Zombehs

—(••[ 𝕎𝕀𝕊ℍ𝔼𝔸𝕋𝔼ℝ ]••)—

Gregory Irving

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Sitting atop the tranquil surface, Gregory’s surprise faded quickly as he stared down towards the endless depths below him. The still waters inspired a certain sense of calm, but the darkness brewed apprehension. Yet for all that, he seemed to be a prisoner of this scene; observing but otherwise unable to move. And staring into the abyss, he couldn’t help but feel that something stared back.

A small piece broke away from the depths. Miniscule, but nonetheless seen within the otherwise clear waters. It rose at a slow leisurely pace towards him, and he could do nothing but watch as what felt like minutes dragged on through its rise. Ice crept through his veins when the fragment finally touched Gregory as it granted him motion rather than freezing him in place.

Such a violent recoil only served to make him woozy though, and the world seemed to spin even as the water’s surface remained serene.

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The room he woke up in was familiar enough that Gregory recognized it as one in the security outpost after a few blinks. His hand slapped lazily at a reformed cheek, and he couldn’t help but roll his jaws a few times. He rolled over in the cot to confirm that, yes, he wasn’t alone in a room and it seemed like the other participants had been crammed in here.

‘Fantastic…’ Dry, unvoiced thoughts aside, Gregory pushed himself to sit up and frowned a bit as he reached out to rub at his legs to deal with the numbness. A few stunted wiggles of his toes brought a scowl to his face as he continued to massage his legs, hoping to return sensation to them. It was something to distract from his thoughts at the least as the pins and needles did a great job at cutting through them.

Q - FLUX

Fuck. The slums? Of all the times his helmet had to be ruined… His shades glinted with every light he raced past and hair blew wildly without a helmet to keep it in place. A few mutters had his phone send out another mass text as he tried to figure out what route the the van might have taken. “Where’s the van? Need to stash my bike.” Thankfully one of them got back to him before he spent too long driving in circles, even if he had to kick the bike into a u-turn to head the right way.

Even a few layers above the slums, it was easy to notice the shift as he drove lower and lower. The faint stench in the air, the worsening road conditions, and just a general lack of maintenance. He rolled up to the parked van without much fanfare, at least compared to the medical heli that took off just moments before he arrived. A quick glance at the members that remained helped him narrow down who could have possibly needed an evac. “Shit. Guess that was Zer0?”

He ran a gloved hand through his hair as he turned off the bike, and unclipped his phone from it with a sigh. “Any of you know if Blitz and End are off doing their own thing?”

Edged Horizon

Roused by the Beast’s footfalls, Jacque shook his head to clear the haze that lingered after the monster’s great roar. From the current commotion, it seemed that the Rift Beast was moving further from them and at no slow pace. “Ambroise! Start chanting. Hector, Notia. Run th-” Before he could finish, the sky grew bright from the magical array that formed above the forest. His eyes widened briefly in surprise, but Gods of War were not an uncommon sight in the capital. Still… the presence of one should make their task much easier.

“Right. Support that God of War!” With that said, Jacque crouched and then leapt up to clear the treeline. He might have gawked a bit as Rift Beast and God of War struggled against one another, but the astonishment took backseat to fulfilling his duty. One made easier now that the Rift Beast had been forced to stop, even if it was just for a moment.

Snapping the two segments together, he grasped the Talentium staff and twisted his entire body into the throw as he reached the apex of his jump. His body threatened to rip itself apart as he pushed it past its limits, but his magic held everything together best it could and repaired what it couldn’t. Any sound he might have made was drowned out by the boom as his projectile, a blur of gray at its speed, tore through the air towards the Beast’s torso. He dropped back beneath the treeline before he could see the results, but it wouldn’t be long until he’d see for himself.

Spitting out a globule of blood as he drew Krisil from its sheath, Jacque looked towards the others with a nod before he darted forward. Even if the God of War could handle the monster, he could not stomach the thought of simply watching someone else fight. Much less when Evloga was, hopefully at the least, buried in the creature’s back.

—(••[ 𝕎𝕀𝕊ℍ𝔼𝔸𝕋𝔼ℝ ]••)—

Oh right. Double weight limit and path length. Bigger glow to notice.

Edged Horizon

There shouldn’t have been any reason to, so Jacque’s eyes widened when his entire body shivered. “Do-” Interrupted by the Rift Beast’s arrival, he blinked a few times as he tried to process this new development. “Well then,” he remarked, voice slightly strained, but nonetheless attempting to keep his demeanor calm. “I suppose we can’t just ignore that as Astopolian Knights.” Snapping the other two segments to complete the staff, he test it with a few swings before he looked towards Ambroise.

“Ignoring the Rift Beast would undoubtedly cause more harm than letting this serial killer remain active for the time being,” he agreed with a nod. The roar caused Jacque to flinch a bit as his hair blew about wildly, and he frowned as he looked at the Rift Beast just poking over the treeline. Was it simply announcing its presence to the world, or were there others that had already encountered the monster.

“We may not have the luxury…” he murmured as he twirled the staff about and then planted it into the ground. Gold motes quickly crept up his arms, covered his body, and he exhaled slowly as he felt his body adjust in response. “Can you begin preparing your magic Ambroise? If we have the advantage of first strike, it should try to be decisive.”

He looked towards the Rift Beast again before turning his attention towards the other two. “Anything to add?”

Q - FLUX

“Fuck,” Echo hissed as he snapped his head back around the corner. God fucking damn it that was going to cost a pretty penny to fix up. Of course the killbots took aim and started firing, the warning had already been given after all. What the fuck had he expected them to do? Dance the fucking macarena for them?

Noticeably annoyed if the partially revealed scowl was anything to go by, Echo hurried over and hopped onto his bike. He kicked it into reverse and spun the bike around before pausing for a moment to concentrate. The bots were probably fairly well shielded, but it didn’t hurt to try and disable them, however momentarily. Gritting his teeth, he twisted reality above the killbots’ position and slammed a powerful pulse of EM radiation into them from above. A bead of sweat fell through his broken helmet as another pulse manifested and crashed against the killbots, hopefully slipping through the minutest of cracks and frying something important.

With a few strained breaths, he gunned the engine and raced down the street. He didn’t know if his efforts had actually paid off, but if they hadn’t then he wasn’t sticking around to find out. Now then… how the hell did he get to the Rash’s from here?

Edged Horizon

Jacque nodded towards Hector for the support of his suggestions, but he felt a bit disheartened when his other companions remained silent. Only for a moment though as it let him quickly pick up on the unnatural stillness and silence brought by the heavy fog. He spun around to face forward as he walked forward with a deliberate heaviness to the step. Yet for all the noise he made, there was an eerie lack of response. His skin crawled as he moved to grab his weapon, but a sensation gave him pause.

The sound told Jacque what he wanted to know, but he glanced back at Ambroise nonetheless, sharing a look with the other magic user, before he nodded. So it hadn’t just been a trick of his mind. His sense for magic was fairly limited and he had never found a talent for analysis of lingering traces. Confirmation by the superior mage helped settle his unease somewhat and he nodded for Ambroise to keep up.

“She’s right. I guess that means no break for us...” He smiled sadly as if that prospect was more harrowing than whatever situation the four of them were now a part of. Drawing forth two sections of Evloga, he locked them together and tapped it against a tree he passed by. The remaining two sections and the folded flag remained in its holder for the moment. “The town’s to the north west right?” He asked the others as he looked down at the compass clipped to his belt.

Q - FLUX

Chris swerved onto the ramp that led him into an even lower layer of the metropolis with a smile. Traffic had been light enough for him to make good time, and he hadn’t done anything more than piss off a few other drivers. Probably. Racing down the incline at breakneck speeds, he silenced the bike’s engine with the flick of a switch. There was a brief sputter before the obnoxious roar completely disappeared and left him with ears open to the sounds all around him.

Grunting as his bike came off the ramp with a slight bump, he turned onto the rather empty street at speed, tires screeching as they fought for traction. The lack of heavy traffic wasn’t too surprising given it was practically gang territory at this point. What was surprising was the sudden gunfire that came from the direction of the Wirefort manor, and the amount. Squeezing the brakes as he came to a halt on the roadside, he clicked his tongue in annoyance as he kicked out the kickstand. “Told them not to get into a firefight,” he muttered as he walked on back to the locker and tapped in the access code.

“Right, let’s see what’s going on.”

As the mechanical arms fitted on the additional layers of his armor, Chris turned his focus inward before throwing it out. Everything seemed to fade out for the moments it took for his pulses to race out and return, but the echoes he received quickly mapped out the situation at the Wirefort’s in his mind for him. The two in th- well, one now anyways, were probably Blitz and End. The big car sitting at the gate was probably her truck, though it seemed to have gotten an attachment at the top; probably courtesy of Arsenal. It didn’t seem like there were any bodies on the ground around the truck just yet…

As for the five trucks and fuzzy groupings, well those were probably the ones making a racket. It certainly seemed like they were the only ones with the numbers capable of doing so. There wasn’t much he could do about them at this distance, and he didn’t really want to get involved in a gang scuffle if that’s what it boiled down to. For the moment he decided to get a better picture just to make sure the other Cleaners weren’t caught off guard.

A few moments later and Chris tched as he picked up something possible worrisome. The nearby roofs, save for End, seemed to be pretty clear, but there was another vehicle approaching. A fair bit larger than the cars already on scene, probably the size of an 18-wheeler. Bulkier than a civi one though. “Well shit,” he muttered as he attuned the waves to dial in on a few specific frequencies.

“End. That you? Big rig incoming, can you get a look at it?”

Meanwhile the truck’s radio would crackle to life shortly afterwards, and let Echo’s voice through. “Yoh. Better haul ass, there’s an armored big rig making its way over. I’m still like two, three minutes out, so it’ll be there before me. If Arsenal’s around, you guys might need some of her bigger ones.”

Edged Horizon

“Phew~” Jacque removed the canteen from his lips with a relieved sigh as he looked back at the mountain the four of them had hustled to cross over. Already partially obscured by the forest they’d entered a while ago, he supposed that the four of them were making good progress. Each step was marked by a crunch underfoot, be it a fallen branch or fresh grass, and there was the soft pitter patter of drizzle. The ambient noises did little to muffle yet another of Ambroise’s sighs though, and it was already a familiar sound to his ears in just a single day.

Though Jacque’s pace did not slow, he tilted his head to consider Ambroise’s question until Notia spoke up and broke the silence that had refallen over the four. “Such faith,” he remarked after a bit of soft laughter, “but relax. Such ominousness is unneeded, no?” As the others might have come to expect, he spoke with a relaxed tone, clearly unworried for the moment.

Admittedly, he did not know a lot about the serial killer the four had been tasked to hunt down beyond what they had been told. Virtuoso had been active for some time now, was responsible for deaths in all three nations, left a calling card with each victim, and seemed to use a wide variety of methods on the victims. “It would be best not to underestimate them. Just because we are four does not mean we hold the advantage,” he said as he broke a low hanging branch so it wasn’t in the way.

“With that said, there could be many reasons all four of us were sent. From what I know, all three of you are capable individuals. I have not worked with any of you before though, so perhaps this is meant to familiarize us with one another. It could be a way of showing that Astopol takes this threat to their citizens lives seriously enough to send four of us. From what I understand, you also work best in a group Ambroise, so that’s likely another reason.” Rolling his shoulders, he looked over his shoulder towards the others.

“I think the ruins we saw while up on the mountains is just another hour or so. Shall we stop there lunch, or rely on our rations?” About to look back ahead, he paused as if remembering something. “Oh, and Ambroise? Sighing isn’t a language.” Saying that with a smile, he looked ahead to make sure the path was fairly clear before he spun about and walked backwards so he could face the three others.

Q - FLUX

It was well past early by the time Chris was awake, and he stared at the neon red colors of his bedside clock for a few moments before he sat up with a groan. Seeing as he was already well past late and into absent, he was in no particular rush as he plodded around his room. A quickly fired off message to some of the other Cleaners that had been around last night would hopefully get him a response by the time he was ready to leave the cafe as to where he was supposed to go. Cracking open the mini-fridge, he fished out a carton of milk and tossed a frozen meal into the microwave that sat on the fridge to cook. In the meantime, he wandered out of the room to pick up whatever was left in the daily basket of baked goods.

Returning to the microwave beeping, he popped what was left of the biscuit down the hatch before gingerly grabbing the steaming carton and taking a seat by his desk. Glancing at his phone, he hummed at the reply he’d received and quickly sent one back saying he’d be there in about 20 minutes? Maybe less depending on traffic. With that said he walked over to the gray locker next to his room’s door and tapped in an access code to the control panel on the side. “Base layers only,” he said as he lifted his arms and let the automated arms go about fitting the pieces in place. It took a few moments before he was able to step away and activate the locker’s hover function so he could bring it upstairs.

It took a few more minutes before he’d finished up with everything and attached the locker to his bike. Slipping his helmet in place, there was a series of hiss and clicks as it locked in with the rest of the suit. Revving to life, he accelerated into the turn out of the cafe’s lot and towards the Wirefort manor. Hopefully the others hadn’t gotten into a firefight or something suitably undiplomatic by the time he arrived.