Schradinger

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

616, though it seems odd you'd forget that little detail...

And you should definitely PM me the details. :)

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

You know, Deathstroke, I was just reading your post and noticed how many times Rachel had sighed. That seems like an awful specific number to me... Does it have any particular kind of significance? ;)

Heh. I'm always sneaking things like that into my posts in star wars RP's. I think I've used some variant of THX-1138 in no less than four post in the last two weeks.

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

Don't worry, I'm not leaving. It just might take longer to get through this intro arc than I'd planned.

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

So I found out yesterday that my usual schedule just got shot all to hell, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to make my next post here, given that they're usually going to be longer than those required in, say, the arena. It may be difficult to bring together both the time and the hardware necessary to write longer posts. So I apologize in advance if my lack of IC posts stretches on too long. I'll definitely keep trying to find a way to get them written though, since I really like where all these stories are going.

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any future target ideas that could lead to possible tie-ins after I finish this "escape the authorities/bad guys, get back to base, get re-assessed and trained more" arc?

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

DeathstrokeSW said
I'm cool with it. Personally, I hope X-23 meets Castle someday.

I'd like that to happen as well. The RP's I'm usually in tend to involve a lot of character interaction, so this bigger picture storyline style is somewhat new to me, though I think I'm going to enjoy it. Honestly though? I'd love to get in some interaction with just about every character that's been approved so far. Not sure how things would go with the sentry though... Lol.

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

Would anyone have an objection to me changing the material on X-23's bones to vibranium and her claws to the anti-metal version? It would make sense since she was designed to kill wolverine that she would have claws that (they think) can cut his bones (in actuality they still can't), and give more credence to her ability to take hits from the likes of the hulk while also making her more marvel-ey than the current carbon based nano-polymer.

And by "anyone" I'm referring mostly to EE, though other opinions are welcome as well. Jones has already given his go-ahead.

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

DeathstrokeSW said
Well, he has stunned me as Oliver Queen, so I looked into his other works; the guy is really really good. Plus, harking back to my obsession with the way people sound thanks to my coclear implant, the guy has a good voice and range of emotional tone. Plus, all those exercises you see him do, all those stunts? That's all him. Speaking of the way people sound, I now automatically use RDJ's voice for Iron Man posts. I like to have a voice ready in my head for characters, so if you have a specific voice you want me to think of when reading your posts tell me. For some reason I think of Thomas Jane for Punisher.EDIT: I'd love to see a Bruce Banner where Banner isn't a sad sack. We only need to go through about 90% of his publication history for that sad sack image.

I love how he plays Oliver Queen. In season 1, he even moved like a guy ready to snap somebody's neck in a heartbeat, always on edge and ready to defend himself. Every move was calculated and precise. Then he started to loosen up in season 2 as Ollie got more comfortable with the people around him, and he ended up paying for that loss of preparedness. All in all, he does a fantastic job with the physicality of the character.

As for Thomas Jane, I am not a fan of the full-length movie, but I love the short film he did in the laundromat. That one was pure punisher gold.

All-Star Marvel: Age of Heroes

Agent Designation: X-23
Field Mission Alpha: Test Protocol
Target Priority: Low
Evaluation Commencing...

Her heartbeat was fast and adrenaline pumped wildly through her veins as she stepped through the large double-door entrance to the hotel where she knew her target would be staying. Her nerves were on edge and her body almost shook with the nervous excitement that had been building ever since she'd been told about her mission. Her own mission! A real mission, out in the real world. She'd never had a solo mission before, only going along as an observer to see how the full agents did things. But she was finally more than just an observer, they had finally given her a mission of her own.

She glanced around the large room for a few moments before her eyes settled on the receptionist behind the desk, and she checked her outfit in a tall mirror on the wall behind her before approaching the woman. She wore a tight corset and miniskirt, with thigh-high lace-up boots and enough eye-liner and mascara to cover any number of imagined bruises. The entire outfit would make it perfectly clear why she was here, and was only partially covered by a thigh-length overcoat. The receptionist gave her a disdainful twist of the lips before covering her slip up with a practiced smile.

"I'm here to see Mr. Smith in room twenty-four-oh-seven." 23 put on her best coy smile for the receptionist, who only smiled back. "He should be expecting me."

"One moment, miss." She didn't want to know the girl's name. She never did when that type came in here. It would only be dignifying their profession, and there were few things she would dislike more than dignifying a prostitute. She picked the receiver up off her desk phone, and punched in the number for room 2407, then spoke quietly for a few moments with the voice on the other end before hanging up and turning back to 23. "He said to send you right up. Have a good evening, miss."

23 Smiled again and thanked the receptionist before heading to the elevator, knowing exactly how hard it had been for the other woman to utter those last few words. She could smell the disdain from halfway across the lobby, and the scent was still burning her nostrils five floors later. She huffed loudly to clear it from her nose, then glanced at the elevator's other occupant, a bike messenger by the looks of him. She flashed him a nervous smile, trying to act like a normal girl who'd just embarrassed herself. "Sorry."

"No, It's, uh... fine." His eyes dropped from her face as she turned toward him slightly, revealing the front of the outfit through the gap in her coat. She breathed deep as his eyes dropped, pushing her bosom up to accentuate her cleavage. Better he remember that than her face. When the elevator dinged and the doors opened, he was jolted back to his senses and realized it was his floor.

"It was, um... nice to meet you! I've just got this package to drop off then I'll be...." He was still mumbling as the doors cut him off, and her nervous smile faded the instant he could no longer see her. She knew that anyone who got in the way of her mission was expendable, and someone like him would have been easier to eliminate than most. If they didn't make her do it herself, they'd send another agent to put him down. Unless, of course, he wasn't considered a liability, and who would think of some boob-obsessed nerd as a liability? Besides, they'd told her to avoid non-target casualties. It was part of her mission to keep him from remembering anything that could identify her. It had nothing to do with how it had felt to be looked at like a woman instead of a weapon.

When the elevator hit the 24th floor, she stepped gingerly out of the car, the adrenaline coming on even stronger now that she was so close to her target. She had to focus just to keep her hands from shaking. This was finally it! She was about to take out her first target and prove herself to the agency. Prove that she was just as good an operative as they'd trained her to be. She knocked hesitantly on the door to room 2407, and it opened a few moments later to reveal a clearly inebriated man in a disheveled suit.

"Welcome! Come in, come in." He gestured her forward and she followed him into the room, catching the scent of two more men before she even crossed the threshold. Panic rushed through her, this wasn't supposed to be part of the mission! He was supposed to be alone with her! The guards should have been off-duty by now. What had changed? Something had changed and she needed to know what. Was she compromised? Had they been tipped off about her? She dropped her head to cover as much of her face as possible with her hair, and was relieved when her target addressed the guards first instead of her.

"Ivan, Victor, you know how much I appreciate your services, but I think I can handle this little crisis on my own." He winked knowingly in 23's direction, as if trying to make some crude joke, but neither of the men even cracked a smile. They just nodded, said yessir, and left the room, closing the door behind them. Good, one problem dealt with. Now to focus on the other.

"Come in, dearie. Make yourself at home!" She fidgeted nervously, not sure how to do that exactly. To her, home had always been the training rooms and bunks at the facility where she was raised. He picked up on her nervousness though, and began to walk around behind her. "That coat looks too hot to be wearing indoors. Here, let me help you out of it." He slid a hand along her shoulder and under the neck of her coat, and she almost flinched away when his fingers met the flesh of her neck. "It's alright, darling, I'm not going to bite." He slowly pulled the coat back and off her shoulders, then let it slide down her arms. "...much."

She gasped as his hand gripped the back of her neck and squeezed tight, throwing her forward onto the bed. She stumbled the distance and landed face-first, then rolled over to watch him approach, a lecherous smile curving his lips as fevered lust clouded his eyes. "They told me this was your first time, so I'll be sure and make it rough." The smile grew wider as he came closer, and his hands reached out like claws toward her. The way he looked at her was very different from that of the bike messenger, and she didn't like this gaze one little bit. To him, she wasn't even a weapon whose craftsmanship you could be proud of, she was just a thing that was here to please him.

On instinct, she raised her leg and planted it on his chest, keeping him from coming any closer, though the expression on her face wasn't one of fear like he'd expected. Instead, it was a mix of confusion, anger, and revulsion. She'd heard there were men like this, read about them in files and dossiers, but never before had she actually met one as vile as the man before her. She was disgusted. His cruel smile turned into a small snarl as his hand slapped her leg away, and he made it only one more step before her foot circled around and returned to his chest, pushing him back to where he'd been before. She was stronger and faster than she looked, he noted, and decided to change tack.

"Very well, little flower. We'll do it your way. For now." His hands slipped down the length of her boot-clad leg until they met the flesh of her thigh, then his fingers found their way to her laces. "Slow at first, as a favor to your employer, but afte..." He was cut off by the sound of leather being cut and the sensation of the tip of a warm blade against his throat. She should have ended it then and there, all her training told her to simply extend the claw further and drive it through his skull, but something stopped her. She'd never killed a man before, never taken a life in cold blood. This felt different somehow from the training she'd been through, felt wrong. That moment of hesitation was all her target needed, though, and while he didn't move from his position, unwilling as he was to risk having his jaw split in two, he lifted his head enough to shout for help.

"GUA..." The gurgling sound of a man choking on his own blood and trying to breath through a hole in his throat replaced the shout as the claw extended seemingly of its own accord, then 23's leg jerked to the side, tearing the gash open wide. She watched in horror as he fell to the floor and the word "FAIL" flickered across her vision, followed by orders to return to base for re-evaluation. No! This can't be it! She can't have failed! She had to prove herself! She was ready for this!

She didn't have long to beat herself up, however, as the last attempted shout of the target had alerted his guards to a problem, and both of them came barging into the room almost simultaneously. They had their guns out and aimed at her, taking in the scene in an instant. Their eyes narrowed when they fell on the body of their boss, and their guns spit lead at the petite form of the girl on the bed. Except she wasn't on the bed anymore. The split second it had taken them to confirm the threat had been too long, and she'd already covered half the distance before the first shot rang out, ducking beneath their aim to cover the remaining distance before reaching up to grab the gun barrel of the nearest guard. She twisted toward the thumb while simultaneously pulling down, applying upward pressure with her shoulder as she came up to a standing position facing away from him. The gun slipped out of his hand easily with a grunt of pain from the man himself, and she drove her other elbow up into his face, knocking him out cold with one blow and breaking his nose in the process.

She followed up by gripping the wrist of his extended arm and pulling his weight onto her back, then thrusting backward with her legs, throwing his unconscious body into the other guard. She spun and half raised the gun before remembering her orders to keep non-target casualties to a minimum, and instead of pulling the trigger she jumped to her right, planted a foot on the wall, then pushed off and drove her knee into the side of the second guard's head just as he was recovering from catching his buddy. He was out cold before he hit the ground.

She landed in a crouch, her breath calm and steady and the adrenaline well under control now. Her mind still reeled at the fact that they had forced her to kill a man, but she pushed the thought to the back of her head. There wasn't time to deal with it now. She had to escape. Had to evade the police and the rest of her target's thugs and make it back to the rendezvous point.

If she hadn't been so shocked at what her handlers had done, at what they'd forced her to do, she might have remembered to pull the bodies fully inside, close the door, and clean herself up before leaving, but she was too shaken to think clearly, apart from that singlular, all-encompassing need to escape. She left a trail of bloody footprints down the hall as she ran for the stairs and a scream echoed behind her. One of the other guests coming out to investigate the noise and finding the bodies. They'd be calling the police now. She only had a few minutes before they arrived and her mission became much more bloody.

She took the stairs this time, it would be too easy to get trapped in an elevator, and jumped down entire flights at a time until she saw a pair of policemen climbing up toward her. They weren't supposed to be here yet! How did they get here so fast? The questions flashed through her mind even as she spun around without hesitation and ran the other way, back up the stairs until she reached the roof. She slammed into the metal door to force it open, but it didn't budge. That meant a deadbolt lock, or several if they really wanted tight security. She removed the problem by unsheathing a single claw and sliding it down the crack in the door, shearing off any locks that were preventing her escape. Once on the roof, she ran to the edge, looking frantically for any way to escape. There was a building across the street, shorter than the one she was on but still an impossible distance away for any human.

She retreated to the far side of the roof, taking a runners stance before setting off at full speed toward the edge, just as the cops burst out of the door. They must have heard her running and followed. Or seen the bloody footprints. Cops were observant like that. They didn't hesitate when they caught sight of her, and even though they could barely track her speeding form they raised their guns and opened fire. That was also against procedure, her training told her. Something tickled the back of her mind, a realization that hadn't quite fully formed yet. Something that tugged at her like a relentless child begging for attention. She shoved it aside and pushed herself harder, faster. She had to make this jump. She had no other choi... "AGH!"

She cried out as a bullet bit into her leg, just as she was pushing off of the roof. She faltered, the muscle giving out in the split second before she went airborne as she realized with horror that she wasn't going to make it. This was gonna hurt.

The cops ran to the building's edge as soon as she dropped below it, looking down at the twisted form of the young girl sprawled on the street below. One of them reached to the radio clipped to his shoulder. "Base, this is Alpha team. Twenty-three is down. Repeat, twenty-three is down. Moving in for retrieval." Both cops left the roof and headed for the lobby, then out onto the street, but when they arrived on scene, all that remained was a blood smear on the pavement.

The girl was gone.

The All-Star Marvel Character Repository:

Player Name: Schradinger

Character You Wish To Play: X-23/Laura Kinney

Moral Alignment (Hero, Villain, Walking the Line): Walking the Line

Affiliation (what group/team/organization, if any, is your character affiliated with?): None currently

Character Origin & Backstory:

Random Descriptors:
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 180 lbs (due to vibranium-laced skeleton)
Hair: Black
Eyes: Green

History:

All her life, X-23 had only known the inside of the secret weapon X facility where she was raised, only known the countless hours of mental conditioning and physical training she was subjected to as they molded her into the perfect weapon. Even before she fully matured, she was a finer combatant than any of the human agents that trained her, and could surpass them all in strength, speed, agility, and endurance. Initial hesitancy to accept the girl as a worthy successor to the man she was meant to replace began to vanish as she matured, and some even began to believe she would surpass the Wolverine in ability, becoming an even greater asset than they had once hoped he would be.

As the results of her training and conditioning continued to come in at well above their expectations, they began to shape her into a weapon of the future, a weapon geared toward the threats of a new world, where war was conducted from the safety of one's own homeland and governments were toppled with manipulation instead of firepower. Where the Wolverine would have been a weapon of brute force and savagery, this X-23 could possess every bit of those qualities, but also be tempered to engage in more subtle tactics. Tactics that were quickly becoming necessary in the changing world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Where the Wolverine would have been sent to wipe out entire enemy strongholds wholesale, X-23 could slip in undetected under the guise of an innocent young woman, playing on the emotions of her targets to strike swiftly and surgically, before they even knew they were dead. She was a precision instrument, a scalpel with which they could remove the cancerous members of society, rather than the brute force claymore that the Wolverine once represented.

In the end, they were immensely pleased with their new weapon, and once her training and conditioning was complete they initiated the final step of the project. The last item before she would be released on the world to service the agenda of the highest bidder. They had to graft her skeleton with vibranium, turning her from a mere soldier into a nearly invincible killing machine. While this new coating would not be as durable as the Adamantium grafted to the Wolvernine, it would be sufficient to render her bones and ligaments capable of absorbing tremendous amounts of force unharmed, while still allowing her to pass unhindered through metal detectors and most other forms of security. Where Adamantium turned Wolverine's claws a shiny silver, X-23's would be altered to a dark, non-reflective gray hue, capable of cutting through nearly any substance thanks to their monomolecular edge and the vibratory energy they generate on contact with metals and other similarly dense materials.

The procedure was a success, as it had been with the Wolverine, and once she had been fitted with a spinal implant allowing them complete control of her actions, she was sent on her first mission, the mission that would brand her as either a resounding success or an abysmal failure, as no amount of tests or training could adequately measure a weapons performance in the real world. Only exposure to the world itself could do that, and now it was time for X-23 to prove her mettle.

Powers and Abilities (What can you're character do? What can't they do?):

With genetics derived from those of the man known as the Wolverine, X-23 possesses an exceedingly potent healing factor that allows her to recover from nearly any wound exponentially faster than any human, healing gunshots and knife wounds in seconds, and even re-attaching an arm after it was severed during a particularly grueling training exercise. The limb returned to full function in moments, and she passed the exercise with flying colors. This healing ability also renders X-23's bodily tissues far more resistant to harm than those of a normal human, allowing her to exert far more force on her body without causing damage to herself. This allows her to match and even exceed the strength and speed of human males in peak physical condition, despite her small frame and slender muscles.

The claws she inherited from her "father" are similar in position and function to Wolverines, but some slight genetic alterations granted her two claws between the first and second toes on her feet, each slightly shorter than the two in each forearm, though still just as sharp.

In addition to this, she also possesses Wolverine's potent animalistic senses and instincts, allowing her to see, hear, and smell better than any normal human, and at much greater distances. This makes her one of the world's foremost hunters and trackers, though her lack of experience means this ability is still inferior to that possessed by Wolverine himself.

Similar to the adamantium that was bonded to Wolverine, X-23's entire skeleton and the connective tissues holding it together have been reinforced with a vibranium coating that renders her bones able to absorb tremendous impact, as well as being unbreakable to all but the strongest of foes. Her claws have also been coated with a chemically altered variation of vibranium that emits intense vibratory energy on contact with metals and other similarly dense materials, allowing them to cut through nearly any substance. This vibranium coating also renders her mind extremely difficult to detect and manipulate telepathically.

While her physical powers and abilities are impressive, it is her mind and training that truly make X-23 a living weapon, capable of handling any modern weapon with exceptional skill, along with nearly every known weapon of the past, from bows to swords to lengths of wood. In her hands, literally anything she can lift can become a weapon of lethal effectiveness, and in the absence of any usable items her own body can be used to kill just as effectively without her claws as with them.

In order to complement and temper her lethal skills with the application of subtlety, she was also trained to use the arts of hacking, acting, and seduction in order to successfully infiltrate the lairs of her targets. She is skilled at playing on the emotions of her victims and has used her large eyes to garner sympathy with just as much success as she has her body to engender lust.

All these skills and abilities are utilized in conjunction in order to keep herself a step ahead of her targets until it's already too late, and then used with equal effectiveness to extract herself from any situation created after the deed is done. In order to allow her the best possible ability to carry out these tactics, she is given as much autonomy of action as the mission parameters allow, though any illusion of free will is exactly that, and her handlers will clamp down control without hesitation if they deem her autonomy too hazardous to the mission or her continued operations.

Sample Post:

Her heartbeat was fast and adrenaline pumped wildly through her veins as she stepped through the large double-door entrance to the hotel where she knew her target would be staying. Her nerves were on edge and her body almost shook with the nervous excitement that had been building ever since she'd been told about her mission. Her own mission! A real mission, out in the real world. She'd never had a solo mission before, only going along as an observer to see how the full agents did things. But she was finally more than just an observer, they had finally given her a mission of her own.

She glanced around the large room for a few moments before her eyes settled on the receptionist behind the desk, and she checked her outfit in a tall mirror on the wall behind her before approaching the woman. She wore a tight corset and miniskirt, with thigh-high lace-up boots and enough eye-liner and mascara to cover any number of imagined bruises. The entire outfit would make it perfectly clear why she was here, and was only partially covered by a thigh-length overcoat. The receptionist gave her a disdainful twist of the lips before covering her slip up with a practiced smile.

"I'm here to see Mr. Smith in room twenty-four-oh-seven." 23 put on her best coy smile for the receptionist, who only smiled back. "He should be expecting me."

"One moment, miss." She didn't want to know the girl's name. She never did when that type came in here. It would only be dignifying their profession, and there were few things she would dislike more than dignifying a prostitute. She picked the receiver up off her desk phone, and punched in the number for room 2407, then spoke quietly for a few moments with the voice on the other end before hanging up and turning back to 23. "He said to send you right up. Have a good evening, miss."

23 Smiled again and thanked the receptionist before heading to the elevator, knowing exactly how hard it had been for the other woman to utter those last few words. She could smell the disdain from halfway across the lobby, and the scent was still burning her nostrils five floors later. She huffed loudly to clear it from her nose, then glanced at the elevator's other occupant, a bike messenger by the looks of him. She flashed him a nervous smile, trying to act like a normal girl who'd just embarrassed herself. "Sorry."

"No, It's, uh... fine." His eyes dropped from her face as she turned toward him slightly, revealing the front of the outfit through the gap in her coat. She breathed deep as his eyes dropped, pushing her bosom up to accentuate her cleavage. Better he remember that than her face. When the elevator dinged and the doors opened, he was jolted back to his senses and realized it was his floor.

"It was, um... nice to meet you! I've just got this package to drop off then I'll be...." He was still mumbling as the doors cut him off, and her nervous smile faded the instant he could no longer see her. She knew that anyone who got in the way of her mission was expendable, and someone like him would have been easier to eliminate than most. If they didn't make her do it herself, they'd send another agent to put him down. Unless, of course, he wasn't considered a liability, and who would think of some boob-obsessed nerd as a liability? Besides, they'd told her to avoid non-target casualties. It was part of her mission to keep him from remembering anything that could identify her. It had nothing to do with how it had felt to be looked at like a woman instead of a weapon.

When the elevator hit the 24th floor, she stepped gingerly out of the car, the adrenaline coming on even stronger now that she was so close to her target. She had to focus just to keep her hands from shaking. This was finally it! She was about to take out her first target and prove herself to the agency. Prove that she was just as good an operative as they'd trained her to be. She knocked hesitantly on the door to room 2407, and it opened a few moments later to reveal a clearly inebriated man in a disheveled suit.

"Welcome! Come in, come in." He gestured her forward and she followed him into the room, catching the scent of two more men before she even crossed the threshold. Panic rushed through her, this wasn't supposed to be part of the mission! He was supposed to be alone with her! The guards should have been off-duty by now. What had changed? Something had changed and she needed to know what. Was she compromised? Had they been tipped off about her? She dropped her head to cover as much of her face as possible with her hair, and was relieved when her target addressed the guards first instead of her.

"Ivan, Victor, you know how much I appreciate your services, but I think I can handle this little crisis on my own." He winked knowingly in 23's direction, as if trying to make some crude joke, but neither of the men even cracked a smile. They just nodded, said yessir, and left the room, closing the door behind them. Good, one problem dealt with. Now to focus on the other.

"Come in, dearie. Make yourself at home!" She fidgeted nervously, not sure how to do that exactly. To her, home had always been the training rooms and bunks at the facility where she was raised. He picked up on her nervousness though, and began to walk around behind her. "That coat looks too hot to be wearing indoors. Here, let me help you out of it." He slid a hand along her shoulder and under the neck of her coat, and she almost flinched away when his fingers met the flesh of her neck. "It's alright, darling, I'm not going to bite." He slowly pulled the coat back and off her shoulders, then let it slide down her arms. "...much."

She gasped as his hand gripped the back of her neck and squeezed tight, throwing her forward onto the bed. She stumbled the distance and landed face-first, then rolled over to watch him approach, a lecherous smile curving his lips as fevered lust clouded his eyes. "They told me this was your first time, so I'll be sure and make it rough." The smile grew wider as he came closer, and his hands reached out like claws toward her. The way he looked at her was very different from that of the bike messenger, and she didn't like this gaze one little bit. To him, she wasn't even a weapon whose craftsmanship you could be proud of, she was just a thing that was here to please him.

On instinct, she raised her leg and planted it on his chest, keeping him from coming any closer, though the expression on her face wasn't one of fear like he'd expected. Instead, it was a mix of confusion, anger, and revulsion. She'd heard there were men like this, read about them in files and dossiers, but never before had she actually met one as vile as the man before her. She was disgusted. His cruel smile turned into a small snarl as his hand slapped her leg away, and he made it only one more step before her foot circled around and returned to his chest, pushing him back to where he'd been before. She was stronger and faster than she looked, he noted, and decided to change tack.

"Very well, little flower. We'll do it your way. For now." His hands slipped down the length of her boot-clad leg until they met the flesh of her thigh, then his fingers found their way to her laces. "Slow at first, as a favor to your employer, but afte..." He was cut off by the sound of leather being cut and the sensation of the tip of a warm blade against his throat. She should have ended it then and there, all her training told her to simply extend the claw further and drive it through his skull, but something stopped her. She'd never killed a man before, never taken a life in cold blood. This felt different somehow from the training she'd been through, felt wrong. That moment of hesitation was all her target needed, though, and while he didn't move from his position, unwilling as he was to risk having his jaw split in two, he lifted his head enough to shout for help.

"GUA..." The gurgling sound of a man choking on his own blood and trying to breath through a hole in his throat replaced the shout as the claw extended seemingly of its own accord, then 23's leg jerked to the side, tearing the gash open wide. She watched in horror as he fell to the floor and the word "FAIL" flickered across her vision, followed by orders to return to base for re-evaluation. No! This can't be it! She can't have failed! She had to prove herself! She was ready for this!

She didn't have long to beat herself up, however, as the last attempted shout of the target had alerted his guards to a problem, and both of them came barging into the room almost simultaneously. They had their guns out and aimed at her, taking in the scene in an instant. Their eyes narrowed when they fell on the body of their boss, and their guns spit lead at the petite form of the girl on the bed. Except she wasn't on the bed anymore. The split second it had taken them to confirm the threat had been too long, and she'd already covered half the distance before the first shot rang out, ducking beneath their aim to cover the remaining distance before reaching up to grab the gun barrel of the nearest guard. She twisted toward the thumb while simultaneously pulling down, applying upward pressure with her shoulder as she came up to a standing position facing away from him. The gun slipped out of his hand easily with a grunt of pain from the man himself, and she drove her other elbow up into his face, knocking him out cold with one blow and breaking his nose in the process.

She followed up by gripping the wrist of his extended arm and pulling his weight onto her back, then thrusting backward with her legs, throwing his unconscious body into the other guard. She spun and half raised the gun before remembering her orders to keep non-target casualties to a minimum, and instead of pulling the trigger she jumped to her right, planted a foot on the wall, then pushed off and drove her knee into the side of the second guard's head just as he was recovering from catching his buddy. He was out cold before he hit the ground.

She landed in a crouch, her breath calm and steady and the adrenaline well under control now. Her mind still reeled at the fact that they had forced her to kill a man, but she pushed the thought to the back of her head. There wasn't time to deal with it now. She had to escape. Had to evade the police and the rest of her target's thugs and make it back to the rendezvous point.

If she hadn't been so shocked at what her handlers had done, at what they'd forced her to do, she might have remembered to pull the bodies fully inside, close the door, and clean herself up before leaving, but she was too shaken to think clearly, apart from that singlular, all-encompassing need to escape. She left a trail of bloody footprints down the hall as she ran for the stairs and a scream echoed behind her. One of the other guests coming out to investigate the noise and finding the bodies. They'd be calling the police now. She only had a few minutes before they arrived and her mission became much more bloody.

She took the stairs this time, it would be too easy to get trapped in an elevator, and jumped down entire flights at a time until she saw a pair of policemen climbing up toward her. They weren't supposed to be here yet! How did they get here so fast? The questions flashed through her mind even as she spun around without hesitation and ran the other way, back up the stairs until she reached the roof. She slammed into the metal door to force it open, but it didn't budge. That meant a deadbolt lock, or several if they really wanted tight security. She removed the problem by unsheathing a single claw and sliding it down the crack in the door, shearing off any locks that were preventing her escape. Once on the roof, she ran to the edge, looking frantically for any way to escape. There was a building across the street, shorter than the one she was on but still an impossible distance away for any human.

She retreated to the far side of the roof, taking a runners stance before setting off at full speed toward the edge, just as the cops burst out of the door. They must have heard her running and followed. Or seen the bloody footprints. Cops were observant like that. They didn't hesitate when they caught sight of her, and even though they could barely track her speeding form they raised their guns and opened fire. That was also against procedure, her training told her. Something tickled the back of her mind, a realization that hadn't quite fully formed yet. Something that tugged at her like a relentless child begging for attention. She shoved it aside and pushed herself harder, faster. She had to make this jump. She had no other choi... "AGH!"

She cried out as a bullet bit into her leg, just as she was pushing off of the roof. She faltered, the muscle giving out in the split second before she went airborne as she realized with horror that she wasn't going to make it. This was gonna hurt.

The cops ran to the building's edge as soon as she dropped below it, looking down at the twisted form of the young girl sprawled on the street below. One of them reached to the radio clipped to his shoulder. "Base, this is Alpha team. Twenty-three is down. Repeat, twenty-three is down. Moving in for retrieval." Both cops left the roof and headed for the lobby, then out onto the street, but when they arrived on scene, all that remained was a blood smear on the pavement.

The girl was gone.