VitoftheVoid

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RE1 knelt in the dirt with her head down, presenting as little a threat as possible in hopes the stranger wasn't going to take the opportunity to shoot her.

That probably wouldn't be fatal. But it would make the situation even worse.

The sound of a thud in front of her caused the creature to flinch, thinking for a moment it was some kind of projectile lobbed in her direction, possibly something explosive...but after a good few moments passed and there was no brutal reprisal, RE1 slowly opened one eye to survey what lay in front of her.

It was meat.

She gazed at it for a short while, before cautiously inching over to it. Once there she lifted the piece in one hand and sniffed the piece in a suspicious manner, as if trying to determine any contamination. Her hesitance was clear, but eventually hunger won out over fear and she tore into the meat with sharp, predatory teeth. Within a couple of seconds only the cloth was left.

The experiment fell silent, only to follow up with an unsettling organic sound, that of flesh knitting itself back together. Her posture relaxed, as if the considerable pain she'd been in had abruptly ended. Then the mutant's head tilted up in the direction of the masked itinerant.

"Th-thanks."

She spoke in a voice that belied a lack of use, like she knew perfectly well how to speak, but had so little call for it.

When your name was an ID code, people had very little interest in your personal opinion. @Conch Shell VII

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Kora/ORIN post up, Rei to follow later. I'm ust a bit out of time before I need to get on with some work. :D

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Kora was quite prepared to take knocks fighting against the metal man. If a broken rib or two was the worst injury she'd every sustained in the line of duty, she'd be extremely lucky. What was wasn't entirely prepared for the merc whose offer she turned down to apparently drop the price and weigh in on the fight as well. And not on her side.

From her rather compromised position it was hard to move as it was, and by the time she heard the peculiar, muted noise of the projectiles it was too late to avoid them.

Kora cried out in pain as her kneecap splintered. The leg of her uniform ripped and warm blood came coursing down her shin. The knight was just able to swing herself in so as to momentarily use the tinman as a human (well, metal) shield to prevent it striking both her lower limbs. Her gaze flickered down to her knee.
She was pretty certain it wasn't bleeding enough to kill her.

She was also pretty certain that with two potential opponents it would cost her the fight.

Unless.

"Am I clear to activate?" Kora spoke through gritted teeth as she talked back to the Citadel.

"I hope you are entirely clear that the mission brief outlined 'alive'."

"Cut the crap ORIN! Am I clear?"

"Fine. Yes. Activate."

Back at the Citadel ORIN cringed momentarily at the moment the audio squealed and cut as the mic disintegrated. Knight was on her own now. Hopefully smarter than she looked.

The heat wave that exploded out of Knight Norrevinter's body tore up the ground in a circular arc around her with an intensity that caused dry grass and wood to immediately burst into flames and the ground around her to be seared like charcoal. The ice that was bid to rise up was not only melted but blasted to steam.

The Knight's eyes, once a ferrous grey, were now a bright, luminous crimson, the irises glowing like crucibles in a furnace. The very air that issued from her lungs seemed to warp and twist with heat.

Whilst her arm was still in the grip of the metal man, she turned from him with complete abandon, and disregarded her apparent fellow knight's appearance on the scene. Her target was the ashrat. That vulture who dared think he could take advantage of this situation for his own gain. A wolfish smirk crossed Kora's face for a moment before she let loose a screaming battle cry and flung her free hand out, unleashing a wave of heat and force toward the merc. It rocketed out of her body in a wide cone and came at him like a perfect little scale model of a pyroclastic flow. Flying ash, rocks, and superheated air that tore up the ground and scorched the rocks.

The hammer of the gods.

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RE1 was relieved to hear the music abruptly cut before she was forced to her feet again, and as a result, remained where she had dropped, in an awkward kneeling position on the ground before the lurid green puddle.

She lifted her gaze briefly to regard the individual who'd managed to exact such a humiliating defeat on her. They had a weapon trained upon her, though even if she felt like trying to tackle that it wouldn't stop them doing that....thing again. RE1's gaze set upon the Conductor and lingered for a moment, before turning her eyes down and lowering her head in a gesture of submission. Even as tenacious as RE1 could be she was realistic enough to know there was no way she could win this.

The experiment stifled another cough and doubled over, lamenting her own poor fortune. It wasn't fair. She just wanted something to eat. Well. Someone in this case. But ashland dwellers didn't count really.

@Conch Shell VII

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

RE1 watched the...man? Woman? Intently...even though she was most certainly concerned, the concern still didn't seem to will her into moving away. It was an unsettling sensation. Neither wishing to stay nor being able to summon up the will to leave. Even the reveal of the weapon was not so severe as to spur action from her.

And that was, as it turned out, one of the more usual things she'd been bid to do.

If the forced stop had left RE1 confused, then the moment she began to feel the music, and the irresistible bid to dance along with it, brought that disbelief to levels she couldn't have imagined.

This was far stranger.

It was also far far more distressing.

Much like the freeze she didn't like it. She knew it was bad. What was more...it was painful. As she began to jerkily move in time with the disembodied music, struggling to adhere her animalistic posture to the unnatural more of travel, she could feel each abrupt shift in her body position tug and tear at the edges of the wounds in her abdomen. Ichor seeped down the robe and dripped onto her feet and the road below to make an oil slick beneath. Her apparent partner's masked expression was all smiles, a bobbing, mocking visage that did nothing to mirror her pain and alarm as she danced herself apart.

Eventually there was a stop.

The Conductor struck a pose.

RE1 buckled to the floor.

The experiment dropped to her knees, hands clutching at her midriff before she coughed and wretched up green ooze into the dirt. What was left was a murky puddle of what served for blood, that she hunched over, long hair hanging over her face, looking thoroughly defeated.

This was, not all that surprisingly given her background, the first time RE1 had ever danced. That considered, and given her state of health, he hadn't made to bad an effort.

But she really really didn't want to do it again.@Conch Shell VII

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RE1's teeth closed on empty air and the momentum of her spring continued to carry her forwards, past the point where her target had been, to land in the dust. She hissed, more greenish ichor dropping down from her front and landing on the cracked earth, before she rose to her feet and swung round to face the Conductor, ready to make another attempt-

Then she froze.

With the strange sound that emanated from the equally strange figure, the mutant stopped in her tracks. Her arms dropped down to her sides, and RE1's expression, previously filled with a sort of feral anger, was replaced by a mix of worry and confusion that came from the fact that she was pretty certain what she was doing was entirely against her own interests, yet she was doing it anyway. An Erubescan experiment was never really designed to have the strongest will, and that was rather returning to haunt the creature, as she was powerless to fend off any kind of mental influence.

@Conch Shell VII

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@TechnoWizROK We got a bunch of wasteland stuff kicking off that a Knight could wade in on, or we could kick some stuff off at the Citadel itself, as there's been some talk about doing some scenes there and we have a few characters based there. Green, Lulu, Gale, ORIN etc.

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

Kora was doing her best to try and get some purchase on Tin Man's core, as that was where she could potentially do the most damage. He intent was to sweep round behind him and wrap an arm round his neck. This golem was bulkier than her, but she was taller, and so he'd have a hard time unbalancing her there.

Unfortunately for her plan, the man grabbed her back, and a metal hand wasn't known to be a very yielding one. One twist let her know that any attempt to part them would come at the expense of any use of that hand...and that wasn't a card she wanted to play just yet. She kept the heat going. He'd release his grip. It was only a matter of nerve.

She had far more pressing things to deal with anyway. She kicked away, twisting her arm in the man's grip enough to get out of the way of the strike for her head, but the knee caught her ribcage in a glancing blow and there was an audible crunch. Kora cursed and clasped her side with her free hand. This guy hit hard. Plenty of others would take that moment to reconsider her strategy. Kora, less so.

"One more chance....to resolve this." she said through gritted teeth.
"Say you surrender...or things will get ugly."

Or course from an uniformed party's perspective, what you had was an injured knight threatening a man she had no way of harming as if she held the advantage.

---

The silver-haired creature paused as the figure passed her, slowing for a moment in apparent surprise at the sight before altering her speed sufficiently to fall into step. Her head tilted to one sde in a fashion that might mirror its own... though possibly for different reasons... as shortly after a few moments of attempting to determine the nature of this person she bore her teeth. Her teeth were a lot sharper than a persons should have been, structured more in a way that implied an obligate carnivore than an omnivore, and the opening of her mouth, though when closed had given not indication of anything particularly unusual about it, now seemed to stretch much too far and show off too many teeth to be normal.

She'd found a target.

There was an almost imperceptible change as RE1 tensed to spring. If fairly observant, The Conductor would have about a second's grace period to avoid the pounce. @Conch Shell VII

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

@IrishAngelQueen Aw, that's a shame. :c Will be sorry to see Rogue go.

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Biological Waste Landfill Site 27-B - One Mile South of Ash Outpost Designation 227

The Plague Pit, local ashlanders called it.

It was a a place that even scavenging animals wouldn't pass near.

A rocky bank over the remains of a crater from some blast long ago.

Every week or so a truck, unmarked, but guarded by a couple of Knights in biohazard gear, would back up on the precipice and disgorge its contents into the putrid pool of chemicals and contamination that now filled the void in the earth. Drums, metal boxes and large glass tanks lay shattered in pieces round the pit, along with years of discarded samples, used needles, and elements of biological warfare too foul and corrupt for even Erubesco to utilize.

No-one went anywhere near Landfill Site 27-B. Even those charged with dumping there did their best to keep their distance. If someone were to approach it though, at the edge of the foul pond they might see greenish mud on the edges quite seriously disturbed, as if something had scrambled out of the water. They might then see the footprints on the ground as the earth became more dry and firm, the drips and splashes left on the ground, the green ooze that seemed to near enough glow with its own light. Anyone who looked at how the footprints had changed in size unevenly shortly after emerging, or saw some of the... were they handprints left on the rocks? Anyone who saw these chilling clues might quickly gather that whatever had hauled itself out of the Plague Pit was not something to follow. Nothing good or natural could emerge from that place. They might as well have crawled out of hell itself.

But no-one went anywhere near Landfill Site 27-B, so no-one could have possibly known the origins of the figure that shuffled along the dusty ashland road.

It looked to be human. The damp, silvery hair was long enough to suggest female, though the stature and build did little to suggest either way, and the featureless one piece grey garment they were wearing, something that had the air of a surgical gown about it, also gave little away. Their skin was a sallow white, which didn't indicate a long time in the ash, particularly with little in the way of protective clothing, though it was also dirty, bloody, and splattered in greenish ichor. The green was streaked through the hair and concentrated on the clothing around the figure's ribs and stomach, where it was soaking through the fabric and dripping onto the dry ground, creating a spotty trail.

It was...unsettling at least...though not entirely shocking where the wastes were concerned. The individual was probably injured, or sick, had just been robbed and beaten up by bandits or fallen off a transit or something similar.

It would be the most sensible thing to assume, if you'd never followed the trail back to the lake of biowaste and understood that whoever...whatever this individual was it was something unholy.

RE1 T1-1 was, in a sense, counting on that.