[b]”What!?”[/b]

Out of nowhere some player came by and killed the dissolution he was fighting. Barely a minute in and it was already dead, it’s body parts falling to the ground. He didn’t see where his berserker went and may be dead from the great fall, so Arms Slave took his wizard and landed somewhere safe. He used his Chain Catch to soften his landing, taking cover before the outlaws noticed the destruction of one of their power houses. While it helped the morale of the defenders, they largely blew off the statement of the girl. Didn’t really matter to them what she thought of them or herself, the ones on the walls weren’t Sweepers anyways. They were just glad to have one less thing shooting lasers at them.

The Outlaws however seemed unbothered by the destruction of their second giant dissolution. Doesn’t help that they were almost through the Black City gates. The storm giant dissolution was giving the cannons hell, not to mention making it nearly impossible to pvp the Outlaws without constantly taking lightning AoE. So now their next priority was to take out the second dissolution. With any luck that would give the defenders time to mount a defense to stop the outlaws from breaching this wall.

[quote]
[b]To:[/b] Paper Moon, Jet Rhino, Junkyard Dog, Ash Roller, Strawberry Baby, Cerulean knight
[b]From:[/b] Arms Slave
[b]Subject[/b] Re: Dafuq

Roger doger. 

Paper Moon and Jet rhino I’ll leave it to you to handle PvP. Give our boyz some breathing room. 

The rest of us will take out the storm giant. Junk Dog and Ash Roller on me.

Ceru Knight when you respawn bring your boyz to the wall.

P.s. Paper Moon send the new kid to me. We’ll do an interview and see what use I have for him/her.

[/quote]

Arms Slave sent out his message as he carried his wizard with him to the wall. While he wasn’t afraid of getting swarmed, he needed to get the undivided attention of the Storm Giant. Using his last Chain Catch before it went into cooldown to scale to the top of the wall, he dropped off the wizard to somewhere safe and ran towards the giant. At the same time the wizard was charging up a spell, waiting to coordinate his attack just at the right moment.

And that moment was when Jet Rhino and his crew came to Paper Moon’s aid, guns blazing. The payload they were holding onto for the big dissolution was instead spent on the Outlaws, wiping out a good third of their forces and severely damaging the rest. This attack didn’t go unnoticed by the Storm Giant, but before he could strike a large ball of fire was shot at his face. The explosion was large enough to engulf his body, and while he was not dead, he turned his attention to the wizard and blasted his with a storm of lightning. Except the bolts were redirected to none other than Arms Slave, who used his Aura of Agony to ensure that the giant could target no one but himself. Even though the attack was a powerful AoE, Arms Slave was far away enough that the wizard was left unharmed, and Arms Slave was tanking the lightning bolts unerringly. And until Arms Slave was dead, which wasn’t any time soon considering that he was still near 90% health even after the attack, the Storm Giant couldn’t fight anyone but him.

The situation was quickly going worse for the outlaws, but they weren’t going to run yet. The Wheel Cannons continued to beat on the walls, and a few more rounds and they would breach the gate. Thus the outlaws, after their only surviving healer patched them up, went to engage Paper Moon and the others in straight PvP. If they could defend the cannons long enough they could breach the walls and storm the city. Junkyard Dog and Ash Roller took their forces to help whittle down the Storm Giant, though they each only had one mage whom could actually harm the creature through magic. The others thus went to either deal with the Outlaws or tried to help Arms Slave not die. Cerulean Knight was, unfortunately, still in the Black City Spawn and would take some time to reach the wall on foot.

[hr]

[color=black]”There’s no need for you to find the Corpse Collector. Find the Black King and bring her to me.”[/color]

Darkwraith sent a quick message to Kisa as she watched Corpse Collector and Doven fought. Despite Corpse Collector being the hottest topic recently, Dark Wraith was more interested in Doven. A cursory look into his true identity and a new string of theories were made. Darkwraith quickly learned that Doven is the brother of Azga the Amazing aka Erika Mitsuki. Her family had a history of skilled Deep Ground players and she was just a runner up. As far as her school life went she was rather normal… Up until she stopped showing up. All of a sudden she simply stopped coming to school. Plenty of students turn to into shut ins for social or practical reasons. Indeed, many of the more hardcore Deep Ground players forgo Purple Crown entirely just to play Deep Ground and raise their ranks. Social suicide, perhaps, but the most practical thing since Deep Ground judged one’s entire life. Dark Wraith was surprised there weren’t more people doing that.

That being said, even Azga the Amazing hasn’t logged in in quite some time. Not just popping in and checking her mail: more than a few days ago Azga simply stopped showing up. Her name did appear on the Sweeper’s hitlist, but she wasn’t marked for Cleaners. Her character was being targeted for… Unknown reasons. This made Dark Wraith sighed. One problem with allowing her Erasers free reign: no oversight for the hits. At least those marked for Cleaners have to go through all of the Erasers, herself included, but anyone could be targeted by the Sweepers for little to no reason. Part of their infamy.

But now things were starting to come together. Normally Darkwraith wouldn’t care for why a person would chose to abandon school and Deep Ground. But it couldn’t be a coincidence that Corpse Collector, a notorious outlaw and likely a hacker, was now being attacked by Doven, brother of Erika who has been MIA. If she had to hazard a guess Darkwraith would assume that Corpse Collector had something to do with Erika’s disappearance, but… How? Darkwraith could imagine someone with Corpse Collector’s personality to bully someone in both Deep Ground and real life to the point they may become a shut in. But then again, that would conflict with Erika’s sterling record. While she may not be particularly notable at school, she had perfect grades and came from a long line of successful Deep Ground players. Her family would surely not allow her to be quiet about something like this… Which is a surprise that Dark Wraith only learned now that Erika was in the hospital.

Now Darkwraith was rather concerned. Immediately Darkwraith wondered if operated an organization much like the Sweepers. In fact, Dark Wraith wondered if perhaps Corpse Collector once was a Sweeper. But no, she was quite familiar with the Sweeper’s ranks, and none ever bared the name of Corpse Collector before. Not that it was impossible for a player to change their name, but even so she has never lost a Cleaner she hasn’t kept close tabs on, and she still has all the Erasers in her ranks since the Sweepers first organized. No, Corpse Collector was outside of her organization, which only made Darkwraith more worried as it would mean that there was someone with powers equal to her own. Yet the report on Erika didn’t show any signs of physical trauma. So she wasn’t attacked. But Darkwraith didn’t know what caused Erika to be hospitalized, only that in some way, corpse Collector has something to do with it.

And Dark Wraith intended to find out how.

From her location she’d first make sure that Corpse Collector couldn’t pull any more of her tricks. Darkwraith wasn’t going to fight directly, and from her location she couldn’t anyways, but she would run interference with Corpse Collector’s teleportation. This way she can’t just warp out of trouble, though there’s nothing Darkwraith could to do stop Corpse Collector from simply running away on foot. But not only did Darkwraith remove Corpse Collector’s teleportation, she also ensured Corpse Collector couldn’t teleport other outlaws or dissolutions. Two notable abilities Darkwraith noticed CC doing often, so she made sure to remove them. Next she removed Corpse Collector’s camouflage. Now her name ought to properly be seen by anyone watching. Removing Corpse Collector would likely also crumble this outlaw siege, though she wasn’t too worried about that. They were too few in number to truly take over the city. At worse they destroy some important structures like siege weapons. But those could be easily replaced.