Well thanx Night. I'll do that. I was just a bit worried I wasn't really reaching anybody. A page view can just mean a person pops in goes "OMG wall of text" and pops out. It's nice to know there are people going further.
Edit: LOL! I got sniped by ala too. Thanx guys.
Now as hinted at,
Mission 2: IVORY
It all started on Druid Hill. Maybe the location was a coincidence. Maybe it wasn't but the thing appeared right in the middle of the big cats section of the Baltimore Zoo on that hill.
Woken by a commotion from slumber underneath the Zoo's Veterinary Hospital Kitty slowly pulled herself out of her daze. Soon she discovered the scene of carnage. Every big cat in the zoo was dead, along with many other animals, even some of the elephants and wild boars. A path of death led south out of the zoo. The Druid Hill lake was boiling.
The heroes exploring Arkham VonArderis's skyscraper were quick to notice the southern sky lighting up like daytime. Something a few hours early and obviously in the wrong direction. The pair made their best time towards the phenomenon. The quicker Shift however found himself kicked from the electrical lines by massive interference. Though comparitively close to the source of the light he would have to walk the rest of the way.
In the midst of late night swing shift patrol Turk recieved an order from dispatch. Hundreds were reported dead and many more unconcious. A new disaster was sweeping across Baltimore, the second in three days. Flooring the pedal of his modified jeep Turk turned and sped towards the bright light north of him.
Reports started to come in. A huge glowing light, forty feet in diameter, was moving through Baltimore. It had just missed the Maryland General Hospital and was headed towards the Baltimore Washington Monument. Everywhere it went it left a path of dead, dying or just unconcious people. The national guard was responding but no one was in position to intercept.
Getting as close as he could Shift found communication nearly impossible. The light was putting off an incredible amount of electrostatic interference. As he approached he could feel his nanotech inner workings start to spark and he was pulling in unwanted energy. Strangely he felt great, very invigorated, yet he was walking through a scene of death.
Following her own inscrutable patterns Cass appeared on a nearby rooftop. She stayed distant and tried to discern what she was dealing with. Above her Kuro was just arriving, his darkness flickering slightly in the bright light. The object, which was starting to seem like some form of energy creature, had passed the monument and turned south. Panicked calls for aid followed. The thing had slowed to a meagre pace but it's current course would take it directly to or past Mercy Hospital. There was no possibility of evacuation in time.
Turk drove up past the hospital only to find his jeep stalling from excessive electrical interference. The big guy just shrugged, got out and took off running the last few areas. Arcs of electricity bounced off him and the surroundings as he approached, his immunity to the shocking effect keeping him safe closer than anyone else.
Shift and Cass both looking at the object realized about the same time for different reasons at least what it consisted of. It was a giant ball of life energy, a mass of chi larger than the average house. It was such a source of life energy it had litteraly overloaded any life form it moved past as it travelled. Noting that it hadn't actually taken a single aggressive action Shift sent one of his drones into the ball as close as he could to the center. Before it was overloaded by the sheer amount of bioelectricity bouncing through the ball one image filtered through the static, that of floating feathers and beautiful wings.
Working up a new use of his ability Kuro opened up a portal to the darkforce dimension in front of the energy ball which immediately complied flying right into it. There was a massive discharge of power and Cass could feel a feeling of confusion in the air. Static sparked and crackled then, a few meters beyond the gate, space cracked open to allow the object back into our dimension. Kuro, not amused, allowed the gate to close.
From the rooftops opposite Cass the Kitty appeared in a rage. Her friend cats were dead and she was angry yet she managed to hold back. Her hesitant and cautious nature, along with her unwillingness to approach any threat, held her back no matter how angry she got. She paced back and forth looking for some sort of opening or something to drop on the ball.
On the other side of the street Cass knocked a few objects into the light only to see them get cooked. Impatient she jumped down into the aura, protected by her almost boundless supply of raw luck. She passed Turk on the way in, the brick rather surprised someone was actually getting close to the thing. Even his invulnerability to electricity hadn't protected him from almost being stunned by the overabsorbtion of life energy he'd been hit with nearer to the object.
Kuro in a fit of pique landed in front of the creature, making sure they had it entirely bottlenecked in a narrow street. Behind them the road opened up and they wouldn't be able to block it anymore. As it approached he tried almost a dozen ways to get the thing to notice him and stop. From shouting, yelling, waving his arms around, through flashing lights to interperative riverdance he went through them all. At last something worked, though he didn't know exactly what so he kept up the flashing and dancing, and the object stopped on the road. Soon it started to flash bright and really really bright in time with Kuro's use of his light power.
Getting deeper into the energy aura Cass survived round after round with little worry. She began feeling and reading the chi of the object trying to get a handle on what it wanted. With all her will she tried contacting the thing chi to chi. Soon the being had taken notice of her, helped by her incredible luck. For a moment it flashed a different chi, which she realized matched someone she knew, one of her trainers from the Chaste. It didn't seem a coincidence she'd seen him in town only a week and a half ago. She headed out to find a phone that worked with all the interference.
From close up Shift noticed the object changing slightly, possibly rotating as it bonked itself into the walls of the thouroughfare. Electrical arcs started to frequent the space between it and the few dead bodies it had left nearby. The bodies started to jerk spasmodically as it approached, almost nudging them with it's bulk.
Kuro, in the midst of trying interperative Oppa Gangam Style almost fell over as one of the dead people got up, clearly alive again. Soon one after the other the recently dead were rising. He was about to let out a cheer with everyone else when something fast passed like a streak overhead and the road was filled with explosions and debris. They all looked up to see the national guard jets receeding into the distance. Another loud crack sounded out and another explosion knocked them back.
The party slapped itself with a collective facepalm as dozens of national guard soldiers moved in, followed by a half a dozen heavy tanks.
Shift moved toward the new problem and found his way was no longer blocked by the creatures aura. Apparently it could turn that down, it just hadn't. Its own sheer power no longer blinding it to the lives around it, the entitiy had adjusted itself to do no harm. This however might not last if it noticed someone taking pot shots at it.
Turk lept into action, running over to the guardsmen and telling them to hold their fire. It was not an easy task to shout over the noise they were making with every gun going off at once. He skipped in through the volume of fire and tried to order them to stand down. Either in response, or just because they hadn't noticed, the lead tank fired again, over his head, almost knocking him over as the shell flew down the street and hit the energy form. Having had enough of that Turk grabbed the tank's barrel and bent it up into the air, yelling for them to stop @#$%ing shooting. Scared by the big man yelling at them and wrecking their equipment the guardsmen didn't listen and instead turned their guns on him. It wasn't a very good idea. To make matters worse the entity had noticed the tanks at least and it had a pretty good way of dealing with them. One was knocked over by an invisible force.
Kuro, taking the direct flight route to whoever he could find in command noticed three people in SHiELD uniforms in the center of the collumn directing traffic. He landed next to them and started yelling at them to pull back, trying very had to explain himself. He was rebuffed bruskly by the agents who told him he hadn't the authority to intervene. Pointing to a tank, which at the very moment was backflipping over their heads, Kuro made note that they weren't in the greatest position either.
In short order Turk had grabbed up one tank's turret and was using it as a big hammer to take down the other ones. He and the entity actually made short work of at least 375 tons of abrahm in the next few moments. The big guy cursed his luck, since he knew there would be hell to pay.
In the midst of the guardsmen Kuro had already lost patience. He grabbed up the lead SHIELD agent and lifted him in the air, threatening him if he didn't stop the firing. In response the agent went for a gun, but suddenly found himself phased out of his clothes, holster weapon and all. In a moment he found himself hovering over the entity. Being dangled over the enormous energy by a very irate Japanese man cursing at him in a weird engrish dialect the man held his ground as best he could. It was academic anyway, without the tanks he doubted he could effect the creature.
Ignoring the rest of the guardsmen the light turned and began travelling back up it's path. Arcs of energy split from it to the dead and unconcious, bringing them back to full function. Soon the creature had a flock of followers cheering it on. Unable to do much about that the SHIELD agents agreed to get the guard to back off.
As Kuro put the agent down he overheard a report from the general hospital that some of those recently dead from other causes had suddenly healed and come back to life as the thing passed. With characteristic aplom Kuro reached over and demanded the SHIELD agents lend him their quinjet. Not willing to piss the man off even further they actually let him onto it. He quickly briefed the group on the massacre at Arkham's building and their need to be there. With the quinjet's speed they made it in meer minutes and Kuro grabbed up a dessicated corpse the took off back towards the light.
The japanese hero reached the entity just as the sun was coming up while it passed over Druid Lake. Holding the dead man up to the light the corpse re-inflated, coming back to life. Unfortunately upon questioning over what had happened Kuro found that he'd revived a staunch fanatic who would give up absolutely nothing, who in fact believed he should die for his failure and stay dead. Not quite understanding that the whole ressurection by powers other than god was a big deal in the catholic church Kuro decided to threaten the guy. He in fact make a spike of darkforce and pointed it right at the fanatic's head, planning to cajole him with it. The fanatic simply lunged forward and killed himself on the spike.
Kuro shook his head at the futility of that gesture and simply held the man up to the entity again. Instant revival number two engage. This of course really peeved the fanatic, but Kuro was having none of it and using the new technique he was practicing opened up a portal to the darkforce dimension. Taking them both inside the equally peeved japanese fellow got into a long argument with the fanatic and finally got a few things out of him. It seemed that the being that was chained up in the tower was called Night Reaver and that it was an intelligent if undead being which when loose occasionally worked for local organized crime. Tossing the fanatic into darkforce storage Kuro headed back to the normal world and found a call on his cell waiting for him.
Seemed like his assets were frozen and a man with an eyepatch was in his office without permission demanding his attendance.
Back at the Zoo Kitty was busy hugging her revived cat friends.
In a flash the entity had revived the zoo animals then departed the dimension for parts unknown.
Relevant Stats:
IVORY:
Type: Energy Form(Angel)
F: PR (4)
A: RM (30)
S: UN (100)
E: UN (100)
R: EX (20)
I: PR (4)
P: UN (100)
Energy Body: UN (100) Life Force Energy. This body takes damage only from chi attacks and direct agressive contact by another living being using psyche as strength. Contact with this body does FE (2) damage(bzzt ouch).
Energy Aura: IN (40) Tied to the energy of it's body this aura is so powerful it interferes with life forms nearby. Any being in an adjacent area must roll against stun simply from being in the aura. Likewise any being in the same area must roll against kill. This power can be turned down by the creature, but the amount of energy it possesses will still force a stun roll against anyone in the same area. Note this can be ignored by resisting it's IN (40) rank with endurance.
Regeneration: UN (100)
Biophysical Control: MN (75), Healing, Revival
Telekinesis: MN (75), Kinetic Bolt, True Flight
Dimension Travel: AM (50), how it got here in the first place.
Extraordinary Senses: AM (50), circular vision, extradimensional, energy detection, life detection, psionic detection
Note: This being is such an immense source of life energy it has a hard time picking up life with lesser energy without concentrating on it.
Who will hold back the dark? Who will stand in it's way? It's who I am, it's what I do.
Hold in no fear and dance. Dance your dances, taste the day.
Live life to the fullest. Dance, dance, frolick and play.
Live not in fear.
For I exist to chase the night away
David Killenger, living spirit
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2012 01:41PM by SorrowDragon.