Kingfisher

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

@Atrophy My bad! I misread the questions in all my greatness.

Movie wise? Deadpool.

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

Collab with @JulienJaden

The Pale Veil was a place on the fancy side, as was to be expected of Dawn Peak Heights. Cain hadn't eaten at a restaurant like this in months; not because he couldn't afford it but because he didn't like them. Establishments like this had a tendency to not only be meeting places for the rich and famous or the powerful and their agents, namely him, but they all too often also had a hidden purpose, for example catering to more... exotic tastes. An innocent-looking restaurant like this could be a cover for a bordello or a blood den. That made asking questions at a place like this particularly dicey. Not that he had much of a choice.

So, Cain had given up his coat at the entrance and his gun was hidden under his jacket, now sitting comfortably in a quiet corner of the relatively empty restaurant - it was only around noon, after all - and watched as a young blonde walked towards him with his meal.

"Here you are, sir", she said with a polite smile as she sat down the tray. "A steak, medium, with seasonal vegetables on the side and a quarter of Trollinger."

"Thank you", Cain returned the smile as he watched her set his table, filled his glasses with wine and water.

"Enjoy your meal." She turned to leave.

"Would you sit with me for a moment?"

The question must have been unexpected but how quickly she recovered spoke volumes of how many proposals of this and probably even more indecent nature she had to deal with on a daily basis.

"I'm afraid I have to wo-"

"Don't worry, I have no ulterior motive.", Cain interrupted with a persistent smile. "I'm just a lonely elderly guy who'd like some company while he eats, that's all."

The blonde chewed on her bottom lip and looked around, making sure that nobody was vying for her attention. Didn't Valorie do that too sometimes? Maybe she might have worked in a place like this too, if it wasn't for Kennedy or her knack for necromancy. Francis pressed on.

"Some smalltalk, a sip of water, I'm not asking for much - and you'll walk away with a nice tip in your backpocket. It's not terribly busy right now anyway, is it?"

She nervously looked around once more as he cut into the meat and enjoyed his first mouthful of incredibly pricy and unbelievably tender steak, but by the time he reached for his wine glass, she had pulled back a chair next to him and sat down.

"You look a little intimidated."

"My boss is kinda anal about taking breaks", she murmured.

Cain chuckled and was rewarded with a careful smile by the blonde. "Salute", he wished her as he took a healthy gulp of the off-dry wine and nodded, satisfied. "What's your name?"

"Anna."

"As pretty as you."

It was a cheesy thing to say but the way he said it or maybe the situation caused her to grin sheepishly as the brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. It was always a boost for his ego when he didn't have to use magic at all to have this effect.

"And how long have you been working for your anal boss?"

Between a little charm here and a bit of humor there, she began to relax.
"I don't know, a couple of months? I kinda lost track of time; I've been tired a lot and today was particularly bad."

"How so?"

The blonde shrugged.

"Well, my colleague Stephanie up and vanished about halfway through our shift yesterday night. She didn't let anyone know, just... left, I guess, so I had to cover for her yesterday and today."

"Curious", he murmured, a forkfull of vegetables giving him a moment to think.

"Yeah... Well, it's not first time that's happened here. It's not the kind of job you wanna do forever."

Cain nodded.

"I know what you mean. By the way", he reached into his inside pocket, "I'm trying to get back in touch with a friend of mine. I've been told that she visits the Pale Veil every now and then", he took out the photograph and sat it on the table before her.

"Have you seen this woman recently?"

The waitress' nervous gaze drifted over the photo, lingering on woman's dull grey eyes. There was a slight, almost unnoticeable twitch in Anna's face, like something was tugging at the corner of her mouth with a fish hook.

" "She was here a few nights ago," Anna said with a slight pause, as though she were choosing her words carefully " "I remember her...she ordered a starter, then threw a big hissy fit when it arrived, and demanded to see the manager."

A look of worry fluttered across Anna's features.

"Sorry, that wasn't worded very delicately...ehrrm, I'm sure her complaint was valid!"

"No, that's quite alright", Cain laughed, "'hissy fit' does sound like her."

A well-placed lie made all the difference when it came to credibility.

He ate another bite of steak before continuing his line of inquiry.

"What happened next? I hope she didn't insult you or the manager too much?"

"I t-tried to calm her down," Anna fidgeted with her hands, compulsively sliding her fingers together "but I think that just upset her more. The manager -REALLY- doesn't like to be disturbed...probably has some kind of authority complex, so we're not supposed to bother them unless its an emergency. Not that I've ever needed to before."

The waitress cast one glance off to the side, before leaning in closer to Cain, lowering her voice to a hushed whisper.

"This isn't me trying to plug the restaurant, but...the food here is -GOOD-, like -REALLY- good." she had an awkward staring contest with a table napkin, before regaining her composure.

"Its creepy, like, we -NEVER- have complaints, but this girl really wanted to see the manager." Anna gave a nervous little laugh, which sounded as though it were lodged in the back of her throat and she was trying desperately to force it out "I guess that's why it stuck in my head. I've worked in restaurants before, but I've never seen anyone be this persistent. She started off like any other stuck-up, ehrmm sorry, customer making a complaint, but by the end of it its almost like she was...panicking. Like she'd drawn -TOO MUCH- attention to herself."

"Well, she is excentric and... honestly, a little paranoid too", he said with an understanding nod. "But you don't need to tell me about the food - I'm already convinced."

He was already almost done with his meal and the aging private detective didn't have to lie about the quality of the food: It was genuinely great and a true blessing after several days with nothing but hotdogs, slices of pizza or other food-to-go to keep him sated. Between running his errand for Bloodbloom and his other obligations, he had barely had the time to sit down and have a quiet moment to himself, other than those ten minutes at home before Valorie came in and his angry brooding was interrupted by a strange conversation and some of the most guilt-inducing and, at the same time, most pleasurable sex he had had in ages.

"In fact... I do feel bad about her causing a scene and badmouthing the restaurant's food and service, especially after the delicious meal and", he raised his wine glass to her, "pleasant company I enjoyed."

She gave him a nervous smile but the topic and time she had spent sitting here were taking their toll and he knew that his time with her was almost up either way.

"Here, for you", he said, reciprocating her smile as he handed her a fifty-dollar bill, on top two other twenties to pay the bill. "Consider it an apology for my friend and a token of gratitude for talking to an old man."

Cain found himself reminded of Valorie again as the waitress' eyes widened and warily shot back and forth between the bill and his face, not quite trusting the motive behind somebody giving her a tip this big, but she reached out and pocketed it nonetheless, not before looking over her shoulder again.

"Would you please send the manager to me, too?"

The color drained from her face instantly.

"I... I don't think that's-"

"I insist", Cain cut her off, his tone amicable but firm and his eyes locked with hers, staring her down until she looked away and nodded. "Thank you. And, if I may offer my advice? You should quit. Work in a place like this has a tendency to... eat at you. I'm sure you can find something better, Anna."

She turned and walked away without a response or meeting his eyes again. He didn't know if she'd take his suggestion seriously. Odds were that the other waitress, Stephanie, was dead or being whored out somewhere and that Anna would be sharing her fate soon, but by the time she got to the manager's office, she would no longer remember their conversation or what he looked like - she wouldn't even remember what he had ordered or where the extra fifty dollars in her pocket came from, other than them being a generous tip.
Cain had written a few runes on the bill, a simple form of mind manipulation without which his guarantee of handling a search like this discreetly would have been almost ridiculously stupid. Of course, runes were not exactly easy to overlook and anybody even remotely knowledgeable in the arcane arts would have been able to identify them for what they were, if modern chemistry hadn't come the aid of spies and mages everywhere: As it turned out, invisible ink was as good as regular one for drawing runes and made his work and life a lot easier. The only caveat was that spells without sacrifice like this only worked on people of weak will and no inherent magic. An elf or an orc would be a little confused by this but their memory would be largely unaffected. On the flipside, this property made their blood a more powerful magical reagent than that of humans.

While he waited, he flipped over the photograph and, with a pen from his inside pocket, refreshed the invisible runes on the back of the photo, murmuring along and pricking himself in the finger as a tiny offering. The spell had worked nicely on the waitress, the rune for 'truth' beckoning her to share a little more information than she might have otherwise and the one for 'lie' making what he offered in return seem a little more believable. The game he was playing was a dangerous one; if his target had desperately wanted to talk to the manager, it was fairly likely that they knew each other, which made it all the more necessary for this spell to work and help him out, if he wanted to keep this investigation low-profile. And for that to work, the manager would need to touch the photo.

Not one to overcomplicate things when the simple solution was likely to work best, he put the photograph down a little to his right, where Anna had sat, and covered most of it with a napkin, 'accidentally' covering it. It was sure to catch the attention of whoever came down to see him and as he sipped on the rest of his wine, Cain, hoped that his second interview of the day would go as well as the first.

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

@DJAtomika Not too bad at all. Yourself?

@Atrophy 1)

Richard ‘Dick’ Phaze

@Kingfisher

Alright! Alright! Fine. In terms of lines/posts that stood out to me, "You can count on the Firm to help you consolidate power over the lesser vampires, if you help us to rid Santa Somabra of Nyxvira Bloodbloom." was a pretty "oh shit" moment. The "everybodies a whore" thing was cool too. Pretty sure they say that in Peaky Blinders at some point.

2) As for what we're watching; A LOT of House of Cards. And my lady love is getting into Jessica Jones, so I'm occasionally re-watching that when she comes round.

How about your fine self, Atrophy?

Chase the Night

Dame

“Thank ya. Ah ‘preciate that.” Dame said quietly, her usual drawl flooding into her voice, as the sketchy looking figure with messy hair and deranged eyes handed her a drink, which she placed on the floor next to her once he’d shuffled off.

Jackass. She muttered internally, mentally flipping him off. You always knew there’d be a big clusterfuck of egos in such a large group. Just keep a cool head and ignore them. The loud ones usually go down first.

A soft rumble rattled through her stomach. Do you even -GET- hungry anymore? Do you even -NEED- to eat?. She certainly could eat. She could still eat and piss and shit and do all that good stuff, but how much of it was real, and how much of it was a glass tower corporation's drearily manufactured imitation of life?

Some prissy blonde made a remark about how their employers must be expecting some of them not to come back alive. Dame smirked at the irony of the blonde not having considered that she herself was just as likely to come back in a body bag, but managed to keep her mouth shut.

The air on the platform was cold and wet as it lapped lazily against Dame’s synthetic flesh, making her thankful for the fact that she could quite literally retreat into her own memories.

You can’t stay trapped inside your head forever. She scolded herself internally. Just fucking watch me. She spat back.

This certainly wasn’t the life she’d envisioned for herself. She’d been the lucky kid back on Chereleanna, but the corporations had swept in, ripped her apart, and made her feel about as lucky as a nympho with aids. The irony that she was now working for one of those corporations was not lost on her.

These arseholes don’t just make the clothes we wear, and own the houses we live in. They control what we see, what we do, and what we think. One way or another, when you scrape away the bullshit, we’re all working for the corps.

“Ready whenever y,all are,” Dame muttered with hushed boldness “Ain’t the pizza free if we don’t deliver it on time?”

Chase the Night

<Snipped quote by Hexaflexagon>

Oh man, I kinda want that game to happen now. And hey, with his name you can go full cheese mode and have him say shit like: "It's time to Crash this party."

..._{I can't tell if that'd be the worst or the best.}

@KingfisherOh hey, I get to bother you in this RP too. Now I'm real excited.

@Atrophy

Wouldn't have it any other way.

Fallout: Vancouver

<Snipped quote by Kingfisher>

How dare you spell disgust wrong. You sickean me.

@Wade Wilson

That's just how disgusted I was.

Chase the Night

Dame

19 | 2047- 12- 9 | Five foot four

Appearance - Dame is a short and lithe young woman, with artificial looking hair, and deathly pale skin. Her form is a combination of strength and grace, with an element of elegant practicality to it. Her features are almost sculpted in appearance, bearing a painted, make-up like quality to them.

Personality - Quick-thinking and meticulous, Dame has a cruel cunning, and an even curler witt. She has learned not to take herself too seriously, but knows when to drop her playful exterior, should the situation demanded it. Her mechanical state has given her an odd, removed view on life; as though she were an outside looking in on the rest of humanity. Every element of human nature has been meticulously dissected by her, and she places desire as the driving force behind mankind.

Biography/background - The young woman that would go on to assume the identity of "Dame" was born aboard the Cherleanna Ark, a rickety and rundown city, full of poverty-stricken folk which most would write off as little more than ditzy trailer trash or hillbilly rednecks.

Despite the harsh conditions which surrounded her, Dame always seemed to endure, flittering through life, relatively unscathed. As though she had some ethereal guardian angel watching over her, and sheltering her from harm, Dame's upbringing was one full of unsavoury characters and hazardous death-traps', all of which seemed to pass her by without a second glance.

Unbeknownst to her, Dame had been snatched away from her real parents at birth, by a secretive organization known as the "Horus Corporation", and implanted with an experimental set of cybernetic implants which tailored themselves to the host, growing as they grew, and allowing them to store memory at a rate rapidly above and beyond any other augmentation, effectively giving them the ability to perfectly mimic the skills and actions of others, based purely on the recollection stored in the host's head. Dame's "parents" on the Ark were state-of-the-art synthetic constructions, who believed themselves to be real humans, and the young woman's immense luck came from the small army of Horus employees that watched her from the shadows, making sure she was free from harm, so that the implants development could be properly monitored.

When Dame hit sixteen, the corporation swept out of the shadows and forcibly extracted her from Cherleanna Ark, whisking her away to a secret lab so that they could fully assess the augmentations progress.

She spent the next few months in a cell, as her broken mind was forced to adjust to the harsh realities which surrounded her. She had little to no human contact, save for the white-masked scientists who held her down and stabbed her with needles and other twisted equipment when it was time for another check-up.

Dame had always had a oddly precised memory, but the augmentation did manifest itself in full-force until the corporation's experiments activated its dormant processes. The young woman’s mind was flooded with stimulus, as painstakingly detailed depictions of the world around her began to gush into her mind. Every passing second became a masterfully elaborate painting, as each frame of life was meticulously dissected by Dame’s augmentation.

She quickly analyzed her captors patterns and mannerisms, and from then on out it was laughably easy to overwhelm and overpower those who sought to do her harm. Escaping the facility itself proved to be a gargantuan obstacle, but the threat of being forced back into her cell, or simply being shot for being too much of a liability, sent Dame’s senses into overdrive, and ultimately helped her to escape.

Time passed by in a warped blur as Dame shambled aimlessly down grimy streets and back alleys. Her augmentation’s experimental nature became agonisingly evident when the flood of information became too much for her brain to handle, and she spent her every moment in form-wracking pain.

She did anything she could to become numb to the torment; injecting countless drugs, and drinking herself to sleep every night, but even if the screaming misery quieted for a few hours, it would always return in full-force.

Eventually, Dame resolved to have her cybernetic implants removed.

She knew that going to a mainstream corp would almost definitely risk her being re-discovered, and subsequently captured, by the Horus Corperation, so Dame instead approached a black market cybernetics expert for help.

The tinker who agreed to perform the operation was fascinated by the high-tech level of implants he discovered once he’d cracked Dame open. Whilst they exceeded his expertise, he could tell that they were valuable, and was quick to try and pawn off the unconscious Dame to the highest bidder.

The promise of a new cache of unexplored tech attracted many interested bidders, but the tinker’s lack of ability to articulate just what exactly he’d found, and the back channels he used to advertise, meant that none of the large corps caught wind of just how valuable the technology was.

All except the Cronus Corporation.

Even amongst a world of shady dealers and seedy kingpins, the Cronus Corporation had a notoriously corrupt reputation. The conglomerate also happened to be one of the few Corps who had agents on the lowest rungs of society, just in case some kind of hidden treasure presented itself.

Cronus out-bid every other potential buyer, and were quick to snatch up Dame.

The fragility of her form was becoming ever more apparent, as the augmentation continued to take its toll on the withering woman, so Cronus devised a plan to combat this.

Some of the board members voted to rip the augmentation out of Dame, but it was ultimately decided to be too finely integrated into her system.

Dame was quite literally gutted. Her brain, augmentation, and other organs, were stripped from her fleshy form, and encased in a highly authentic artificial body. A husk of metal alloys replaced her skeleton, a hyper-realistic blend of rubber replaced her skin, and state-of-the-art optic prosthetics replaced her eyes. Whilst this new body may have been human in appearance, the complex machinery which whirred away inside it provided a much more stable environment for the augmentations, allowing Dame to utilize them without having a complete mental breakdown.

Infuriated by the atrocities which had been wrought upon her, Dame flew into a blind rage, slaughtering the corporate goons who held her captive, and fleeing out into the wilderness.

Now, Dame stalks through the underworld, finding work wherever she can, and raking in enough cash to keep herself comfortable, without drawing unwanted attention.

Weapon(s) -The Decimator: A five-shot assault rifle of Dame’s own design. The decimator fires rocket-propelled shells, each of which is infused with a small amount of explosive. The shells detonate upon impact, wreaking immense damage to the target.

Skillset - The Horus Module allows Dame to meticulously analyse the world around her, and self-teach herself the skills she sees others demonstrate. Whilst Dame is a moderate threat at this stage, the more she sees, the more of a threat she becomes.

Augmentations - The Horus Module: A state-of-the-art augmentation which tailors itself to the host, and bestows them with immense cognitive powers. Currently in the testing stage, the Horus Module proved to be unsafe when implanted in human subjects.

Synthetic Body: Dame’s old body was stripped away, and replaced with a form of plastic and metal. Whilst she still retains her humanity, her exterior is almost entirely mechanical.

Fallout: Vancouver

Sorry I'm late! I was in hospital, but I'll get a CS up soon.

@Wade Wilson

How dare you show your face here after being abscent for a perfectly valid medical reason. You disguist me.

Fallout: Vancouver

“Anythin’ will taste nice if you stuff it full of fruit and drown it in brandy; A mole rat iz no exception.”

“That as may be,” Matthew Dupont reasoned, scrunching up his nose slightly “but you might as well inject yourself with a syringe full of liquid radiation, for all the good eating a mole rat will do you.”

“Itz a clean mole rat.” Galhaena Calhoun insisted, shoveling another forkful of fried mole rat into her mouth.

“Those snag-toothed freaks role in their own shit and munch on trash! There’s no such thing as a clean mole rat.” Dupont scoffed, a crooked grin sliding up the side of his cheek.

“Well, I for one intend to enjoy every inch of Vancouver whilst I’m back down ‘ere.” The large woman took a delicate sip of something bitter and purple, wrapping her hand around the smooth glass cup.

“How’s it feel to be back home?” Dupont asked, smiling lightly after a brief pause.

“Odd,” The Trade Queen said simply “Feelz like I haven’t been here since I was a little girl.”

“Wouldn’t have been possible to make it cross-country without getting ripped up by zombies or Yao Guai when you were a little girl.” Dupont gave a throaty little chuckle “You’ve even started talking like one of those Quebecois.”

“Just going with the flow, Dupont.” Galhaena shrugged her broad shoulders “getting to sleep on a warm feather bed instead ov rubble and piss ‘elps to ease the burning shame of my outrageous conformity.”

“How about the burning pressure of running the Coalition?” Dupont asked, somewhat more seriously.

“I can dedicate day after days to keeping everything in check, and all it takes is one tiny little error to fuck everything up,” Galhaena admitted “It's...stressful.”

“Have you tried furiously masturbating?” Dupont smirked “that always helps me to relieve stress.”

Galhaena grinned ever-so-slightly, fluttering her eyelids “I’d never get any work done.”

“Never let work get in the way of a good workout.” Dupont declared loudly.

“Even if it's just my vagina that’s getting the workout?” She laughed softly.

“The vagina is a very important part of a woman’s body, madam.”

The hall that the pair were dining in had been little more than a pile of dust and rubble a few years back, but now it was a cathedral of high-ceilings and smooth brick. All across the frozen vastness of the Canadian Wasteland, bombed out ruins had been swept away and replaced with shanty towns and scrap metal shacks. The crippled husks of concrete leviathans had been restored to their pre-war glory, as a wave of new industrialization swept across the crisp white post-apocalyptia. The Coalition may have made many enemies, and committed countless atrocities, but it had all been worth it in the end.

This isn’t a world you can afford to be nice in.Galhaena thought to herself.There’s no profit to be made in holding other people’s opinions in high-regard.

“So,” Dupont inclined his head with a gentle tilt “what do we do about these military types?”

The Enclave may have thought their arrival had gone undetected, but the Coalition had practically every inch of the surrounding area mapped out.

“Mercy isn’t something zhat people such as ourselves can afford to extend,” The Trade Queen said in a voice that was as cold and firm as the empire she governed “its time we buried them in the snow.”

Chase the Night

@Kingfisher
Hmmm very interesting concept and in general I really like the concept. Corps do dark and dirty things all the time and sometimes they do dark and dirty things to children, it's all just an ends to a means. Though I do have some questions I'd like to ask before I can give my hundred percent seal of super duper approval.

The Horus Module how quick does it exactly work? Is it like she has to watch the skill be performed over various instances to fully understand it or is it more like just watch the person once and then boom you are a master at kung-fu? And does it work for full sets of skills like Martial Arts as a cohesive whole? Or would she have to watch each move be performed individually one by one.

The Second Question revolves around how does she deal with not becoming a C-Freak without the use of Neurotop? Because with a highly advanced neurlogical implant and a fully synthetic body the stress on her brain is going to be quite high. So I'm assuming either the Horous Implant helps dampen the symptoms, or the Synthetic body is base grade (looks almost completely human but the cybernetics inside are not super ones so that she has would only have the normal strength, speed et cetra of an everyday joe just a tad bit more durable and with much more trouble in metal detectors? XD) Would I be right in assuming either of these options?

Once you answer those we will be all good to go!

@Hexaflexagon

I'm glad you like the concept!

The only way that the Horus Module would make Dame a kung-fu master is if she'd witnessed several instances of kung fu mastery over a period of time. The Module captures a deatiled depiction of whatever she wants to memmorise, then she plays it back over in her head.

For instance, if she was fighting someone who displayed a particularly intreseting, say, punching technique, Dame could analyse that in her head, and ethier mimic the punch, or brainstorm a way to deflect the punch, bassed off of other techniques she's seen in the past. Essentially, the more she sees, the more she has to compare other people's skills and techniques to, and the faster she can learn them. At this stage, Dame is only just starting out, so she has a limit number of memmories to compare them to.

This is my bad for not going in to greater detail about how the synthetic body works. I think I'd sort of used up all my writing juice by the time I got to the augmentations section xD So, the primariy purpose of the synthetic body was to create an enviroment for the Horus Module which would stop it from turning the user into a C-Freak. This is acomplished by a series of dampeners which line the inside of the body. Whilst the body supplies her with a bit more resitance, due to it being partialy made of metal, it dosen't give her super speed/strength etc, and is functionally a base grade, like you suggested.

Please let me know if anything else needs clarifying.