Stein

The Mavericks (A Threeway between Hillan, Lord Wraith and Stein)

-

The Mavericks (A Threeway between Hillan, Lord Wraith and Stein)

Well then, looks like I'll just have to get 'im warmed up first.

The Dreamscape and Musings of a Mad Queen Stein

To Sow Hope: Part 1

_{A Mavericks derived Story}

Where a city street was once covered in confetti
see Her slick with screams, singed by fire

and smelling of gasoline and the debris of dust.
At the end of Her road, a noose is hung before Justice.

A damned man weighs the innocent
and find his wanting in the taking of creation.

Unknown

--

I.

Annie is out of ammunition. Her HUD gauge details critical ranges for the internal thrusters. Her core’s temperature is bordering the orange range. It was an error to enter an unpredictable mission environment and use her AEGIS O.S. so soon. A miscalculation on her part.

┤NOTICE:├
_{˹.005m, 270°˼}

Annie releases the quik-eject valve in her kneecaps. Reduces pressure, tilts her frame parallel to the ground, allowing her to narrowly avoid the horizontal swipe of longsword.

┤NOTICE!├
_{˹.065m, 230°˼}

˹_{Disengage Joint Locks: Shoulder Rotator}˼ Annie follows through her bend and places both hands on the ground, swinging her body up just in time to miss the polearm brought down where she’d been. Her miscalculations were becoming more frequent. Was there a malfunction in her HESTIA program?

II.

Falling toward the city. Every sense and neuropath alight—like the twinkling concrete sprawl below him. The whip of air, the anchor embrasure of gravity, pulling him down. In the howl of falling, tears blurring his vision, he smiles. Tasting ozone—Miles was actually alive, falling through the sky.

As he falls, Miles screams hope to the clouds he passes. He can do this. Of course he can, because as he plummets, his left fist—slick with precipitation—pulses blue with light. Reminds him that it’s audacity that gives way to sow hope, sometimes. Miles grips the source of the glowing light tighter: a glowing fidget cube.

The light glows and bends to coalesce around him, a translucent cocoon, as he plummets toward the chaos below. He falls closer to the chaos below and the cube glows brighter still.

III.

┤NOTICE!├
_{˹Multiple Hostiles˼}

˹_{Disengage Palm Lock}˼ She straightens her left arm. ˹_{Engage Reinforcement. Engage Rotor Wrist Function. Command – Begin Spin}˼ Annie’s body spins rapidly from the wrist. Spreading her legs, the force of her spin is enough to take out the 4 enemies surrounding her in 3 cycles. She brings her legs together. ˹_{Disengage Rotor. Engage Palm Thruster – Output .55}˼

┤NOTICE├

Bringing her arm up as her thruster launched her inverted form into the air, she looks down at the blade that was aimed to sever it, swinging where her arm had just been. Annie tucks her body mid-air. Extends her left leg to bring it down on the head of this 5th enemy. Planting the foot to a low-wide stance, Annie juts out her right palm. ˹_{Thor Palm: Engage}˼ Sinking it into the abdomen of the final enemy. The resulting voltage was enough the shudder the man to the ground.

Annie straightens herself and surveys the area. Opening her mouth, she inhales a large amount of air. Cooling intake to help her exhausts and core temperature. Around her, the chaos has subsided mainly. There are a few stragglers and medical aids, but seemingly no more hostiles.

˹_{Energy Spike Detected}˼

┤NOTI—├

A force slams into Annie’s frame. She can feel the crunch, the ripple of force, as it shoots her skidding down the pavement. A metal pebble skipping across an asphalt pond, she collides with the side of an abandoned delivery truck.

The figure closing the distance between them gave a different aura than the other enemies in the area. Standing over 2 meters tall, a metallic mask over the face, the figure brandishes his weapon: A great-axe rippling with energy, crackles audibly. Annie hears the pinging in her HUD. This one was giving off a dense surge of gravity particles. With a swift motion, he unholsters the great axe, twirls the weapon over his forearm before pointing the hilt at her. She has enough time to read the spike in energy. To recognize the opening barrel of an energy rifle, to deduce that her AEGIS is truly out of commission, before the weapon fires at her.

--

But tell me, what is Hope, ‘cept sparks hopped
from nothing but audacity and dried dreams?

Who can beam from darkness but broken boys who shine curiosity
looking for the best in men who break for the sake of pleasure

takes sheets of best wishes and the pasty memories of forehead kisses
to build lilac shields and sapphire umbrellas to catch the spray of blood.

Unknown

--

IV.

Miles can smell smoke now. Can see splats of fire across two blocks. Sees dots scurrying about. Some dots file into blocks—emergency vehicles and cars—that speed off. He knows, in seconds, the scattering dots will become humans scattering in panic. Some dots won’t move. This will become real.

But his friends were down there. Annie was there. Past the howl, cut of air and growing fear, they needed him.

V.

˹_{Bunt Shield: Engage}˼ The small shield springs from her forearm just in time for her to catch and deflect most of the beam. All she can do. But not before she is almost thrown off-balance. Annie can deduce that this battle will not be immediately favorable to her. She sends a scatter signal SOS, switches her visual receptors from battle to analytics mode.

“PERFECT!” he booms. His voice is enough to rattle the car windows near him in the nil of sound surrounding them. “It’s just as we thought,” he points at her. “Your power reserves are low. Your core temp is probably near its danger range. But most importantly—your pesky little AEGIS is down. Which means…”

Instantly, he was upon her. ˹_{Aegis: Enga—}˼ His hand gripped her throat. Fingers clenched to dig into her alloy neck frame. A hum grew from his palm that she could feel against her throat panel. “You can’t dodge this!” ˹Engage˼ She couldn’t! Her processors weren’t responding. ˹_Eng—Error˼ A series of jolts ran from her clavicle panel down to her frame—each shock slackening the tension rods around her joints until she was limp.

VI.

He taps his ear where his comm still resides, and it blares an S.O.S. It’s coming from Annie!

Annie says she doesn’t have a heart, that she’s all artificial. Gears, pins, alloy, pistons and everything else that’s cold. But Miles has seen her warmth, so he knows that isn’t true. He can feel it, that essence of her. That want to be more than she is, that she can be more. He can feel it holding on as the rest of her dims—sputters ichor and traces of fumes on the city street far below.

VII.

With a flick, he chucks the android across the street into the side of a wastebin. The wastebin crumples and she slumps to the ground. Her frame was still unresponsive, so Annie could only look up at the figure as he walked toward again, brandishing his axe. “Short story— my leader wants that AEGIS system you’re running,” he touched the tip of the axe to the center of her chest plate. “Also wants that core, since it’s technically stolen property from his father’s empire.”

“Between you and me,” With a touch to the side panel of his face shield, the smooth surface hissed a series of lines across the face. They segmented and folded into themselves as he crouched down, revealing a humanoid face. The major difference seemed to rest in his smaller nose and reptilian eyes. “I don’t think it’s gonna mean much, y’know. Kid’s birthright empire is falling, father banished him and he thinks finding a team of skilled warriors or bringing home…trinkets is gonna fix that.” The man shrugs and stands, taking one step back.

VIII.

No!

Miles juts out his fist. The cube swells with light, pulsing in his palm. Turning it to the joystick face, he breathes in. Exhales then—flow:

ʭJoystick: L, R, D, Pr, U, D -> Input: TL, BRBR, BLBL, TR, BR -> Wheel: C90, CC180 -> Switch: FOn, FOff. ʭ

The input takes less than 2 seconds and on the last flick, Miles feels a warmth start in his chest. It cascades to his ears, a melody of tones. Around him— this boy falling from the sky— lines of light trace outward. The wisps build outward while he plummets, becoming tendrils that wrap and weave, bind to become wings. A last surge of light before dulling into an azure eagle streaking toward the ground.

The azure eagle enveloping Miles tucks its wings and falls faster. She was close. Miles urges it faster. His eyes glow blue, he can now see the street—focused in on Annie’s form sprawled on the ground. ‘Faster.’ She was so close. ‘I will make it.’ The enemy was closer. ‘Faster!’ The axe was being raised. ‘Faster! Tilt.’—

IX.

“But with as much as he’s paying me, I don’t need to think.” He pointed the axe at her chest again, lining up the swing. Though her circuits in her fingers were starting to twitch. But her body frame was still a long way off. “So here we are,” he finished with a raise of his axe.

Annie doesn’t have time to simulate a string of probabilities to evaluate an escape option. Only time to scatter one last S.O.S. Before the blade whistles through the air, ready to cleave her chest.

X.

The construct scrapes the ground, chucking up and billows of dust. Miles, unsure of his recovery plan, only sees Annie. He rips down the street as the axe falls, urges himself to be light itself. The eagle construct swipes through the space where Annie’s form lays only a shaved instant before the blade of Galtrin’s axe cleaves through it, cutting only the streak of cerulean light.

The Dreamscape and Musings of a Mad Queen Stein

To Sow Hope

Prologue
_{A Mavericks derived Story}

Apprx 20 Hours Prior to the New Lilith Space Sendoff Parade

Frances Kindt typically didn’t work Friday through Saturday. Once he hit his 25-year mark, the custodial department head offered him the option to opt-in for a paid day off, so he chose to apply it to Friday’s. Only caveat was he couldn’t use those days if it was one of their “all-hands-on-deck” weeks and weekends. Festivals, parades and such. Working New Lilith’s municipal district— and for City Hall no less— those happened more frequently than he wanted. But the pay for the municipal district was good, and they treated him well, at least like a person, for the most part.

So here he was, sweeping the steps of city hall in the dimming dusk. Because he was smart. He knew he couldn’t get his typical 3-dayer this weekend—either today or tomorrow off along with his Sunday. So, he traded his Saturday shift with one of the young guys who just had to go to the launch of that new techno-house-EDM-doohickey club downtown—Synfulesque. Once he finished loading new bags in the bins (making sure to stow two extras underneath, just in case), Kindt would be finished for the day. Where most of the crew had to work the parade tomorrow, Kindt was going to be in attendance, celebrating, for once. Not cleaning up the aftermath of celebration.

Frances leaned on his broom for a moment, looking down the steps toward Main Street below him. The dusk in the sky was giving way to the deep blue of night, and streetlights sprung to life across the wide street. His grandson, Jarrod was in town and Frances hadn’t seen the tyke since he was 3. And now his grandson was a whopping 7 years old. Loved all the tech stuff, and gadgets galore. But mostly, the kid just loved figuring things out. Frances was getting the chance to watch him until Tuesday while his daughter in law, Jarrod’s mom, went to a work retreat.

The parade tomorrow was a celebration of one of New Lilith’s own embarking on his first voyage into space. Frances knew that would be the perfect surprise for Jarrod, seeing a whole city of folks celebrating an astronaut. A black astronaut, at that. And he wanted Jarrod to see this, to see faces like his celebrated by a street filled with people. By this time tomorrow, the astronaut Alexander Dumont Latoja would be handed his keys to the city and a medal in the very spot Frances stood: underneath the 5 meter tall statue of a blindfolded woman in a flowing tunic holding scales, and wings sprouting from her back. A gift to the city titled –Ariadne, Winged Justice. Frances patted her exposed foot. “Hope you got something else to wear tomorrow. People might think you’re just reusing the same outfits for photos,” he joked to himself.

The Dreamscape and Musings of a Mad Queen Stein

I'll be posting my random musings from disparate stories I've played in.

Maybe sometimes I'll post one-off poetry or even videos of spoken-word performances.

Stein's Temple of Debauchery, Creativity and Characters

I'll come back to this (maybe) and clean it up (definitely maybe).

Sensation & Wonder: An Absolute Comics Roleplay [DC & Marvel One Universe Style Game]

Gonna go ahead and slide my gay ass in here

The dragged out version of the King of Cities is coming to an urban area near you

The Curse of Crestwood Hollow - A Hyperhuman Story [CLOSED]

I wanted to go ahead and get my post up because I know other's are waiting on me. But, that's not all I'm going to have up. I still want to throw in some interaction with Vanessa and others, but I wanted to at least establish Sim at the party.

The Curse of Crestwood Hollow - A Hyperhuman Story [CLOSED]

S I M O N E M E L A N C O N
S I M O N E M E L A N C O N

^{_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

^{October 18th, 1985}

The Day Before the Party

“What does it mean to be seen as a person?” Simone asked. She could feel the glacier clear set of eyes on her, like red-hot tips of fire pokers near the nape of her neck. But she continued to look over the sprawl of quiet buildings from their perch on the roof of a building in mid-construction, the sunset squinting her eyes. There was a flint flick of a lighter and the first waft of smoke. She turned around to face the only friend she had in this new town.

“I guess that depends on how you mean it,” Vanessa told her. Vanessa took a long drag. They seemed to be getting longer in recent weeks. But Simone didn’t ask. Simone, of all people, knew when and when not to ask why a girl might want to poison her body. To damage it beyond repair. It’s why Simone ran, still. It’s why they were on top of 10-story building. Vanessa handed her the cigarette. “So, how do you mean it?”

“I don’t know,” Simone took it, pressed it to her lips. Long but shallow inhale and hold. Release and she felt the heady rush, the flex of her mind. She swam in the sensation for a few seconds before exhaling. A smile ebbed onto her face like memory and she was looking beyond Vanessa. “Sorry, it’s this habit I think I’m picking up. Something my brother used to do.”

A gust of wind almost drowned out Vanessa’s voice, “Don’t be! You’ve been bringing him up more, compared to when we first met.”

Simone rode the tail end of the cigarette’s rush before responding. “Well, yeah. There was no way I could tell someone like you what happened to him at first. Mathers assigned you to be my “campus transition buddy.” Where I come from, that’s just a thin way to say “assigned white friend” but during school hours only.” She held up a hand to stop Vanessa, “I know, I know. It’s not necessarily always like that here. But remember, ‘Ness. I ain’t even been here a full year.”

Up until 4 months ago, Simone called her small parish outside of Baton Rouge home. ‘Home’ in the sense that she could name each road like siblings—their tar pavement something like her own skin, the dirt roads ashy like her feet after chasing cicadas. ‘Home’ like she’d shared a meal with almost every family in her parish. Like she could go to Auntie Bea’s general store when Mi*les—Simone had to pull herself to the present again. “And I definitely didn’t expect to actually become friends with you. You actually get it."

Vanessa jabbed at Simone’s side with her index finger, “Even-though-you-hardly let us hang out in public together!” Simone laughed, falling to the ground. She was always extra ticklish after taking a run. But finally she looked up at Vanessa.

“You’re right. I just…I couldn’t, y’know. Before, when I was just the new girl. The new black girl. I just, I know things are different here. But —I didn’t want to feel like there were eyes on me again…” her voice trailed off in the presence of budding tears.

“Oh, Sim! I’m sorry. Jesus, Vanessa that was totally idiotic. I was only kidding, but I didn’t think how insensitive that could be.” Vanessa was hugging Simone now.

Things back home had been fine as they could be for a black girl in southern America up until her town’s small high school—a converted church—caught fire one night. It was the switch to a new school. So many new eyes, so many blue eyes. And then things were not fine as they could be--

Simone exhaled, singing the hairs of her nostrils with acrid smoke. The pain anchored her to the present because it was becoming too simple for her to lose herself, lapping up dark waters of her past. "Nono--no, you're kinda right. I been meaning to try...try being more...y'know--comfortable in being outside my comfort bubble." She ground her foot into the gravel, flexing her calves. That coiled sensation of flight so common these days. But she remained still. "I just...I don't know how. And I ain't gonna grovel to people for a friend." Her days of looking up from her knees for mercy, those were done.

Vanessa wrapped an arm around Sim's. "Theeeen, that's why you should come tomorrow, Sim. No one can know if you don't give them the chance to. I promise, this party is at my place so I'll be setting the rules. I run that house...until my brother decides he has to open his fat mouth. But these guys coming tomorrow, I like to think they're a good bunch. And--"

"I know, I know," Simone took the cigarette back, savoring the billow of smoke in her lungs. "Besides, my aunt Bea's been threatening to put me in her church's choir if I don't start socializing somewhat."

Vanessa jumped and kicked her feet out, "So that's a yes?!"

"It's a MAYBE."

"Well, Maybe is just ebyam spelled backwords. And ebyam is just a ancient Greek for 'most likely'."

"Nuh-uh. Really?"

"Who knows? But it sounds about right."

The two girls cackled--a burst of tense energy suddenly unwinding, taking form in their exhaled breaths. Simone was actually considering what living in this new town could be, instead of just surviving until she was an adult. She found herself smiling, walking down the building with Vanessa, chatting about who would be at the party--namely Vanessa reminding Simone who different individuals were. Thinking that this might be a good idea. This might be a step in the right direction for her.

---

The Day of the Party

Simone ignored the urge to bolt in the opposite direction of Vanessa's house as she walked up. There was no hanging moss in the trees, no cicadas in the air. The air that wasn't sticky with the tingle of humidity. Everything was crisp in this state--she'd recognized this when she'd moved. But it seized her again, walking toward the large house, along with this feeling like a screwing of the stomach and a prod at the base of her spine. The feeling like she'd had back in Louisiana. Even when everything else was different, this feeling rang through her body.

Simone was already a little past fashionably late to Vanessa's party. "Vanessa and her brother," Simone told herself, "gotta remember that." Originally, Simone was going to bail on the party. On her morning run, she'd plotted a dozen excuses to use.

And yet, here she was. Re-checking the set of brass knuckles in her high-waisted jeans before shoving her hands back into the pockets of her splatter-neon windbreaker. Always something visible, never dark on dark anymore. The sudden cut-off of a motorcycle engine alerted her to the fact that she was still standing outside while everyone else was going in. She fiddled with the gift in her small purse and the can of mace. The music was something robotic and new-wave—she tried not to grimace and walked into the house, thanking the person who held the door for her.

The Curse of Crestwood Hollow - A Hyperhuman Story [CLOSED]

finally posted my sheet in the Character tab and reworked the gender. I kept the powers the same, so there's no change in that department.

besos