When Judas called and told him there was trouble at the Veni Vedi Veni he couldn't have cared less. He didn't want to go on over and deal with whatever was going on. He had books to finish settling from this week's drug sells. He suspected someone might be skimming some of the money, but he couldn't be sure until he crunched the numbers and noticed a pattern. He'd been keeping an eye on for the last two weeks. He needed this week's numbers and next weeks to be sure. Couldn't bother Judas without evidence of some dumb fuck kid stealing their money. It'll have to wait though. Judas wanted him with the rest of the crew to the club. He locked up his office, then headed out, meeting the pack halfway there.
He rode in the back and arrived at a clusterfuck of abstractions. Some people he didn't know were causing a fuss.
"Fuck me." He sighed. He got off his bike and joined the crew in a group. He stood in the back, towering over most of the crew other than Valjean and Shayton was slightly shorter than him. He pulled his cigarettes out of his pocket with his match book. He kinda hated lighters. Didn't know why. Maybe it's the way it felt in his hand. Sometimes the shit didn't light without a few clicks. He could strike a match and his get his fix right away. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit the match, then lit the cig. He took a pull, then blew it out.
"Now, can someone tell me, who the fuck here killed Joe Skinner?! Don't give me any of that "Aw, we didn't do it, believe us" bullshit! Shit ain't happen until you motherfuckers showed up, thrashing the place! So, you guys have one fucking minute to decide who the fuck killed a member of our pack before we send all of you to your God!" Valjean yelled.
"Damn. Joe's dead? Well fuck me. He was good for business." He didn't keep the club's books, but he knew when money was good.
He got a little closer to the chaos, keeping his gun under his jacket. He rarely needed to pull it out. His size was enough of a deterrent for most folks. Plus, he wouldn't need it when Judas showed up. That's the go ahead to use their abstractions of if everyone here was gonna end up dead anyway.
Up close he got a better look at the people he didn't recognize, eyeing the girl Victor called up. Probably his type. He felt something dangerously off about her. He didn't get too close. There were several other guys there he didn't know either. Strange thing about all this, is that they knew all the abstraction users in the city. At least anyone that's a major player anyway. This folks mixing up with their business was a death sentence. He expected this shit from 8th Street. None of those bitches were here. So who the hell are they?
"Ey, Val, something 'bout these no names don't add up. That girl, those girls, and those guys." He pointed at the one Victor called forward, the other women and men he didn't know. "That's a lot of fucking people signing their death warrants tonight. You reckon they new or we ain't notice them till now?"
Sloane, despite standing with her arms crossed and wearing the expression of an impatient commuter waiting for a bus that was running late, listened intently to the others. It turned out that she had misjudged Luca. She returned his smile with one of her own, a brief twitching at the corners of her mouth that could very well be mistaken for a muscle spasm that suddenly corrected itself the second he mentioned giving Auri a chance. Disappointment only even existed thanks to the power of positivity, while dwelling on the negative meant that she was always prepared.
Although, truth be told, she wasn’t prepared for Jack to arrive unexpectedly. It was a recurring habit of his it would seem. She welcomed Jack to the table with only the briefest of side eyes and a tensing of shoulders, yet both ended up lingering as he spoke a harsh truth that resonated heavily with Sloane. Her own family—not the small inner circle of people that she would spend holidays with that was becoming smaller by the day, but her actual bloodline—was an unfortunate fact. She was already breaking herself paying indulgences for the sins of her parents, there was no way she could afford to carry anymore.
Kali made a good point about taking safety precautions. Check ins and having a numbers advantage was a better play than assuming Father Wolf was going to announce their next victim with a wooden bauble every time. However, Kali would likely notice that the entire time he spoke Sloane did not break eye contact. She hardly even blinked. While Jack had a hill to climb out of to ever earn Sloane’s respect, she at the very least felt like she had a decent grasp on who he was as a person. Kali was an unknown variable. Definitely erratic, possibly delusional, maybe even dangerous. He’d said something that chilled her when referring to the danger Father Wolf presented: it’s all of you who are potential targets.
You.
Not us.
Sloane’s eyes remained for a moment longer on Kali as Drake presented his thoughts, but with a flash like a sword being drawn from a scabbard reflecting sunlight she shot Drake an obviously annoyed glance as he bitched about the mess of a meeting yet then defended Auri. The reason the meeting was such a clusterfuck was because she had failed in her duties to serve as a mediator despite being the one to irresponsibly claim the role. If Sloane had been in charge of the meeting, well, nobody would’ve shown but, in all fairness, nobody would’ve been called. She sucked in her lower lip and dragged her teeth across it: Auri deserved credit for making the call.
"How do we even know that it's Father Wolf in the first place?" said Drake.
"Oh, how did we figure out that was his name? I haven't seen what he left... I know it was a statue, but was there a call card or something too? Or does everyone else have ways of finding this stuff out that I don't? We don't know, I guess. But surely Father Wolf could be anyone? It's probably an alias. Like, yknow, all those famous serial killers. He probably isn't any of these other guys going by wolf like names. That'd be too obvious, right. Like he wanted to get caught,” said Luca.
“It would be an incredibly stupid double bluff if that were the case. It’s safer to assume that Father Wolf is savvy, but there could exist a world where Father Wolf is just a lucky idiot. Nearly half of all murders go unsolved in this country. Perhaps there is a renaissance of criminal masterminds operating in the US, but more likely it’s due to mistakes made by overworked, unprofessional, or incompetent investigators,” said Sloane. She was unable to stop herself from glancing towards Kali. It wasn’t meant to be an accusation or a personal insult, but there was no denying that it sure sounded like one. In a slight backpedal, she pulled out a business card with her number and slid it over towards Jack. “Kali’s idea of making regular check-ins is a good one. We should get everyone in the chain.”
Brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear, she directed her focus back on to what Luca said and continued: “So you’re probably correct, Luca. It’s unlikely that our Father Wolf is the Wolfpack’s Father Wolf. You’re also very wrong: it’s nigh impossible that Father Wolf is just anyone.They’re probably—”
In a rare moment the monotonous needle scratch of a blank record that was Sloane’s voice hit a bit of warped vinyl and wavered. She broke her intense eye contact from the group, turned her head away, and cleared her throat with a cough into her elbow. She had avoided bringing this subject up at the flower shop considering how much of a powderkeg it had seemed with everyone back together. She didn’t want to put the thought in their head. The people here had all expressed some kind of sensibility and restraint, even the sometimes mulish Drake. They could handle it. Maybe. She needed them to be able to handle it. Her hand faintly shook as she grabbed the water bottle, opened it, and took a delicate sip. Recomposed, she turned back to the table, her voice resuming its usual drone.
“Apologies. Like I was saying, it’s naive to believe that Father Wolf could be anyone. The reality is that Father Wolf has to be someone who knows about the Sycamore Tree Coven. Either they were around us ten years ago or connected to someone who was. It’s possible that they’re an old enemy reemerging with a new name. However, considering that they targeted some of our strongest or most useful members, I think it has to be someone closer,” said Sloane.
She set down the water and crossed her arms, “I hope none of you think that this is a convoluted way for me to avoid saying that I do not trust you. I’ll go ahead and say it: I don’t trust you. Any of you. Not. One. I hope you are smart enough to be suspicious of me, too. Nevertheless, I will still cooperate fully with all of you and I expect the same.
“Kali, you’re the agent here. Should we start by checking everybody’s alibis against the time of death of our fallen friends? Because it’s obvious,” said Sloane, finally sitting down and propping her chin up beneath her folded hands. “Father Wolf was in the Coven.”
His effort with the beer can had been a waste, and his argument had mostly fell on deaf ears. Clancy could see the girl wasn't in a position to reason, and he could see.... emerald light, flickering and swelling at the periphery of his vision. It was blinding, and he felt the strength of it close him like a fire licking at his clothes.
His feet moved on their own, almost autonomous - Clancy circling to what he'd felt was a safer distance somewhere a little more shaded as Stormy, Sully and Alizee briefly tussled on the street. It was only when he looked back he saw the girl was spent, all-but-broken, and for a moment he felt something that was halfway between contempt and pity. She lacked self-control, he realised, and that was something which brought on a sense of disconnected self-loathing.
Noise shook him out of that notion.
The collective buzz of motorcycle engines, catalysing with a single warning shot. It had been a while since Clancy had heard that unpleasantly familiar crack associated with gunfire.
A barely discernible mutter left his mouth."... warned you."
If it wasn't for the light, Clancy might've snorted at how moronic the Wolfpack looked. Between the braids, the spiked hair that had been poorly brill-creamed and what he wagered were sores from using, they almost looked like a collection of comic book villains, like the ones he used to read. The only things he'd lacked were named, until he overheard one of the others call out some names. "Valjean, Elodie, Shayton, Cyril, Maggy, Dean, and Victor.... no Judas or Curs."
Clancy wasn't sure who was who, save that Valjean was probably the spiky asshole barking orders at them.
For bikers, they seemed characteristically pissed, though he wondered if the commotion at the bar was their only reason for being here, and being ready to hurt people.
"Now, can someone tell me, who the fuck here killed Joe Skinner?! Don't give me any of that 'Aw, we didn't do it, believe us' bullshit! Shit ain't happen until you motherfuckers showed up, thrashing the place! So, you guys have one fucking minute to decide who the fuck killed a member of our pack before we send all of you to your God!"
Oh. That.
Clancy had almost considered the matter all-but settled. But things happened, it wasn't like Skinner was aanything but a bad guy. Did it really matter?
Wasn't like he was number one public enemy here, that went to the girl with a lack of self-control.
And Daddy Wolf was on the way. Maybe this was his shot at finding Judas? He wasn't sure at this stage; too many unknowns, too many people, in a world where he was very small.
Clancy flinched, threw up his hands, inching further off to one side. His attention was really on the motorcycle off to the far side of the lot. Joe Skinner's motorcycle, to which the keys were still in his pocket. It was one option, he'd guessed-
“Hey, kid!”
Clancy heard one of the female members of the Wolfpack call him. A sulty woman leaning up against her bike with her arms crossed and a cigarette in her mouth. She gestured for him to come closer with one finger.
“C’mere.”
Shayton turned to look at her with a raised eyebrow.
Clancy glanced back towards the others, "H-hey, I dunno anything lady, I was just waiting for my dad." It was probably the most genuine he'd sounded tonight.
Palms still raised, he apprehensively stepped forward, then-
“Bullshit.” Clancy froze as the woman hissed at him. “Any other kid in your position would be ready to shit themselves, but you?” She quickly drew her pistol and levelled it at him. “You’re agitated. All agitated. That makes zero fuckin’ sense for a kid your age… and I’m new to this magic bullshit, but that means one of two things…”
She raised two fingers.
“... You must be some kinda sociopath, or you’re not who you say you are.”
”Or,” Clancy snorted, squinting at the woman, ”Maybe I was taught not to fall over and shit my pants over some losers replaying the sixties over and over.” She wasn't wrong. He was agitated, and not necessarily because of the Wolfpack - though that particular fact was about to change.
“Bullshit, but you know what…?”
Maggy squinted down the gunsight and tugged back on the trigger. A single muzzle flare erupted, Clancy barely able to let out a whimper before he collapsed like a deck of cards with the center torn out.
There was no blood, no spatter of brain matter or viscera on the floor, simply the sight of a child crumpling to the ground beside a row of parked cars.
Interactions: Sully, Alizee, and the Greenwood Coven
Flowers and Canvases
With Alizee pulling away and backing up enough, the Void Heart manifested enough that she was fine again. Stormy was definitely hit in the stomach, but he was sturdier than that, so it wasn't so bad. For a brief moment, Stormy turned his attention to the child for a moment, something didn't seem right about him. Why was he still here, after seeing what he did? And why was he trading words with these fucking guys? Stormy turned back to the Wolfpack, while one of them shouted about a guy named "Joe Skinner." He would've said something if he didn't notice the air getting warmer. This wasn't something that just happened on its own, and sand didn't just start appearing, either. Stormy could tell, quickly enough, that something suspicious was going on. Something paranormal. If he pulled a shield out now, it would set someone off. But he only had so long before his Phantombane aura started to dwindle. Meanwhile, Alizee was fucking walking over to them, at the demand of their loud-mouthed member. That was a problem, and Stormy didn't like the look of the one with the axe, in multiple senses of the term "dislike," given his stupid fucking Brosatru look that he as going on. He was the only one that had anything visible indicative of a channeler. But it was still possible everyone among them was also an Adept and armed. Stormy wore his channeler under his sleeves, after all.
This went to shit way faster than any of them likely expected. Even worse, while the air got warmer, one of Wolfpack's members started ordering the strange child around. He had a lot more backbone than Stormy would've expected from a child. Maybe he was paranormal like them. He resisted, only for a bullet to rip through the air, causing him to slump down onto the ground.
That was the moment when Stormy decided to put a stop to all of this.
He brought his arm up, and swung it forwards in Maggie's direction with enough force to knock someone off their feet. Green light burst forth, hardening into a glowing shield that went flying at her center mass, with extreme prejudice and an intent to put her out of fighting shape as quickly as possible. If they wanted to draw guns on children then they were going to deal with real threats from adults. Many people in the world of magic believed that guns were the definitive weapon to defeat all of magic. Fireballs? Gun. Teleporting? Gun. Zombies? Shoot the Lux user. This was, of course, the reason Stormy felt vindicated in being the one who stood up to the Wolfpack first: Guns did not mean a damn thing to him, because he was Stormy fucking Carson.
"Someone help that kid, now." With his shield sent after Maggie like a derailed train, Stormy walked up between everyone, standing in the proverbial No Man's Land dividing the Wolfpack from the Sycamore and Greenwood members. If any of the Wolfpack members got much closer, they'd feel his Phantombane aura start to repel their Apparitions. He brought his glowing hands up, and a pair of red Lux-proof shields exploded into existence across his arms. But he didn't stop there, as copies of the shields appeared on his left and right, in two rows of five, daring anyone to pass. The parking lot was bathed in the soft green light of the very spells that saved many lives a decade ago.
He raised his voice loud enough that everyone in the parking lot could hear it. Every Wolfpack member, every "friendly" paranormal individual, and, ideally, the members of Greenwood that Alizee had wronged. "Whatever grievances you have with any of these people, legitimate or otherwise, you are grown adults! Does it make you feel powerful, pointing your gun at a child? If any of you raise another gun, or use magic again starting right now, I will break you all! Turn around, and leave! You are not taking anyone of us with you." That last part was said entirely for Alizee's sake. Stormy wasn't happy with her, but she was one of them. Her problems were their problems, and he refused to throw her under the bus. Stormy fully intended to put stick his own neck out for everyone who wasn't a Wolfpack member right now. If someone followed his example, then maybe this reunion wouldn't be so difficult after all.
Interactions: Drake, Sloane, Kali and Luca
Flowers and Canvases
"If we knew it was our Father Wolf, it wouldn't be a mystery," Jack commented as he picked up the card Sloane dealt him. He held it between the fingers of his shadowy hand, and pressed it into his palm, where it seemed to disappear completely against the "skin." He still had it on his person, though. "I agree that he'd have to be familiar with us. These wolf carvings appear anywhere on earth before a victim's death. So either our killer is someone capable of macro-scale movement, like me," He emphasized that fact so no one could say he didn't own up to it later, "Or this is the work of numerous individuals. Both are equally likely, and the second option could imply anything from a criminal network to a particularly unique abstraction. The only common link are the wolf carvings... Do we have any of them with us that we can study? There could be forensic information that would give us some direction."
Jack couldn't blame Sloane in the slightest for not trusting them. Everyone was a suspect in a murder case. Moreover, Jack was the one unhinged enough to play with the fabric of existence. For all they knew, the killer could've secretly discovered the secrets of his Voidwalking, and was using that to pick them off. From someone else's perspective, it could've been Jack himself doing that. Jack wasn't so sure he could reasonably trust any of them either. At least not yet.
"Unfortunately, we shouldn't trust each other so much at the moment. But I would like to at least ask all of you for a chance to earn one another's trust. Auri meeting went poorly, because we can't trust her to be an effectively leader. If we don't trust each other, then we'll only stay divided. We could be stronger and safer together, once we've found a way to rule ourselves out."
And then Sloane said it plainly: Father Wolf was in the Coven. Jack wasn't surprised at that conclusion. It made sense, how else would anyone explain the dead members?
"How much can we narrow it down, knowing that? Who else among us could appear anywhere on earth at a moment's notice? I've experienced time at a slower pace than everyone else, having been outside Shimmer for most of the decade. I should be able to remember them all... Victoria could produce portals that led to anywhere. I remember working closely with her to track down the Snake through other worlds." He looked over at Drake, her brother. "Can you rule out the possibility that it'd be her?"
Mentions: Lyss Burns, Linqian Han, Auri Auclair| Location: St. Portwell, Oregon: Municipal Library
Edict laughed at Linqian's proposition. Like letting staff members hang out at the bar, it was a great way to make sure you recouped losses in an efficiently scummy way. He'd happily sell her all the tobacco she could ever want knowing full well that it's all his own money going around in one big loop. "I hope you do, and I hope you come to enjoy it as much as I do." he commented, watching the shadow of a female figure approach them. Lyss Burns, as the helmet came off. He was surprised to see her, given they'd left St. Portwell around the same time, but everyone had some sort of reason or another for coming back. If he stopped to wonder about every single one of them, he'd probably not have any sort of time to work out what he was required to. The note in his pocket gripped at him, calling his mind back to responsibility and the desire for the almighty dollar. Yet, here he was pissing it out... "Well God damn, if it ain't Lyss Burns! I was just about to split; I need to check on some things that I haven't had the chance to yet. Auri ain't leave yet, so like Linqian said, if you wanna get in there and bother her I'm sure she'd be real happy to see, y'know, a face that isn't insane or whatever." Edict laughed at his last comment before turning his head to Linqian. "But, hey you have fun at Veni. And remember to give me a call, we'll set up a place to meet. Your terms of course, wherever you're comfortable. And, remember, Pink and Violet!"
Edict turned his body fully, taking one last drag from his cigarette before tossing the stub on the ground and trodding over it with a slide. He made his way down the road a ways, crossed the street, and inconspicuously made his way into the back seat of the car that had brought him there. The driver, surprised that someone would have the audacity to just open the door like that in the middle of the city, made a turn in his chair as his hand reached to his side for a gun. But, seeing Edict's face, he took a deep breath and tilted his head back. "Shit Greyson... Don't scare me like that, what the fuck happened? It's only been like thirty minutes." "Shit went south, Molo. Just get me over to the Brick Harbor." "You got it, Boss..." The car's lights came on, and before either Lyss or Linqian could see the plates, it was down the street and into the St. Portwell evening. The heading? The last Mafia bastion in the entire city: His Uncle's pet establishment and the Devola family's original power base, The Brick Harbor.
Leon
Mentions: The Clusterfuck Coalition (AKA Sycamore Members)| Location: St. Portwell, Oregon: Veni Vidi Veni Parkinglot
Things were so far downhill at this point that Leon was just biding time. There had to be a period of destress before he could reliably unleash the seals again, and if what he thought was going to happen was actually going to happen, he'd need all the energy he could get when the time came. At first, he backed off and tried to be as inconspicuous as a near seven foot tall man could be; especially with a bunch of ripped up clothes. He'd not even realized how big he managed to get during that short period, but the bulk of his transformation always destroyed clothes... Thankfully he wasn't a modest man, and between his figure and his confidence he didn't mind showing off a bit of skin. But, who really cared? The massive group of Sycamore Tree members rolling up on the strip club unannounced made him think that Auri had agreed with the idea of Father Wolf having something to do with Judas and his ilk, but this wasn't exactly what he had in mind. Five or six deep, most of whom he did want to talk with and catch up to. But, these circumstances were anything but conducive to that.
It was nice to see Britney, even if she wasn't his favorite person. He knew that Alizée loved her, and that hopefully she'd have some sort of brain about the situation. But, Sully, Stormy... Where was Drake? It didn't matter. None of these people were hanging around in St. Portwell regularly to deal with Alizée and her constant hunger. They all ran. "Allez, ma fille, on ne peut pas rester ici plus longtemps! (Come on, Girl, we can't stay here much longer!)" He stepped forward across the parkinglot, casting a gaze of death at everyone who chose to watch his massive bulk cross the parking lot. He approached Britney and Alizée, trying to smile. "Alizée... Don't be a fool now, you know we can't be hurting people like this. I'm so serious, that this isn't the way we should've met everyone again. Come on now, we need to get to the Temple where there's someone willing to be fed on." He tried to whisper, tried to be subtle, but then Stormy butted in. Pissed her off. She was so fragile these days, he felt like he was dealing with two Daisys. Before he knew it, she was back on her bullshit. The Void was very purposeful in keeping distance between itself and its eternal rival, and as she began to choke up on Stormy, she shoved the weakened Leon off his feet and onto the pavement of the parking lot. In that moment, he could feel the gentle vibration of the ground, and his head turned an ear to it directly. The sound of half a dozen bike engines roared in his brain.
They're coming...
Leon laid on the ground for quite a while, faking incapacitation as he felt Lelou's seals slowly but surely refresh. Once the engines were finally close enough that everyone knew, it was too late. All he could do now was activate what he could. If he kept it light, he may have another ten minutes in the tank, all that alcohol having made a decent buffer to start with. But now he was on his own reserve. It was either a powerful burst, or a low intensity burn. He'd pick his timing; and slowly but surely he began to release the seals again. One by one, the multitude of energies began to flood back into his body. He didn't pop the cork, letting the brew within ruminate as he continued to wait and wait again. He could hear them shouting, yelling, then... Someone said You there which wasn't exactly clear until Alizée spoke again. "Wh-what do you want?" It doesn't matter, Little Sister... They're bikers. They want revenge, but I know you didn't kill anyone inside. I was watching. I won't let anyone hurt you. Then the kid got mouthy. Stepped in where he shouldn't have. Paid the price. Before Stormy had the chance to begin grandstanding, Leon's body was already shifting again. This time, it was serious. Flesh buckled and tore open rapidly, muscles on muscles building themselves unnaturally across Leon's frame. He let out a single loud snarl of pain amidst the group, and in a flash his unnatural physique saw him spin in place before the snapping and crackling of bones reforming themselves echoed loud as any shouting. A massive, claw covered hand made purchase on the ground, digging into the pavement.
"Oh, shut up Stormy... Who taught you how to talk like a hero?"
Pushing off the single fully formed arm, the half-transformed body of Leon flung itself across the pavement like Carpenters' "Thing". He was a mass of half broken meat and long blonde fur that peeled back further and further until he was right behind Alizée again, just like they had started things. Only this time, he wasn't playing anymore. It was rare for Leon to push it this close, but they had to be scared. Everyone had to scatter. He had to be the monster. His legs spun into place like some twisted flesh Transformer, digitigrade and fully clawed. Standing at full height, the golden werewolf was almost thirteen feet tall, and his hands were big enough to grip with the Void's hands. Instead, he fully wrapped one around Alizée's torso to lift her up off the ground. An instant later, they were both in the air. Leon had jumped over the bikes, over the gang, and began to take off down the street with Alizée in his clutches. He was headed for the only place he knew they'd both be safe... Home.
Eve watched with satisfaction as the punch made it's mark on her as she bounced off the wall she made in the first place. She exhaled smoke from her nose as she watched Bianca take the hit. It was like serotonin, winning like this but it would be interrupted by the wolfpack as they rolled up and started shooting. The metaphorical shoulder-devil of hers was getting tired, lying on a pile of cigarettes as she chuffed out another blow of tobacco-mixed carbon.
"Don't know who you work for, why you're setting us up here for a fight. If you want to do some good, then help us take on these guys. Let's say you don't, if I'm still standing we'll finish this." Eve dropped her cigarette and crushed it beneath the heel of her boot. She couldn't trust everyone, especially a girl from way back when she decided to come to the exact spot they were at without consulting Auri. By the time Eve turned her attention to the Wolfpack who were executing a kid by that time!
"Jesus 'ah christ.." Eve gripped her brass knuckles pressing her fingers into them as they turned white from the tight circulation.
"Yo' - You fucking bitch! You think you can shoot a kid 'n get away with that shit! You're dead! Yeah, dead like your boy Skinner!" Eve spit to the side on the mention of old Joe Skinner.
"You think you can greenlight Weaver and nothing is going to happen?!" With a raise of her hands multiple pockets of obfuscate shades erupted around Eve and the parking lot to the max she could push it. Moving and closing, reopening as the distance was closed between herself, Stormy and his god damn fortress. The shadows while not bullet proof would prevent Eve from being instantly gunned down as she made her trek towards the pack. She'd be literally under the cover of darkness.
"Skinner died like a bitch, you're going to go down the same way. No teeth, no hope, no chance Maggie." Eve said angrily pointing at her behind the shields. "You're fucked, Shayton as my witness. No place for kid killers in Portwell, 'least while the Sycamore Tree Coven is still together!"
Eve didn't actually kill Joe Skinner, she had forgotten about him. Though things were escalating, fighting Bianca didn't make sense but if she was calling mercenaries or another gang to the scene the least she could do was stall them out.
Oh, and of course commit everyone from Sycamore into the fight. This was their battle now.
”Oh don’t worry, I will.” Linqian resisted rolling her eyes at Greyson when he listed off things he’d already told her not that long ago. Yeah, she’d give him a call (what was wrong with a text) and yeah, Pink and Violet. They weren’t difficult names to remember. She wasn’t that stupid. But he was paying her, so she could put up with it just about. Pretend it was like her bar job. Customer service resting bitch face.
Once his back was turned, though, she couldn’t resist and rolled her eyes at his disappearing figure. Then she turned back to Lyss. She'd love to stick around and chat to her more, but she had to go earn that cash that Greyson had paid her. "I better get going… If you come along, now or after seeing Auri, drinks are on me."
Well, Greyson technically, but nobody needed to know that.
Whether Lyss agreed to come right then or was going to talk to Auri first, Linqian didn’t stick around to find out. She spun on her heel and power walked towards where she’d parked her car - a good five minute walk away, closer to her workplace than Auri’s. It was an absolute piece of garbage, bought about six years ago for dirty cheap second hand. The thing was at the end of its life and Linqian should’ve replaced it ages ago… But she couldn’t afford that. And it still worked as much as she needed it to, just with a few fun extras.
She shoved her car key in the lock, swearing under her breath as it got jammed again, before finally getting in. Time to go have some much needed drink on someone else's dime.
Interactions: Leon @AtomicEmperor, Sycamore Tree Members Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot
Linqian tapped her fingers against the steering wheel to the chinese rock music she had blaring in her car as she pulled into the Veni Vedi Veni parking lot. She was thinking about all the strippers she was going to pay - a deserved rest while trying to get information, in her mind. Nothing took your mind off your brother’s death like a nak- Holy shit.
Linqian slammed on her brakes and flung the steering wheel to the right, narrowly avoiding being actually trampled by a goldilocks-esque werewolf that had flown through the air and ran right towards her car. The tires screeched against the ground, uneven from taking a few beatings, as she spun to the side. The side of her car slammed into the trunk of another and ground to a halt. There was a dent in the side of her car and the car she’d slammed into, but it didn’t seem that damaging. It hadn’t hit anything important. That could’ve been bad- her car wasn’t starting. Her car wasn’t fucking starting.
What the fuck.
Linqian tried the fuse again, hearing it straining to turn on before completely going out. That was it. Her car, which had survived this many years, was taken out by a fucking werewolf. Typical.
Without even looking at what was going on Linqian jumped out of her car, yelling after unknown, strangely blond wolf creature. Frost coated the door handle she was still holding, her body visibly paling as her temperature dropped. "What the fuck, you furry piece of shit, you wrecked my fucking car, I swear to god, I'm going to-"
Linqian abruptly stopped her angry tirade when she noticed the wall of shields, aggressive looking bikers and dead child on the floor. Shit.
This wasn't the scene she'd expected to turn up to. She internally apologised to Greyson for all the cash he'd given her for some juicy information she wasn't going to be getting cause it looked like going into the stripclub was off the table, being shot was on it. Though perhaps he'd like to know about that too. Yeah, sure, what was possibly an all out faction fight would probably be useful information.
Linqian brought up her body temperature again to just slightly below normal, to offset the strange warmth in the air, and quickly jogged away from her car to the safety of Stormy’s shields and the rest of the group. Eve was calling up shades all over, Stormy looked ready to kill and there was a werewolf trying to flee with Alizee in its hands.
”What the fuck is going on?” Linqian asked no one in particular, though Britney was probably closest to her. She began to lower the air temperature around her to combat the warm one that was really beginning to irritate her, even with her own body temperature lowered. She narrowed her eyes at their presumed attackers - the weird bikers with the guns. Yeah, no. She couldn’t take on a gun. Even so, she began to lower her body temperature again to levels that would hurt anyone that touched her. ”We fighting already?”
Bianca Manalo
Interactions: Agent Phillips @Punished GN, Stormy @Blizz Veni Vedi Veni Parking Lot
It took everything in Bianca not to facepalm, because holy shit. Eve was a master at taking what she said and twisting it into whatever she wanted to hear. As if she was in a position to order Bianca around just because of presumed physical superiority.
Bianca's face paled as Eve's wall dropped and she witnessed Clancy crumpling to the ground. Shit. She shouldn't - couldn't - just get directly involved, but she could at least help. She quickly surveyed the Sycamore Tree members there. Who did she trust the most? More importantly, who would keep everyone from dying before the rest of the PRA arrived?
With a soft murmur under her breath in Filipino, and a flick of her wrist, Bianca's rope bracelet glowed a faint orange. She targeted Stormy with her boost spell - he'd feel an increase in his abstraction's strength wash over him. His shields would be stronger, more resistant to damage and he could make more of them. Any other spells he cast would be stronger too.
Half concentrating on keeping up the spell, she pulled out her phone quickly. There was enough people between her and the Wolfpack, along with a whole wall of shields, that she should be safe. She was still crouched in the ground too, so a more hidden target.
She quickly skimmed the messages she'd missed, frowning. It would’ve been nice if she’d been able to not engage, but she hadn’t exactly had a choice when Eve had attacked her. Shit. She’d better reply before she got attacked again.
She kept her messages short and to the point, prioritising speed over everything else. She was, after all, at risk of getting shot or attacked again and had to pay attention to that, while keeping up her boosting spell.
As soon as she was done Bianca shoved her phone back in her pocket, concentrating on keeping up her spell. She muttered under her breath again, layering another one on top - increasing the range of Stormy’s abstraction too, so he could make shields further out. It was a bit more taxing on her, having already taken a hit, but not bad enough she couldn’t do it while carefully observing what was going on.
Still, she hoped Agent Phillips and the other agents on call turned up soon.
The kid dropped dead, and Maggy aimed her gun and fired off a few more shots, and then she sighed in relief. Shayton appeared next to her, going from the far end of the group to being right in her face in the blink of an eye. He scowled at her as he asked a simple question,
"... Mind telling me why you shot a kid?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, trust me," Maggy said as she placed a hand on her chest. "That thing was no-"
A shield went barrelling towards Maggy, and Shayton grabbed onto her arm, and in the blink of an eye - he disappeared in a burst of speed so fast that it appeared he teleported. The only thing left behind to hint at things was the gust of wind that disturbed the dust and trash that littered the streets. Shayton and Maggy appeared in an alleyway some distance away...
"... Holy shit!" Maggy grabbed her neck and tilted her head slightly to the side, "Whip. Lash."
"Sorry, but you drew too much attention to yourself," Shayton softly apologized. Then he turned down the alleyway, where they could hear the chaos outside. "Call Judas. Tell him to bring the Curs. Stay here; I will bring anyone here that needs healing."
"Gotcha'," Maggy said as she pulled out her phone and dialed Judas...
Shayton returned to the chaos and appeared right back where the Wolfpack was, calmly standing there as if all hell hadn't broken loose. Stormy and Eve made their heroic speeches, but... St. Portwell was no place for a hero. He spoke to Stormy and Eve in a calm tone...
"... Child killer or not, my bosses need Magnolia alive, so you're going have to go through me," Shayton calmly said before he quickly added on. "You're not going to be able to go through me."
Stormy was teleported away, which just left Eve. Shayton raised his hand and said to Elodie and the rest of the Wolfpack,
"I'll handle her."
"You're fucked, Shayton as my witness. No place for kid killers in Portwell, 'least while the Sycamore Tree Coven is still together!"
"... Is that why you set your father up to die, Eve?" Shayton asked with a raised eyebrow, likely catching Eve off guard. "Or, were you just hoping to take his cult from underneath him, but it just didn't work out that way?"
When the kid dropped dead, among all the screaming, Élodie was laughing like a maniac. Pointing at the kid, she almost fell over on her bike; when she stopped, she made a little joke...
"... Betcha' he wished he ended up in a condom now!"
Victor and Cyril shook their heads as Élodie laughed, holding her stomach.
However, at this point, someone had the gall to walk up, attack Maggy, and place a barrier between them all. He made this obnoxious speech, and Cyril just rolled his eyes as he raised a hand.
"... You talk too much."
Cyril snapped his fingers, and Stormy, and all of his shield bullshit, was teleported to the center of the group...
... And in his place was Sully.
"C'mere, fatass!" Élodie quickly ran over to Sully, yanked him by the collar of his shirt, and shoved her gun in his mouth. She laughed as she said, "Make one wrong move, and I'm going to give you another hole to suck dick out of!"
She turned to the rest of the Wolfpack and shouted, "Kill 'em all! My brother can take the bullets!" She noticed that Valjean had already shifted into scorpion form as Cyril and Victor began blasting into the crowd.
Then she turned her attention to Stormy's barrier... her abstraction had already coated the parking lot in the sand, and it was starting to get hot. By this point, it'd definitely be difficult for people wearing multiple layers of clothing. She shouted at Stormy, "Hey, dipshit! You talked all that shit just to hide behind a shield; get the fuck out here and fight like a man! Or..."
Suddenly, the sand around Stormy began spinning, creating a violent sandstorm fast enough to cause lacerations, choke him, and clog his orifices. Also, get in his shoes.
When Alizée walked up, Victor pointed his axe at her and said,
"Why did you go into a club protected by the Wolfpack, ask for Judas' favorite girl, and, then cause a ruckus with your magic? Don't you know that's bad for bus-"
Another gunshot rang out, followed by screaming and Elodie laughing. Victor shook his head and went back to Alizée... that was when all hell broke loose, and various people began trying to fight back against the Wolfpack. It distracted Victor enough for a god damn werewolf to appear, grab Alizée and take off down the street. He fell on his ass... before pulling out his Glock and letting off a few shots down the street.
"Aw, forget it!" He told himself that when Elodie told him to open fire on the crowd, he noticed something...
"... Where the hell did the kid go!?"
The kid was gone.
He shook his head as this day kept getting weirder and opened fire on the two Covens.
Auri Auclair, & Justin Haggar.
Interactions: They're doing a "special" interaction. 😉
Flowers and Canvases.
Auri stopped and raised herself over her countertop, utterly topless as she stared off in the distance.
"What's wrong?" Justin asked from underneath.
"I don't know... I feel a disturbance, like my blood pressure is about to skyrocket."
"... Do you want to stop?"
"No."
Naomi Rodgers, & Valjean Vasil.
Interactions: Linqian (@FernStone), and everyone present towards the end.
Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot.
Britney screamed the second the little boy hit the ground.
She didn't notice him at first, but she should have done something to stop this from happening... though, there wasn't much she could have done that wouldn't have gotten the group cut down by the Wolfpack. She had no idea what was going on and only came out here because she wanted a lapdance from a trashy stripper! See some bolted-on titties! That's all. She had no clue that Alizée was out here fighting people, nor did she expect things to pick up like this. Britney couldn't move... she had seen some crazy things during the fight with the Stygian Snake, but a gang of bikers holding her hostage was something else. She had no clue about the Wolfpack or that this was their turf - if she knew things would go like this, she would have stayed the fuck home. However, the leader of the bunch, Valjean, shook his head and shouted,
"God damn it, Maggy!" Valjean hissed before he finished, "... We could have sold the brat!"
However, Stormy and Eve opened the fight with a fiery and passionate speech not out of place in those animes Britney watched sometimes. If a kid hadn't gotten killed right in front of her, Britney would have scolded Stormy for dragging everyone into a goddamn gang war! However, Britney would pick her battles, especially how volatile and irrational Stormy was. Their leader, Valjean, pounded himself on the chest and laughed.
"Ooooooh! We got ourselves a fucking hero!" Valjean shouted, followed by a vociferous bout of laughter. He pulled out his pistol as Stormy walked forward and aimed it at him, "This ain't no place for no hero!"
Britney had to act fast... she raised her hands and tried to create plants on him, but that didn't work. He has an abstraction? She thought to herself as she had to create vines out of the ground - she ensnared Valjean in various vines and roots. She quickly had him wrapped up, and his gun was aimed at the ground as he thrashed.
"Ooooh, you all must want to see..."
In the blink of an eye, Valjean became a towering scorpion monster that had to be around fourteen feet tall. ... And that must be his abstraction. When he transformed, he obviously broke out of Britney's vines as her eyes shot open. Valjean flexed in this scorpion form and then shouted,
"... THE SCORPION!"
Britney took a few steps back, and she just noticed how hot it was getting... and it was late October in St. Portwell, which was not expected. It must either be his abstraction or one of his goons. She was sweating, and her clothes were getting a little muggy - it would worsen the longer she stayed here. Linqian showed up and asked the golden question...
”What the fuck is going on?”
"I don't know; I just wanted to see some titty!" Britney shouted in response. However, Britney realized that if Eve and Stormy wanted to be the hero, then screw it, that was on them. She turned to Sully, hoping to grab him so all of them could get out of here...
... Who disappeared and swapped places with Stormy. Britney, intuitively, turned to where Stormy was originally and saw the Wolfpack lady shove a pistol in his mouth. Her heart started racing as she knew she had to do something to help her friend. She couldn't face herself in the mirror if she had just left him here... however, Valjean was right here. The first thing that came to mind was to restrain him, and she raised her hands and willed more vines to wrap around his legs, including binding them together.
Valjean stopped, looked down, and prepped his stinger to cut through them all...
... Only to be wrapped in a wreath of ethereal white webs.
"... What the shit!?" Valjean shouted as he thrashed and attempted to break out. "Wait... this is that Greenwood bitch's bullshit, ain't it?!"
Naomi landed on the other side of Valjean on one knee; she wiped the sweat away and was glad she was dressed skimpy underneath her Greenwood disguise. She hid behind a car for cover and then shouted, hoping that it would get past the gunshots,
"Hey, guys! It's great that you're helping, but we gotta wrap this up quick! There are a lot more Wolfpack than this, and if Judas shows up, we're going to have a SERIOUS problem!"
Britney listened as she tried to get down behind cover... then a bullet struck her in her forearm, and blood splurted out. She screamed as she fell to the ground (ironically ending up behind cover), and her heart started racing. She felt cold as she grabbed the wound and desperately tried to stop the bleeding... and then she heard that one girl land next to her. She wrapped webs in both hands tightly above the wound to create a sort of makeshift tourniquet. She said to Britney (or tried to over the gunfire),
"I got you, mama!"
The Greenwood Coven.
Sans Naomi, Ruby, and James.
Interactions: None of note.
Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot.
Members of the Greenwood Coven also screamed when the kid went down.
It wasn't like they hadn't seen someone get gunned down (or die) before, but it was something that nobody should get used to. Especially not a kid. They knew the Wolfpack played for keeps, but they needed to get out of here - especially now that Stormy decided to march up and try to pimp slap a Wolfpack member with a shield.
"He's got some balls!" Jessica shouted with a smile.
Unfortunately, the Wolfpack decided to open fire on the entire crowd; Sully and Stormy got switched places, and Valjean transformed. If it wasn't for Sully getting held hostage, Greenwood would have left the two factions to duke it out.
"Sully!" Pearl shouted with a hand outstretched...
... Before a bullet hit her through the hand and ended up in her shoulder, and another bullet hit her in the stomach. She screamed as she fell to the ground, but Jessica grabbed her and pulled her underneath cover. Kashmira quickly activated her dermal boost spell, sprinted towards Pearl (ironically, no bullet hit her), and knelt over Pearl. She was wrapped with a green aura as the bullets were pushed out of her, and the holes were gradually healed. Jessica was right next to Pearl as she said,
"Keep it cool, sister, I got you!" Jessica started, "You got her, Kash?"
"Mhm... Long as nobody else gets-"
A bullet struck Autumn in the stomach, and she screamed as she fell backward, and her appearance disappeared.
"Autumn!" Jessica shouted.
"I got her!" Amelia shouted as she got up and began waving her hands around - with her aeromancy, she managed to lift Autumn off the ground and launch her towards their position. Thankfully, she was rolled into arm's length of Kashmira, and she used her other hand to heal both of them. She was starting to sweat, and her hair was getting matted as things got hot.
"We need a plan!" Kashmira shouted.
"We to go on the offense!" Jessica said as she raised her fist in the air and then shouted,
"Krakatoa!"
She punched the ground, created a shock that vibrated the area, and turned some of the concrete and stone around them into molten magma (which didn't help with the heat situation, but it was all Jess could do). She needed a few moments to create more, and Valjean was finished...
Ruby White & James Carmicheal.
Interactions: None of note.
Rooftops overlooking Veni Vedi Veni.
Things happened so fast.
A kid got shot, then all hell broke loose, and Sully got kidnapped. Ruby gripped her staff tighter and felt James' hand around her bicep again.
"... Keep a lid on it, Ruby!" James chuckled. "You rushing headfirst down there will only make things worse."
"I'm done standing by and letting my friends get hurt," Ruby said as she aimed her staff down there at Dean.
"Let's split their attention up," James said. "They can't possibly shoot at everyone, and we got the high ground!"
"Good idea," Ruby said.
James walked to the rooftop's edge and aimed his axe at the Wolfpack. It began charging, surrounding itself with bright electricity, just hoping that one of them would notice and start shooting up here - or, even better, come up here.
"So, we're disguised as St. Portwell Police Officers..." Trevor spoke before he rolled his eyes and said, "... But we are in a van that says FBI."
The PRA agents were in the fancy SWAT truck that they own (that was as conspicuous as it comes), speeding down the highway, following the GPS. Each Agent wore special PRA armor (St. Portwell Police signed across the front and the back), except Fiona's armor was a modified version that covered her inhuman features (to an extent). Nakala was driving, and she rolled her eyes at Trevor and answered.
"This was the only one I could get- actually, why am I explaining this to you? Be quiet," Nakala rolled her eyes as she glanced out the front window and saw Samson flying off into the distance in his phoenix form. She checked the GPS, and it would still be another fifteen minutes before they arrived. She hoped it was nothing, but Samson would get there faster than they would. Though Samson had one of the PRA's most powerful abstractions, maybe this would be one of those situations where he could burn the problem away. If not... then hopefully, she could get some backup.
Her phone dinged, and she quickly glanced at it and sighed in relief.
"It's Agent Manalo! She's okay!"
She quickly put together a response...
"Texting while driving!" Trevor said.
"Trevor... Agent Obott... shut up! I can tell why Liao gives you shit all the time," Nakala rolled her eyes again, and responded to Agent Manalo's text...
It was nice to get Sloane off of Auri's back, as Drake was not exactly the person who was big on talking shit about people behind their backs. It always felt disingenuous, and he wasn't a fan of throwing punches in places where people couldn't fight back.
Though, he almost laughed when Sloane threw shade at Kali.
That was when Sloane brought up the uncomfortable and obvious truth: Father Wolf was simply an alias used by an older member. However, in a stroke of brilliance that would surprise anyone convinced that Drake was just some dumb jock, he was less concerned with who but why.
"That's fair; I wouldn't trust me either, heh,"
Drake played it off with a simple joke; this was unavoidable in their situation. But there was something on Drake's mind...
"How much can we narrow it down, knowing that? Who else among us could appear anywhere on earth at a moment's notice? I've experienced time at a slower pace than everyone else, having been outside Shimmer for most of the decade. I should be able to remember them all... Victoria could produce portals that led to anywhere. I remember working closely with her to track down the Snake through other worlds. Can you rule out the possibility that it'd be her?"
... Then Jack opened his mouth and made his blood boil just a little bit. It was a fair assumption, he admits, but he didn't appreciate his sister being accused of being a mass murderer. He knows Victoria would never do it, and it didn't make sense for it to be her - she was busy with a new job and her kids. She seemed so tired half the time; she looked like she was about to keel over! He chuckled to himself as he tried to remain calm and composed.
"Victoria's too busy killing herself taking care of the new little Blackmores we got, heh," Drake answered with a chuckle, hoping that would be the end of it (it would not). "But, I think you all are looking at it the wrong way. Like, has anyone thought about why someone would start offing us after ten years?"
He shrugged as he continued. "There were over a hundred people in the old cult when we defeated the Snake, a lot of whom left St. Portwell in the ten years since because they moved on with their lives. Are we even considering them? What about the many that refused Auri's little call? I think it's going to be hard narrowing it down. We're going to be tearing our hair out trying to get an alibi from everyone that was in the Old Coven, especially the people who got burned by Auri, Daisy, and Ashley and stormed out and never spoke to any of us ever again."
Like Greta, but that was a different discussion altogether.
"I had an idea, though," Drake tilted his head. "Everyone here knows that the Snake could, like, enter our minds and shit? Make us see shit and read our minds? It couldn't control us because we had magic, but what if it left some type of presence in us? Like... fuck, what's the word?"
Drake rubbed on his chin.
"Like, what if it left some kinda... programming, or something in our minds that it could use to turn us into sleeper agents at will? I'm not sure how it would work, but what if the Snake planned for this and is using one of us to enact its revenge and break it free?"
He desperately hoped that everyone here understood what he was trying to convey.
If not, it was going to be a loooooooooooong time in the Coven.
"Why did you go into a club protected by the Wolfpack, ask for Judas' favorite girl, and, then cause a ruckus with your magic? Don't you know that's bad for bus-"
She heard it. The crack of a gunshot. A crumpled body. Sick laughter.
It didn't take a genius to deduce who got shot. She heard the conversation clear as crystal.
The kid... got shot...
Tears pricked her terrified eyes.
And it was her fault.
"You son of a-"
The woosh of wind. A shot of vertigo mixed with adrenaline and cortisol. Her teeth clenched against the g-force as the claws holding her landed again, jarring her senses, and he began running.
It also didn't take a genius to tell who held her. She knew that gait, the shallow breathing, the scent. Who else had the power and desire to save her?
Leon.
The sounds of chaos - Stomry yelling at the bikers, gunshots - drifted away. Stray bullets chasing them. A part of her wanted to leave it at that. To leave it all behind. The painful fire in her throat, the exhaustion beginning to seep into her bones, the horrors screaming in front of her eyes, still effectively blinding her - it was getting too much. She should just lie down, and get taken. There would be food - a way to ease this terrible pain - and no more fighting. She would be safe. That's all that mattered, right? That's all she cared about, right?
The thrum of pounding footsteps down the street, her hands bracing against the grip around her torso.
She was allowed to lean into safety, into ease, right?
Footsteps. Then tires screeching, the crunch of metal.
"What the fuck, you furry piece of shit, you wrecked my fucking car, I swear to god, I'm going to-"
Alizée's eyes widened, feeling as the running - Leon - hesitated for a brief moment. What was Linqian doing here? She didn't know-
"Don't-!"
Her warning was cut off as Leon took off again. The horrors digging into her eyes were overlayed by horrors in her mind. The kid, Stormy, Sully, Brit - hell, Eve - all dropped, lying in pools of their own blood. Sticking around because they wanted to protect her selfish hide. Dying for nothing.
And it would be her fault.
All of this... was her fault.
A shaky breath was sucked through clenched teeth, and she cried out desperately, "Loup, ils vont mourir! (Wolf, they are going to die!)"
Words only went so far when Leon was in a state such as this. Taking another shaky breath, adrenaline pumping through her veins, she summoned a phantom hand and, as gently as possible, pried open the massive, clawed hand of Leon. It was like bending rebar, but she managed.
She had to. There was more at stake than her own soul. Someone had already paid the price for her mistake. A child.
She wouldn't let that happen twice.
She dropped to the pavement like a sack of potatoes, rolling and rolling until she came to a stop. She coughed, vision cursing her eyes and causing a strangled whimper to escape her throat. She didn't have time for this! There were more horrors going on in real time here.
She could hear more gunshots. More screams and yelling. More chances of people dying. Maybe Brit was already dead.
Getting to her feet as quickly as possible, she staggered back to the sounds of violence like a crazed maniac. She really was insane to be choosing death over salvation. Choosing the bikers over Leon. But, she was in an optimal position. If her internal map was right, Leon jumped over the bikers and took off. That placed her on the opposite side of the bikers. Opposite to Brit and the rest.
She squinted hard, trying desperately to see. For a brief second, she saw the chaos ahead, and took off at a run.
A screech, and she fell, the horrors of the Void causing her to visibly flinch. "Arrgh...!" She twisted, picking herself up from the ground again, ignoring the stones in her palms now.
She tried to steady her heartbeat, calming herself to loosen the Void's hold. And, slowly but surely, as she approached, she could see through a small little sliver in her vision, unmarred by the screaming faces. The lights of Stormy's shields were lost in a raging sandstorm. Sully took centre stage, pistol glinting in his mouth. Darkness from the south - Eve? Glowing webs and - most shocking of all - a towering scorpion. There were molten cracks in the pavement on the Sycamore Coven side. And from the rooftops, crackling electricity.
She squinted, moving her head furiously to take it all in, peeping through her sliver.
At their back, she had luckily come in unnoticed as the Wolfpack fired shots and continued their assault.
She could do something about this.
A slow breath, trying to widen the sliver, taking another last glance before she pushed it again. Memorizing the locations, trajectories.
With a huff of exertion, she made her move. Two phantom hands appeared, buzzing with desperate energy. Her eyes lit up with power as, effectively, the sliver closed and blinded her once more. But she didn't need it. She didn't need to see. She just had to focus.
Two hands swelled in size, rippling masses closing around the frame of a tossed car. With a quiet screech of metal, it was launched into the air to land directly on top of the scorpion. As long as the thing didn't notice, it would hopefully be crushed into the pavement as brutally as how his ilk killed the child.
She shifted targets, her knees trembling.
One dark hand, smaller in size, flailed through the air as it searched for its target. It came into contact with a slender arm, and trailed up to feel for a gun. Yes, the shape of metal was there. Alizée wanted to save Sully and extract him from his treacherous position as quickly as possible.
Blindly, the phantom hand gripped around the hand holding the pistol, finger sliding under the trigger to prevent it from being fired. And, with the same strength she used to bend steel, she crushed the hand holding the gun, hoping to break as many bones as possible.
The exertion sent another screaming Voidling into her face, and Alizée let out a strangled yelp, half falling behind a tossed-aside car. Quickly, she clamped a hand over her mouth, tears pricking her eyes as she shook with terror.
"Breathe, pet." Void speaking somewhere in the far distance of her mind. She was too numb to comprehend it.
Interactions: Stormy @Blizz, the Ugly AF Scorpion @Punished GN Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot
Everything was going to absolute shit.
Linqian backed away from the massive, grotesque scorpion monster that made her want to vomit. What the fuck was she meant to do here, why had she walked into a whole gang war- should’ve stayed in the car.
As it got hotter, Linqian got colder, lowering her body temperature to as cold as she could. She needed to run. No way she was sticking around for this. Stormy and Eve could do whatever the hell they wanted, she sure as shit wasn’t-
Things went from awful to catastrophic. Any thoughts of running disappeared when Sully was teleported across the parking lot and had a pistol shoved down his throat. Linqian would leave almost everyone here behind, but not Sully. No fucking way.
Linqian reached out a frozen hand towards the scorpion, hoping to freeze off one of its claws. Deal with the immediate threat first.
“I would love to leave, but- fuck!” Linqian screamed in pain as a bullet tore through her outstretched hand, then another hit her side. She collapsed to the ground with a pained cry, spitting out a torrent of Chinese curses. She'd never felt pain like it. She could feel the burning hot metal in her side, as if she was on fire, while incredibly cold at the same time. Her blood coagulated in the open wounds before it could pour out. It only made it more painful, her rushing blood trying to combat her freezing skin. Britney got hit too - fuck, she couldn’t even help-
The oppressive wave of heat weighed down on Linqian. She felt like she was melting, her below zero body temperature only making the heat worse. Previously clotted blood started to sluggishly leak out of the bullet wound, dripping down her side. She should switch to heat, it would be safer, she could cauterise the wounds, but if she did that now… She’d overheat and die. But she'd die from the bullets too. She needed to stop the bleeding before it got worse, before she warmed up and she bled to her death.
Fuck, it hurt so fucking much. With an agonised groan Linqian slammed her bleeding hand against her bleeding side. The extra cold skin against cold skin helped coagulate the blood again, slowing down the flow to a dribble. It was excruciatingly painful pressing two bullet wounds together, like she was ripping them open again, but there was a wave of numbness and ice cold washing over the area too.
”Stormy!” Linqian yelled through the pain, channelling the intense agony into anger. It didn’t help, but it let her get the words out. ”Can you not get up a shield that blocks the fucking bullets?! Or literally anything?!”
In the corner of her eye, vision blurry, she saw a car hurtling towards the scorpion. Fuck it. She reached out with her uninjured hand, trying to grasp the Scorpion’s foot - to freeze it, distract it, anything so it’d be hit by the car.
Bianca Manalo
Interactions: Agent Phillips @Punished GN, Stormy indirectly again Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot
Things were getting more and more heated (literally). Crouched as she was, Bianca realised she was out in the open. She needed shelter. Behind a car would be easiest. She spotted the nearest one, her phone buzzing in her pocket then.
She should get there first then answer- no, check the importance of the message. Bianca pulled out her phone again, skimming over the messages… ten minutes. Fuck. And it wasn't her fault she'd gotten involved! She didn't exactly have a choice. In a rather stupid move, Bianca responded with just that.
Then things got even worse when some of the Wolfpack started spraying bullets through the air with seemingly no care with where they were aiming them. Shit. She sprinted for the nearest car, trying to keep up her spells as she did- A bullet struck her lower thigh, causing her to fall onto her knees and drop her spells. She gritted her teeth, fighting through the pain and crawling forward to a car she’d almost reached. She collapsed behind it, back pressed against a tire - aching pain from her injury there adding to the agony that came with bleeding out. Blood stained her loose corduroy pants, gushing down her leg. She gathered up the thankfully thick fabric and pressed one hand against the wound, applying as much pressure as she could that way. She needed to deal with this quickly.
Bianca shrugged off her thick jacket, pulling off the cotton tank top underneath. This left her in just a plain bra, but it didn’t matter with how fucking hot it was, and the top had the best material to tie around her leg. Letting go of the wound, she ripped the bottom of the shirt into a long, uneven strip of fabric. She swiftly tied this above the wound around her upper thigh, shoving a hand into her coat to pull out a pen she thankfully had on her. She knotted it into the fabric and twisted it around until it was tight enough to staunch the flow of blood.
It hurt like hell, but it would stop her from dying until help got here. Namely Trevor and his healing. She was suddenly very thankful for the hours of emergency first aid training they got that she’d found incredibly boring at the time.
Taking a moment to catch her breath, Bianca got back to replying.
With a muted groan, Bianca leaned around the car just enough to see what was happening. The heat was getting more and more intense. She was almost glad she’d practically stripped off her top half (for practical reasons). So many of the Sycamore Tree coven were down - Britney, Linqian (shit the first time she’d seen her), Sully had a gun in his mouth… Bianca murmured under her breath again, recasting the boosting and range spells on Stormy that she’d dropped after being shot.
Luca froze again, plastic cup in his hands beginning to silently sizzle underneath his fingertips. Plastic was always the worst, but the slowest, to erode. He hadn’t even considered the possibility. It wasn’t him, though. Or was it? There were blanks in his memories that he couldn’t account for. Did they coincide with the murders? He didn’t have the ability to, but the rot might.
More damningly, wood carving was the one hobby of his he'd managed to keep up in some form. Sure, he could only do it for an hour or so at a time on the best of days, but it was feasible for him to carve small, wooden statues. He had plenty of different small wood carvings lying around his apartment in varying states of complete, and varying states of decay.
"Ah, wait," he realised suddenly, speaking his thoughts without really meaning to. "There wouldn't be any bodies if it had been me."
Oops. Didn’t mean to say that outloud.
Of course it couldn’t be him. There was also a reason the rot was so attached to his body - it was limited where it could go, and probably couldn’t make him teleport all across the world. He likely had blood on his hands, but it wasn’t coven member’s.
”I’ll be open about it,” Luca said. ”I don’t have an alibi. I barely leave my apartment. The last time I talked to someone was a week ago when I called Olivia’s parents, and that was only for a few minutes… Before that, when I talked to Olivia herself two weeks back. I don’t mind if you trust me less because of that.” He smiled ruefully, looking at Sloane. The only sign of his agitated inner state was the faint wisps of dust coming from his gloves as they began to disintegrate around his hands, and a light, acrid smell of the plastic cup degrading. ”Like Jack said, I’d like to trust everyone. Well, be able to earn that trust.”
Sloane’s conclusion did make sense, even if he hadn’t thought about it before. Maybe he just wasn’t smart enough to realise this was ‘obvious’, or he hadn’t thought about it enough. He did trust most of the people sitting around this table. Maybe he shouldn’t? But he didn’t want to think so negatively about them all.
If he was wrong in the end, well, at least he’d die quickly.
"Like, what if it left some kinda... programming, or something in our minds that it could use to turn us into sleeper agents at will? I'm not sure how it would work, but what if the Snake planned for this and is using one of us to enact its revenge and break it free?"
”Mm, I understand,” Luca nodded, smile dropping as he thought about it. He probably understood the concept better than most. He already had a presence in his mind that was trying to take over to enact its own will. It wasn’t hard to believe that a being as powerful as the Stygian Snake was able to leave something behind in their minds, a presence that went unnoticed until it was too late. ”Maybe it couldn’t enact its revenge until now… Or there’s a reason it has to be now. It makes more sense than a coven member deciding to start killing us off after ten years. Like, most didn’t even bother coming back.”
Is there programming in my mind? He asked the rot.
That would have made things easier.
Luca snorted. Made sense, he’d joined late and barely been touched by the Snake’s shady mind powers. Just the presence he was used to coexisting in his body, then, trying to take over and enact a different kind of slaughter.
”If it's cause someone is a… snake sleeper agent, then there must be a reason for it happening now, right?” One he couldn’t figure out. All he had were questions, and not even an idea for the answers. ”And for whoever it chose. If it even chose at all. And that still means it could be anyone… Or everyone. It could be using everyone.”
"Shut up, Sully! Clearly, you should have the brains to see who's really in the wrong here."
No, clearly Sully didn’t have the brains, as the brains would’ve told him how terrible of an idea it had been to try and hold Alizée’s hands. Sully dropped to one knee and wheezed as Stormy’s spell banished the hands. He gave Stormy a shaky thumbs up in gratitude as he fumbled for his pack so he could get the Chalice. His body felt heavy. It was like he’d just worked a double at a non-union site doing backbreaking construction without a single break for a paycheck that possibly wouldn’t clear. His hands gripped the cold silver of the Chalice. Maybe he’d bail on going to the club after all. He put the Chalice to his lips and a gunshot rang out followed by the roar of motorcycles, causing him to jump and spill the cranberry colored elixir down his shirt.
The Wolfpack had arrived just like the kid said they would. See, this was why Sully was inclined to listen to the stripper’s son—they were always mature beyond their years, like wise sages specializing in feeling out bad vibes. The Wolfpack were all leather jackets and tough expressions hiding low self-esteem and a need for a sense of belonging, like the bullies on his team who Sully always attempted to reform back in high school. Being big had its benefits when it came to people like that, but it didn’t matter how big he was when a firing squad of one percenters were staring him down and accusing him and the others of being killers. He deliberately avoided looking at Alizée.
He could feel the sweat forming on his forehead. Why was it getting so damn hot? He wanted to wipe it away, but took to heart the whole “do not move” order. He looked over to see the kid being beckoned forward by one of the bikers. Sully huffed out a heavy sigh of relief. Okay, good, some of them had a conscience, maybe they could listen to some reasoning after all. His throat was dry. He sucked what little bit of spilt elixir he could off of the beard hairs under his lower lip and swallowed. He felt a little better. They could talk this through. He cleared his—
BANG!
Time slowed. Smoke slithered out of the barrel of the woman’s gun. Another woman started cackling like a hyena, the slo-mo laugh track sounding like a demonic entity in Sully’s ears. The kid’s body went limp and fell backwards, all of him vanishing behind the wheels and frame of a car except for his shoes. Sully felt himself choke, his eyes watering. The barrage of gunshots as the woman emptied her clip, the little shoes kicking with each one, sounded like the bombastic finale to a deranged symphony. His hands shook. Stormy called out for somebody to help the kid as Eve moved to retaliate. Sully blinked. A wall of shields went up. A werewolf snatched up Alizée. He was quivering on the ground, and then he was quivering on the other side of the parking lot with a gun shoved in his mouth.
"Make one wrong move, and I'm going to give you another hole to suck dick out of!" threatened Élodie.
A brave idiot would have taken the opportunity to make a playful quip, or summon forth a brimful of lava and chuck it at the psychopathic biker bitch, or use the fact that she was thinner than the rails she bumped and try to wring her like a ragdoll. A brave idiot wouldn’t walk away from this. Sully didn’t feel like a brave idiot today. He felt like a useless, stupid idiot who muttered mkay, mkay into the barrel of the gun and didn’t make any sudden movements. He sniffed and felt sweat roll down his cheeks, or maybe it was tears. His eyes didn’t leave her trigger hand, widening as he saw a familiar appear and wrap itself around Élodie’s hand. He saw her finger squeeze and there was no click, no bang, and (thank god) no second hole. Why would you ever want to disappoint an additional person?
Sully spat the gun out of his mouth, grabbed Élodie by the shoulders, and jerked his leg back. It’d been a while since he’d delivered a punt, but the concept wasn’t hard. “Oh yeah? Well I’m gonna make it so your h-whoa!”
Élodie blasted Sully with a wave of sand that knocked him up and away, his mouth sputtering as he tried to spit out the sand. He remembered now why making quips was fucking stupid. He caught a brief sight of the carnage as he soared—bullets ricocheting off of parked cars, Greenwood and Coven members alike dropping here and there, spells flying, folks screaming, a massive fucking scorpion tearing things up, Linqian’s voice somehow (okay, not somehow, it was Linqian after all) cutting through all of the chaos. Sully landed hard behind a row of cars and felt the wind get knocked out of him. He rolled on to his side. Fortunately, nothing was broken.
He blinked tears and sand away as he gasped for air and looked around to place where in the parking lot he actually was. He rolled one way and saw a clear path into the strip club. He rolled another and saw the shuffling feet of people fighting beyond the cars. It turned out that Élodie had inadvertently knocked him clear of the fight. Sully could probably crawl inside of the stripclub and take cover until the shooting stopped. Greenwood and the old team had it. He was just a little rusty. He’d only be in the way. Probably just get shot. Next time, he’d go through a bit of conditioning and then be right on the frontline. He promised. He rolled onto his belly to inchworm himself to the door when he saw it again: a pair of kid shoes poking out from behind a tire, unmoving.
Sully paused. The kid was probably dead already. He’d taken, what, five, six shots? There was no way he was still breathing. Absolutely no way. Sully looked to the safe haven of the tastefully blacked out stripclub door, spat out a bit of sand, and pressed his forehead to the pavement.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” he whispered to himself as he began to crawl to the kid.
If Clancy was still alive Sully would crack open an ice cold Chalice and give the kid his first drink, making the bullet holes nothing more than a few little scars that he could use to impress his mom’s work friends when he was older. If he wasn’t, well, it would be the next thing on a growing list of shit that kept him up at night.
"There wouldn't be any bodies if it had been me," said Luca.
“Likewise,” said Sloane. If it had been anybody else it would have clearly been a dark joke. However, as far as anyone at the table could tell it could have also been a confession, a threat, or a truly tone deaf humble brag.
"The only common link are the wolf carvings... Do we have any of them with us that we can study? There could be forensic information that would give us some direction," said Jack.
“His people had one. I doubt we would be able to ascertain any more information than the FBI, forensically speaking,” said Sloane, gesturing towards Kali.
He had shown them a picture of it at the meeting, but it was reasonable that Jack might’ve missed it considering Drake had shoved a lightning sword in his face. It also appeared that Jack must’ve missed the static charge that accompanied Drake’s spells, or else he wouldn’t have brought Victoria into it. She was thankful that he made the accusation, if it could even truly be called one, because it meant Drake wouldn’t think too hard about what she had implied. If Jack hadn’t said too much, Drake might’ve realized that Sloane had implied that there existed a reality where he killed his own wife. She kept her hands folded but lowered them to rest on the table, leaning back ever so slightly, relaxing her shoulders.
"Like, what if it left some kinda... programming, or something in our minds that it could use to turn us into sleeper agents at will? I'm not sure how it would work, but what if the Snake planned for this and is using one of us to enact its revenge and break it free?" asked Drake.
Immediately Sloane tensed back up, her knee hitting a table leg. She had not considered the possibility. Was it even a possibility? Their Emotional Fields had prevented them from being influenced, but perhaps there was another layer to the Stygian Snake’s abstraction that they were unaware of, or perhaps they had been aware of it but it had been wiped alongside their memory of sycamore tree. She glared at the water bottle, the rippling spring water morphing into the tide of a beach as she thought about how willing and how close she had been to letting Greyson into her mind. Perhaps that had been the case because of a familiarity—not with Greyson, but with letting something else in.
It could explain things that had happened to her in the past year. Mistakes, oversights. She’d chalked it up to stress, to being drawn too thin and not having nearly enough support. Perhaps the reason why none of her security measures stopped the intruder who had robbed her of her Counterfeits was because there had been no intruder, no physical one at least. Just her, dangled along by invisible puppet strings, ignorantly doing the bidding of another, supplying who the hell knows with an arsenal of dangerous magical artifacts, memory scrubbed of the whole ordeal, unaware that she ever had anything to do with it. Perhaps she’d killed Ashley during her visit, replacing the murder with an argument. Perhaps she could be controlled at any moment with no chance of stopping it, complete and total vulnerability.
Her left eye twitched.
“Luca, don’t entertain this,” said Sloane, fixing him with an icy glance. It had been confusing if she had been playing with him or not early. Now it was obvious she was dead serious. “It’s an interesting idea, Drake." He could be right. "It’s also based on nothing more than completely unfounded conjecture.” Jade could’ve scanned it. “It goes against any kind of mental manipulation abstractions any of us have ever dealt with or heard of.” Kari could’ve sensed it. “We’ve all had the Stygian Snake in our heads before; you’d feel it if it were there.”
Ashely could’ve cut it out.
“You know what’s also interesting? How quickly you changed topics when we were on the subject of alibis,” said Sloane, pushing herself up from the table and glaring across at Drake. Cut it out. She leaned forward and caused the lock of hair tucked behind her ear to come loose, casting a shadow over her dead eyes. “Drake, I know you didn't do it.”
cut it out cut it out cut it—Her hand slammed down on the table, shutting the pesky thoughts up. She deserved to know the truth about Jade.
Elodie screamed when the phantasm hand broke hers, and her pistol fell to the ground. She should have just killed the fat bastard when she had the chance... she held her hand, which she couldn't feel. She quickly looked to the left and then the right: she saw that fucking bitch with the white hair again. Elodie's gun was on the ground, and there was no way she could shoot it with her nondominant hand. She grit her teeth and hissed in pain as fatass made some quip when he had signed his fucking death warrant. She shouted at Alizée,
"... You should have gone for the fucking head!"
With a wave of her hand (Well, the one that worked), she launched Sully with a blast of sand like any rational person would do to their hostage. Then she turned towards Alizée and shouted,
"... I'm gonna bury you alive, and then I'm gonna fuck your corpse!"
She pulled all the sand in the area - including the sand she used to terrorize Stormy - and dropped it all on Alizée. It was a massive and daunting mountain of sand that was all coming at her at once with crushing force.
Naomi thought to herself as she remembered Valjean breaking out of her webs. They were resistant to magic but, unfortunately, not immune (or many of their problems would be solved)...
Linqian grabbed onto his foot, froze it, and then Naomi noticed that there was a fucking car barreling towards him from... wherever. Naomi acted quickly and shot out a strand of web, attached it to the girl's foot, and used all the strength she could to get her out of the way. The car landed on him; he loudly screamed as he was slammed onto the ground. Naomi knew that wouldn't kill him, but it did a number! She could see his shell cracked, but he finally burst out of the web.
He got up, brushed the car off him, slammed his claws into it, and lifted it over his head. "You bitches are dead!" He shouted.
A bolt of lightning came from the rooftop and hit him in the back - it was a blinding flash of light followed by a boom that many would call deafening. That had to be James... and naturally, he lept down with a grin as he dramatically punched the ground on landing - creating a wave of fire.
At this point, Jessica had finished with her spell and laughed, "Take this, you ugly motherfucker!" She sent a wave of lava at Valjean that clashed with James's fire. Utterly double penetrating him, smashing him from both sides... and he charged out of the clash, missing a claw and a regular arm, and half of his face burned off. He looked to the left and then to the right...
Only to get blindsided by Ruby launching herself as Valjean like a missile, holding her staff in both hands as she let out a blood-curdling battle cry. She swung her staff at Valjean and created a wave of air so powerful that it launched Valjean backward and sent him stumbling over a car. He hit the ground with a thud.
"James, why the fuck did you jump off?!" Ruby shouted.
"Sorry, Rubes," James laughed as he threw his axe over his shoulder. "I had to make my entrance! Why the fuck did you jump off?"
"I'm tired of standing on a fucking rooftop, watching my friends get rag-dolled by some white trash!" She replied; she glanced at Alizee and hoped that Elodie had killed her ass. "So I made my fucking entrance!"
Valjean climbed to his feet and then looked around... and noticed Ruby's staff, James Axe, and he started compiling everything. "... You fuckers are-"
A beam came out of the tip of the tree branch that Ruby used as a staff, a dull-yellow beam that hit Valjean directly in the face and launched more of his shell clean off with the sheer impact.
"Shut up!" Ruby looked around before she valiantly shouted, raising her hand in the air. "WE GOTTA KILL EVERYONE!"
"... The fuck?" Naomi tilted her head at the order.
"Everyone that's Wolfpack!" Ruby glanced at Eve, "Our little buddy is busy and doesn't have the brain cells to figure shit out anyway!"
"Easier said than done!" Naomi answered.
At this point, Kashmira finished healing Pearl and Autumn, and both sprang to their feet. Bullets still barraged them, but fortunately, Pearl had an idea...
Ruby pointed her staff at Sully,
"Kash, help him!"
"On it!" Kashmira activated her dermal boost and ran over to Sully as fast as she could - a bullet hit her in the back, and while it didn't penetrate, it was still one hell of an impact. One that knocked her on her hands and knees, but she still tried to crawl over to Sully.
"Autumn!" Pearl shouted. "Boost me!"
"On it!"
The spectral presence of the woman faded away, and seconds later, a new Apparition was revealed to everyone presence; a fading presence of a burly man that some would recognize as the second-in-command to Das Sonnenrad. The Apparition pointed his hand at Pearl and fired a beam of orange energy directly at her, which made her bones and veins glow through her skin. Pearl felt the power as she raised her hands into the air...
... and then shouted,
"From the breath of winter, my power unfold, let frozen tendrils, my will uphold!"
The temperature dropped as Pearl's cyromancy countered Elodie's desert creation abstraction. The boiling hot heat quickly vanished, and the air temperature was finally bearable again. Snow and ice began gently falling from the sky.
"Hehe," Jessica said to Bianca, "You might want to put those bazookas away, sister!"
Everything Luca said, Jack said, and Kali said... it was all mumbling when Sloane dropped the golden question. The question that tanked everything good that Drake thought about her.
“But why the fuck weren’t you there to stop it?”
It was a swift motion; Drake stood up with a crackling sword of electricity aimed directly at Sloane. His teeth were bared, and his sunglasses had finally fallen off. He said, in the calmest tone possible,
"I can take you all accusing my fucking sister, I can take you all accusing me..." Drake hissed. "But, do not ever in your fucking life say something like that again. You fucking hear me?"
So it wasn’t Victoria. Good. He left it at that, since Jack trusted Drake’s judgement. At least, he did until Drake suggested that they were all the killers themselves. And he noticed how uncomfortable the idea made Sloane felt. It was palpable. ”That’s a dangerous thought process. If we start doubting each other, we’ll be too paranoid to save ourselves.” The unfortunate reality was that they all had a valid reason to doubt the innocence of the person next to them. But at what point did caution become hysteria? The best way to prevent that was to stop it before it started. Though, Jack was knowledgeable enough that he didn’t consider ruling that out entirely. But they wouldn’t survive if they banked ok that idea being true. Greyson could weasel his way into their Emotional Fields easily. In a world where he wanted to do more sinister harm, they would have bigger problems right now.
And then Sloane had to fuck it all up, by asking Drake a question that couldn’t be anymore tone deaf. Jack would’ve sympathized with that question if Sloane expressed any amount of grief over Jade’s murder- If it was obvious she was hurt by it, because then it would be justified. But Jack didn’t suspect she felt anything for Jade. If she did, then Sloane did a good job at masking her emotions. And she did it a hell of a lot better than Drake, who had every vindication to pull that weapon of his out. Jack didn’t move an inch, not because he was afraid of Drake- Drake scared him about as much as a wet cat did- But because he was contemplating just how in hell he’d respond to this.
Drake was pissed, and of course he was. Sloane just hit a nerve that no one should’ve hit, even after admitting she believed Drake was innocent. There was a federal agent sitting right next to them all. They were outside, and that sword was made of lightning. Calmly, Jack reached down and pocketed the sunglasses he dropped, before Drake stomped them by accident.
”Why don’t you make a second lightning weapon so even more people notice us, Blackmore?” There was no concern for being caught in his voice, but Jack was trying to make a point- They were in fucking public. In the dim light of the DQ patio, shadows clung to Drake’s shoulder in case he actually made a move. Unlike him, Jack was a bit more subtle in his use of magic. ”Sloane… Do you find it amusing to ask stupid questions? This is exactly how we die out: By burning bridges. What if Father Wolf wants us isolated and unwilling to see each other, knowing we’re easier to murder in private? Saying things like that does not help any of us.”
Location: Veni Vedi Veni, Parking Lot @Punished GN
"... I'm gonna bury you alive, and then I'm gonna fuck your corpse!"
A tremble shuddered through her bones. She could hear it. Sand scraping the wind. Granules upon granules, building. Surrounded by laughing, demonic faces, she stared up blindly. Slowly, a sliver gave way, as a looming shadow overtook her.
Horror overtook her.
Panic overtook her.
A scream cut out as two massive phantom hands circled around Alizée, just as the mountain of sand came crushing down on her.
Searing pain. The weight was immense. She could feel a terrible weight as sand piled on sand. She lay crumpled on the ground, gasping under her hands that weren't prepared for such an immense weight, only inches of space between her body and the voidly canopy, sand seeping in between the fingers.
She sweated, a strangled, agonizing scream leaving her lips. The hands trembled, losing inches of space, threatening to give in to the mountain that wanted to crush her, body and soul.
If her void hands had bones, they'd be fractured at the least, broken at the worst. Instead, this immense pressure translated to a searing, crushing pain that caused another strangled scream to echo across the sandy coffin - what may very well be her tomb.
If she could see, it wouldn't account for much. It was dark. Pitch black in her sandy grave.
Her phantom hands trembled under the exertion, the seconds ticking by like the lacerations from a whip.
Her breath was shallow, pain causing her to gasp and hyperventilate. Dizziness overtook her mind, and she lost another inch off the roof of her coffin.
Oxygen was suddenly in very, very short supply.
Her mind fluctuated between terror and pain, crying out again against the muffling, suffocating sand.
It was a battle of wills on all sides. The crushing weight over her, the searing pain, and the haunting faces in her vision.
She really wouldn't last long like this.
And Void knew this.
That's why, as Alizée suffered in her sandy coffin, he approached the spiky haired lady from behind, voidly clawed hands raised like a haunter stalking its prey. And in one fell swoop, he tried to grab her torso and snap her spine with a iron grip. At the very least, snap all her ribs. Anything to get her to stop. Anything to save his pet.
”Struggle and die, vermin!” He yelled as he attempted to crush her.
He waited in earnest to hear the crack of her spine snapping.
All hell broke loose when Maggy lost her damned mind and shot a kid he hadn't even seen in the group. Great. He's a lot of things. Done a lot of things, but child murder wasn't on his resume. It was now. Fucking great. They got attacked by the girlies and guys. He drew his gun when Valjean told him and started firing at whoever was in his line of sight. There were a lot of targets he could riddle with bullet holes. He focused a lot of his attention on the girls by the cars. The men got rounded up. One with shields teleported away and Elodie got one with a gun down his throat. It's in the midst of the chaos that he heard someone yell they were part of the Sycamore Coven.
"Oh ho ho, Christmas came early this year. Capture one of them alive! I got questions." Namely where the fuck his doll's been these last two years. St. Portwell ain't that big, but if it wasn't his circles he didn't know who to ask about Tayla. Knew her daddy worked down at the docks, but the fishermen in this town were important. Respected. Didn't go down there looking for trouble, unless you wanted guns drawn and bullet holes. They protected their own, and if Tayla's one of them then she's not an easy catch. But these Coven bitches would know. He could do whatever he wanted to them for information, and he planned on it.
Elodie's sand was getting every where and he was fucking hot. He hated her abstraction like he hated the beach. He couldn't take off his jacket right now. When the counterattacks came, they came hard. A car came and crushed Valjean, followed by Greenwood bitches come in out the woodwork to beat his ass. Elodie's hand was crushed, then her sand neutralized and the weather cooled down enough for him to think straight. He's had about enough of this.
He sank into his shadow and rushed forward to the Greenwood kid with the lightening. There were plenty of shadows around for him to work with. He appeared in a shadow behind him and cold cocked him with his gun in the back of the head, knocking him out. He was gone as soon as he arrived, doing the same to the girl next to him that controlled webs. He saw them as the biggest threats. He kept conscious of his time. So far, it's been 30 seconds. He reappeared on the side of the building out of the way and in the dark. He's doing good with on time. He would go back in, attacking who he could a few seconds at a time from shadows next to their enemies. He just had to hold out, until Judas showed up. He could swing that.
On one of his breaks, he stopped by a man crawling on the ground like a worm. He's the one that had a gun in his mouth. He as weak, down, and probably wouldn't put up much of a fight if he's trying to escape the conflict. Fucking perfect. He danced his way through the shadows and appeared out of the ground right in front of the man. He crouched down to his level. So far, he's got about two minutes worth of his abstraction in. Not the most terrible.
"Hey, man. Gotta question or two for you. Play my way, and you'll see the sun tomorrow," he said, his voice deep and gruff. He flipped his gun from the barrel to the grip, finger on the trigger. He pointed it right at the man's face. "Tell me where the fuck I can find Tayla Choi. And if you don't know, point me at who does."
Interactions: Naomi, Britney @Punished GN Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot
Linqian's hand didn't get crushed under a car, thanks to the web girl's abstraction, which was nice. She'd been prepared to sacrifice it, in a move very unlike herself. Well, a crushed hand was better than being stung to death.
”Thanks,” she grunted to Naomi, rolling over to behind the same car as Britney (that she was now close enough to get to). Britney looked in about as good a state as Linqian was… Shot, but not bleeding out. Yet. It was difficult to think through the gunfire, the heat and the shouting.
”Fuck,” she muttered, looking down at her side. It was bleeding more now. She could hardly feel or move her hand, limply pressed into her waist in a pathetic attempt to keep both wounds cool. It wasn’t working so well.
But then the temperature dropped.
Sweet, sweet coldness. Linqian's lowered body temperature was no longer fighting with the unnatural heat. The blood oozing out her wounds coagulated again, practically freezing as it touched her frigid skin. It was still fucking painful, she could feel the bullet underneath her skin and could barely move her injured hand, but she could last until she got a drink out of Sully's chalice... Or some other medical attention.
She could actually think a bit. Linqian tried to figure out what was going on - it was difficult, with so much happening. She didn’t know who these girls (and one boy) were, but they were holding their own a lot more than her coven… And yeah, they had spells with range. Linqian wasn’t getting close enough to people with guns to do anything useful. It would be best to get away. Where was Sully? She didn’t care about the rest, they’d dug their own graves (Alizee and Eve) or could get out themselves (Stormy).
”We should grab Sully and get outta here,” she muttered to Britney, who was hopefully still with it enough to listen. ”If you can move.”
If she could move. Linqian hadn’t actually tested it but… it’d be fine. So long as she didn’t increase her body temperature and let all the blood flow out of her! Which also meant she couldn’t touch anyone… shit.
”Where is he- shit.”
Two of the other group dropped without her seeing who’d done it, and Linqian finally spotted Sully - with a gun pointed in his face. Fuck.
”Can you, fuck, provide enough plant cover for me to get to him?”
Her plan, to get over there and freeze the fuckers gun out of his hand, was a terrible one. She didn’t have the capacity to think of something smarter, she could barely think at all, her mind buzzing with static and pain. But she couldn’t just do nothing. Sully was the one person she wouldn’t abandon.
Bianca Manalo
Interactions: Greenwood Coven @Punished GN, Stormy (indirectly) @Blizz, Alizee @Estylwen Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot
Bianca snorted at Jessica’s comment, glancing down at her (rather lacking) exposed chest, before joking with a wink, “someone has to help keep up morale.”
But still, it was fucking freezing now, so she pulled back on her coat and consequently covered up.
This group was stronger than she'd thought… She squinted her eyes at Ruby and (the guy). Something about them felt vaguely familiar - ah, their weapons! She’d seen those in the file, so it was the Greenwood coven. Interesting. She considered sending another text update, but realised she couldn’t really while they were actually nearby… It was fine, they weren’t hostile. Probably. She'd planned to find a further away car to shelter behind, but that plan had been ruined by the bullet spraying technique of the Wolfpack. She couldn’t exactly move now, either, with the way her leg was. Thankfully she wasn't behind the same one as Linqian and Britney - close enough to be seen, though, if they paid attention. Which at least the one she didn't want to be seen by right now wasn't.
But the situation wasn’t getting much better. Not getting involved be damned, she couldn’t just let everyone die - Alizee was getting buried in sand, Sully had a gun in his face and bullets were still flying everywhere.
Bianca changed tactics with her spells, splitting out her strength enhancement rather than just targeting Stormy. She murmured under her breath and directed her boosting in three directions - Stormy, Kashmira and Alizee. They’d all feel an increase in their abstraction’s strength, making it more powerful and durable, but to a lesser degree than when she focused on just one person.
She hoped Stormy could still use his strengthened shields to protect himself and everyone else and that Kashmira could actually reach Sully. As for Alizee… Bianca didn’t trust her, but she didn’t want her to die. As soon as Alizee wasn’t in immediate danger she’d drop the spell on her.
Luca was unbothered by Sloane’s icy look, or her sharp words. It was typical Sloane and it slid right off his overly positive exterior. But, he didn’t agree. Luca coexisted with an apparition, and he didn’t always feel it. He knew it was there, feeling the physical effects, but the rot itself? Sometimes he didn’t sense it, when it lay dormant.
But he didn’t have time to voice these thoughts, because Sloane went to a place she never should have, and Drake reacted just like he should be expected too. He had every right to be pissed. Luca was shaken by her question, and he wasn’t the one it was directed towards. But they couldn’t fight here.
Luca jumped up and got in the middle of Sloane and Drake, close enough to the electric sword to feel the sparks jumping against his skin.
Close as he was, both of them were within the aura he'd been avoiding letting touch anyone. At first, all they'd feel was an itching sensation, the feeling of something scratching at their skin. Then a burning pain would start, slight and creeping, intensifying with each second near him. It would feel like their skin was peeling off, bit by bit - slightly, at first, until it felt like their flesh was melting off their bones. As if they were beginning to rot.
There was no actual damage without him touching them, paranormal as they were, but the pain was very real.
"Please stop, we can’t fight here." He looked at Drake pleadingly, hoping that he would lower his sword. ”Jack’s right. We can’t start infighting, that’ll just make us easier to pick off.”
”But Sloane,” he turned to her with a hard stare, lips pulled into a thin line. There was something unstable in his gaze, a flash of the unnatural, of something broken beyond repair. This wasn’t the normal cheerful, optimistic Luca. Something in Sloane’s words had damaged the continually fraying thread of his sanity. ”Sometimes you can’t prevent it. It doesn’t matter how much you want to, or how hard you try, it’s just not possible. That’s the thing with death. It always comes when you don’t want it to. It’s better to accept that. Easier, really. Will throwing around blame help anyone - help you - feel better? It won’t. I promise you, it won’t. Just accept that it couldn’t be stopped. Not everything can be controlled.”
He looked away, biting his lip. No, he’d gotten too emotional. Was he even talking about the situation anymore? About Jade? Not really. He just wanted someone to be like him. To have to accept the helplessness of not being able to do anything. How horrible. Why didn’t he just keep it hidden?
Luca glanced over at Drake, offering him an awkward smile. He was more like the normal Luca then, building back up his walls of happiness and false hope. ”Sorry, didn’t mean to make it sound like it was inevitable. I’m sorry.”
With everything going to hell in a handbasket, things seemed tranquil between Shayton and Everleigh Thorn.
There was a boiling rage, the thoughts of the mansion burning and the death of the Kaiser or the more literal instance 'Dad' came back to Eve's mind for a moment, almost like a burning rage of sorrow and agony that Kali had to subside through when he mind-knocked her just hours earlier. Most would act on this rage, use its raw power to plow through or make purpose in combat against an enemy but someone like Shayton was planning on it. A cunning old man, though some old fart wouldn't outplay her it was apparent that being Paranormal was beneficial to him someone of that age should be geriatric but to teleport or move beyond the speed of light was terrifying.
She bit down on her tongue as her face raged a hot red, soon controlling herself of her outward emotion for once as she summoned a long black shadow-like sword into her right hand. A nimble short sword of sorts, small puffs of shadows like bushes emerged nearby each with tentacles oozing out wanting to grab Shayton to slow him down or trip himself up. "...I must say, to decide where you will die is a gallant act."
A bush of shadows formed onto her for a few seconds before she vanished as it disappeared, the bushes moved and closed themselves out as she moved around Shayton. The tentacles harassed Shayton doing their job to open him up, even for a second.
The best offense was defense, in the face of an immortal enemy an Achilles heel must be opened up or imminent death would follow.
One strike was all she needed, this was the start of a duel.
The pickup moved at pace, two of the boys in their leathers holding onto the bed of the truck for life. One of them, cigarette dangling from his mouth, was grumbling to his companion.
"-me why my coffee's going cold on the counter?"
The other man, squat with a goatee, spat off to the side and shrugged. "Iunno, Dutch said he got a call some fuckers trashed the Vee-Vee, and messed Joe Skinner up real bad."
"That dumbass sack o' shit," the smoker snorted, "Why should we care?"
Goatee shrugged, "He's Dutchman's brother."
"In-law, or somethin' like," the smoker corrected, "Which counts for shit."
"Don't matter Jay, still one of ours, s' the principle, and "Papa" is gonna be piss-.. ah shit, I think that's them." There was already half a riot breaking out on the parking lot, sand, detritus and cordite in the air. The two men held on for life as the driver of the pickup applied the brakes.
Veni Vedi Veni - Parking Lot
"Oh shit," Goatee chuckled, "Val's already gone Scorpion King on them."
They'd arrived in the middle of it all, probably beating any local authority by a good mile.
"Sand in my ass for days," Jay coughed as some of the Vasil sister's handiwork blew against the bodywork of their improvised cover, tugging at the .38 under his waistband. They were hunched low, moving between cars, a few rows away from the heart of the chaos. Goatee was keeping an eye on things, trying to dind a window to move in - the kids had the kind of power that some of the club had barely tasted, an expensive gift that only the lucky ones got to wield at their fingertips.
There was a dull thud, barely audible over everything else. "What you reckon?" Goatee asked, but no answer came. The man looked over one shoulder to see his companion crumpled against a car door one row over. "Jay?"
Closing the distance, it became clear why Jay wasn't answering. Fluids trailed from one side of what was left of his face, where something had smashed him into the windscreen of the car - a spiderweb of bloody cracks forking out from the corner. The force of the impact had shattered his eyesocket and cheekbone into bloody pulp. Bone and tissue speared through the sleeve of his jacket where the arm had been bent inwards, far beyond what human joints could handle.
"What the fugGHAAR-"
A tiny foot slammed into the back of Goatee's knee with a strength that didn't belong, hard enough that something popped. The man dropped to the ground with a yelp before someone muffled his squawking, tiny fingers clasped around the underside of his jaw, tight as a vice against his throat.
Nobody noticed the muffled shriek, blended into the cacophony of noise wreaking havoc across the parking lot.
Sully crept through what must've felt like a mile of sand, shell casings and stale piss to get to where the kid had been dropped. With visibility reduced amidst the thin cloud of sand and shadow, the only thing that stood out were a pair of child-sized sneakers peeking out from behind the tires of a parked car.
Sully found it was for nought. There were clear indents in the surrounding gravel and bodywork where Maggie's cartridges had punched past or through their target, but no blood spatter, and save for an empty pair of sneakers, the kid wasn't there.
It wasn't a discovery he had time to question, between the wave of sand and one of the Wolfpack's other hard-hitters coming up on him fast. A few muffled noises erupted a few cars away, although between the biker putting a gun to his head and the junkie throwing sand everywhere, it was easy to miss.
What wasn't easy to miss was a large, humanoid shape, flung through the air. It bounced off the hood of the car, next to where Dean and Sully were having their conversation, before flopping to the ground with a meaty crunch, between the two men,
Not humanoid. Human. A body, tossed from behind the row of parked cards. It- he was just barely twitching, limbs contorted at unnatural angles, but it was a foregone conclusion; the poor bastard's lower jaw had been pried open past human limits, until tissues which connected upper to lower had torn under the strain, leaving a gruesome, lopsided expression.
The only recognisable feature was a goatee, sticky with blood.
A vaguely familiar voice growled with a child's pitch, carrying over the row of parked cars.
"... you assholes..."
A few moments later, another shrill noise intermingled with the rest; one of the cars parked close to where Victor had been firing on the others began to sound off when something triggered its alarm. There was a faint, metallic groan, followed by the weight of the car briefly tilting downwards, before it jolted forward at a skid by a few metres - directly into the path of the armed Neo-Pagan with the full tonnage weight bearing down on him.
In the empty space it left behind was a familiar child-sized silhouette, barefoot, face shadowed by the poor lighting of the space, with dark sockets that almost appeared hollow. @Punished GN@silvermist1116@Estylwen@Atrophy
It didn't take a genius to guess what Eve was doing. Maybe on someone less experienced, it would have worked, and he would have charged in and gotten himself impaled on Eve's tendrils.
However, Shayton didn't last this long by being stupid.
In the blink of an eye, Shayton disappeared down the street (before the tendrils could get a chance), and reappeared in clear view of Eve but under several nice and bright street lights only a second later. Even though Eve hides herself or puts up a barrier, she's still human underneath it all, and all Shayton needs is an opening. Not even a giant one. Or at least, wait it out until Judas arrives.
"Did you even know about Latissa Simmons?" Shayton started. "She was nothing but a fourteen-year-old girl... your father's punks cornered her. Two of them - grown men - beat her head in with baseball bats while the rest of them just cheered. All because she was black, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Was that the legacy you wanted to take for yourself? Most of Das Sonnenrad's victims were children, Eve. Your father killed children all because he wanted to play Hitler."
All Shayton needed her to do was step in the light...
Élodie was more than sure that she had killed Alizée, as she had planned. Maybe give it a few more seconds in case the bitch had some trick to get herself out of it. She laughed as she turned herself and focused on the rest of the Sycamore Tree Coven...
”Struggle and die, vermin!”
Elodie's eyes shot open... then a second later, she had swapped entirely places with a nearby car and she looked over her shoulder. Cyril had snapped his fingers and laughed as the Void Light annihilated a random sedan instead of Elodie...
"... Insurance isn't covering that one." He said as he walked over to a parked pickup truck and slapped it for no reason.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck! What the fuck is that?!" Elodie shouted as she crawled backward... she swung her hand forward and all the sand strangling Alizée went straight for the Void Light like a monstrous wall...
... All while the temperature began quickly rising.
Victor, as ordered, was raining bullets down on the two Covens, with them taking casualties like crazy. However, Victor knew they would run out of bullets soon, and this fight would go from raining bullets to abstraction-on-abstraction. However, Victor kept his axe in his free hand and was ready to charge in and cut someone's head off...
A car went skidding toward Victor, and before he could react, it had pinned him against another vehicle. he loudly yelped as many would have expected the attack to kill him. He slumped briefly before pushing the car off him like a person would push a shopping cart. He looked down and saw his pistol was destroyed. Victor dashed forward, raised his axe in the air, and cleaved the vehicle in half with one fell swing.
He saw Clancy, that kid that Maggy shot, and he aimed his axe at him.
"Now, I can see why Maggy shot you!" Victor shouted as he charged forward at supernatural speeds and swung the axe horizontally at Clancy's next.
On the bright side, there was still a wall of shields separating one part of the parking lot from the other, and there was this weird feeling of power flowing through Stormy, that he didn't know he had. It was Bianca's Abstraction, but he didn't have time to think about that. More people were getting shot at, Linqian came out of fucking nowhere, someone became a giant scorpion, and Alizee got buried. The Void Heart was going on a tantrum right now, and worst of all, more people were getting shot at. More of them, fucking more of them. There were so many things go on right now that Stormy couldn't react to at the same time. He was in the middle of everyone else suddenly, with two of his shields that he kept for personal use. And the heat was... Fluctuating. Wait, no, there it was again. It was snowing, and it was heating up outside... What the hell? And of course there was fucking lightning. There had to be lightning.
Did Linqian really have to do that? Complaining about a lack of shields? Regardless, all of the shields present at the moment vanished and were replaced around a few people. Notably the ones who were currently suffering from gunshot wounds: Linqian, Britney, that familiar girl who he didn't recognize as an old coven member just yet, and the Greenwood members who were currently being taken care of. These shields had purple, chain-like patterns rippling across their surfaces, and floated in pairs of six around the intended targets, like asteroids, just out of arm's reach of them. If someone needed to get up and move, they could simply shove the shields away, but Stormy didn't want anyone being an easy target for that teleporter right now, so he kept them from doing anything funny. And this strange swell of energy he felt was making it much easier to make these shields. Whoever was doing this, he'd have to thank them after. Pushing his luck with this boost, Stormy threw up a dozen more of those purple Lux shields, ensuring all of them were either near a friendly target, or directly in front of them, to give them some cover.
"GET BEHIND SOMETHING!" Just like in the good old days of the coven, he was walling off everything across the battlefield.
Their little battlefield was a mess now, and it was incredibly obvious that there was a magical war going on right now. If someone inside didn't notice, it would've been a miracle... The shields could keep people keep people protected from the gunshot for as long as was needed, and maybe longer depending on the magic Bianca transferred to him. So with that in mind, he decided to do something stupid: Drawing attention to himself.
Stormy raised his foot up, and stomped it into the dirt. A green trail of light shot towards the giant scorpion monster that someone had turned into, which became a solid circle of light at its feet. It was the Consecration spell, which burned and weakened Aberrations who came into contact with the energy. It was like Kyrptonite, and Valjean was standing right on it... The only problem was that it was very, very obvious who was casting the spell. And Stormy didn't want to risk making another shield for his own use, so he quickly dove behind one from the random spread he threw out. This put him near Bianca and anyone near them both (because object permanence is hard in this chaotic event so his writer is using Bianca as a reference point.) Between the strain this was starting to put on his magic, and the boost he didn't know the duration of, Stormy wasn't sure just how effective the Consecrated ground would be, but it was something.
"We can't do this forever... If we don't take out the shooters now, we're going to lose someone," He said out loud, before turning to Bianca. "Stay near these, and the teleporter can't use his Abstraction on you. It's like a black hole for magic."
