it except for this hidden treasure in Burberry, and the coffee reminded him of his childhood as well, that pungent, bitter aroma tickling his nose as he drew another sip.

Through the cafe's window, he could finally see the clear skies beginning to become obstructed by plumes of smoke, and it had been a joy too to witness the hurried work of regular officers in the district as they evacuated civilians when those giant dragons took to the sky, seemingly fighting nothing but an annoying fruit fly. The detritus left by the Butcher's Block certainly had a way of taking on far more than what she could bear, mm? But that doggedness was what made her endearing, adorable in the way that a small, barking dog was. He should buy something for her and Celina to share in the clinic. Maybe a toast box? A cheesecake? A...

"Oh, Wes?" A sliver of a tattoo peaked out from beneath his glove as he held a phone to his ear. "Yes. No. No. Yes. And of course, I'll let him know."

The ladies would have to settle for donuts then.

Fingers curling over the dragon's head once more, Elijah stood up, dusted the crumbs off his coat, and struck a jaunty stride as he headed to Burberry PD to deliver the Good News.
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