<II> Carpal Tunnel Kills RPers...

[-kola-nut-]

Night falls upon a bustling city bursting with a population well past 6 digits. It's numerous skyscrapers break the skyline like jagged teeth as spots of lights travel and flicker between its webbing. They block the sun making it seem as if night falls faster in this city that never sleeps, but no one really notices because the sun to them are the neon signs and illuminated billboards that line every avenue that matters. The cold structures of steel and concrete dressed in this gaudy pendants of advertisement reflect these lights, glowing ominously. They seem to creak and groan to the seasonal temperatures and sit like heavy, contemplative giants to the ambient noises of busy people.

In the nest of these man-made structures not too far from the main arteries rises the outlines of a building, bare and naked to the environment. A crane rises from this network of steel. It is a structure meant to be 32 stories tall, and is currently a gridlock of i-beams. Only 26 stories have been completed. When undressed with the trappings of a finished building, each floor is 20 feet high. The steel framing vertically supports the weight every 10 feet on center but spaces out more to 15 feet on center wherever the engineer deemed it 'feasible.'

The total area of each floor spans 50,000 square feet; the north and south sides being roughly 200 feet in length while the east and west sides are roughly 250 feet.

The place is clean. The flooring has yet to be installed past the 10th floor. They were still in the rough framing stages meaning, no plumbing, no electricity, no air ducts for heating or air conditioning. Just a basic steel i-beam network. and some plywood scaffolding. Perhaps chains have been left lying around meant to strap those i-beams to the crane during daylight hours. The top plate of each i-beam is only 2' wide. Perhaps ropes have also been left as a means of bundling construction material or as a means of protecting the workers in addition to the scaffolding.

At the very top of the future 27th floor, where the network has yet to be completed, 5 i-beams 15 feet apart precariously cantilever out towards the main arteries of the city. From this height, the wind feels colder, and runs faster. It obscures whatever noise the city streets may make for an ordinary human being. Atop the i-beam in the middle of the 5 sits a slender female form with identifiable cat-like features: a pair of ears perking through her blue hair, and a tail. She watches the city streets below with a daylight clarity reflected in her yellow oculars. Her ears tentatively sway about in the wind, catching the faintest noise of pigeons nesting in the the building next door to pedestrians lightly colliding into each other on the streets below.

She is barely clad it seems: a skin-tight outfit graces her athletic body engineered at the seams for maximum performance. It covers her body modestly, but the modesty is compromised by how the fabric clung to her like it was her own skin. Around her neck hangs a thin, flat metal ring that is striated at the back with a barcode. The front is jeweled with a red translucent orb. Aya feels the icy cold breeze. It cuts across her cheek, blushing them, but she does not react in the ways humans shiver in the cold. Her mid-length, hair waves around crazily about her face, failing to obscure her vision, but succeeding at hinting at the current wind speeds of roughly 8.2 miles per hour.

Except for the hair, the ears, and the tail that sways from side to side like a pendulum, her figure remains still like a statue: each muscle perfectly in sync, perfectly controlled down to her own heart rate and her own breathing. Her breathing is quiet, even and calm. Aya waits.  

[Tacitus]

Jason Riker: Burning Bright

The scent of sulfur and a dark presense lurked in the shadows, the heat of fire and brimstone curling the hairs on the back of the neck. Sounds of and endless war rang up through the structure of the building, resounding off and from the many I-beams and thge limited completed construction below. Terrible demonic roars and hellish scents began to waft up from below as the scent and heat of hellfire gave way to death and decay amidst the humid warmth of massive piles of decaying bodies. Throughout the whole structure the sounds rang and scents pervaded the senses, but not a single sight could be verified, not a single demonic or devilish being anywhere, at least not wholy on the Prime. All the same, a war raged throughout the building, climbing up around Aya like a spire of death within the building itself.

This was the Blood War.

Gusts of wind surge through the tower as the barrier between the Prime and the abyss weakens under the strain of such heavy demonic combat. Massive weapons swing through the air and gigantic siege weapons hurl death through the air, creating blasts of wind with scents of fire and acid left in their wake. The structure supporting the beam upon which Aya perches trembles as a burst of wind surges out past her, the dying scream of a large demon echoing around her skull.

Then it all stops, and for a moment there is peace.

Then the war breaks out with a new intensity one could only find between foul demons and fell devils. The building itself begins to shake to the point where it might start to fly apart, a single bright white flame errupting from where the last gust originated from. Instead of an intensely hot flame it produced only a stench strong enough to force most humans into a fit of violent vomitting. It was a Hezrou demon, its huge bulking frame covered it patches of metal literally fused with its skin, each massive arm ending with a paw greater than any bear's with a series of nasty claws. It took two steps from the flamerift between planes before it stopped and seemed to melt away, drawing back into the rift. Within the white corona a man in black jeans and a white tee stod with mouth open wide, consuming the essense of the demon and binding it to his very soul.  

[-kola-nut-]

The heat of such demonic incident would travel through the entire length of the iron structure and it would start to tremble to the temperatures. First a roar, that would manifest into a trembling and then the tremor, sound, and scent would manifest and invade the heights which Aya sat upon. Bolts would twist with excitement and the tension would loosen like a body drenched in alcohol. She sat upon the i-beam still, but letting her body relax to its agitated tensions. The engineering though still lived to its name, and the skeleton of the building would remain true to its integrity for this time...

The Blood War would rise about Aya now with an intensity her ears may have been too sensitive too, and to which, she folded those ears back to mitigate the high-pitched screams of hell. For a moment, she felt the air about her stand still, and fight with the sudden intrusion of a demonic atmosphere. Yet, the creature that was Aya still had to learn fear, and with all irony, she reacted to the opening chapters of hell with some fascination and innocent curiosity.

While her ears remained ringing, her eyes grew wide open. Her heart rate intensified suddenly excited by the changes in environment, but whether or not it has registered as fear or something else would be left to the creation.

Then it paused. Her ears could still feel the remnants of the perceived sound vibrating through her skull. She thought she could hum to the vibrations. She thought it could serve as a sort of tempo now, and her tail continued to swing left and right trying to find this beat. The muscles down to the ones commanding her pinky began to twitch with anticipation as her breathing continued evenly, yet more deeply. But still she sat.

Suddenly it became clear and in the final tremors, a scent so foul had invaded her nostrils so she wrinkled her nose while turning towards the origin of the scent. Gripping to the edge of the i-beam with her palms square against the vibrating metal, she swung her legs up with a good amount of force and agility to bring her body upside down into a backwards hand stand and then land on both feet, first left and then right, quietly and effortlessly like a dancer. In the fashion where the world turned upside down did her oculars finally make contact with the rift of fire vomiting the hell spawn that would be her opponent.

She stood up, turning her gaze away from the lights to minimize its reflection in efforts still to conceal her location. A human? Becoming a demon? What could she make of that? Her collar glistened, keeping its thoughts to itself. Her body began to feel the heat in terms of a perceived illusion aided by the sight, and acclimated so resetting her internal temperatures to the sudden intensity of the environment. As naturally as breathing, she began the process of absorption. Her mouth opened slightly, letting out a breath that would condense happily but for a nano-second before being blown away by the chilly winds. This was a sure sign she had control of the environment about her, but to what extent she had yet to find out. For now this would be all she would need.  

[Tacitus]

Once the Hezrou demon had been entirely consumed the man standing just beyond the flamerift stumbled through in the brief moment before it sealed and the heat was gone. He looked rather average at first, his white tee hanging loosely around his torso with a pair of loose fitting black jeans ending in tennis shoes with no visible socks. Sleek black hair was held against the wind, presumably by some sort of hair gel or similar substance. Deep blue eyes held an ounce of sorrow behind a veil of utter exhaustion which hinted that he did not seem to have slept for days. He stares at Aya for a moment, "Oh ******** me...why are there always bloody civilians..."

With a groan his arms move to clutch his gut as if he had a case of indigestion, and rightly so given he had just apparently eaten a demon. He leans forward and unleashes a belch of thick green smoke which disperses to leave the same foul smell in the air which had been pouring from the demon. When he looks back to Aya he has a glazed look to his eyes, a single word spilling from his lips before he stumbled backward, "Run." Another step and he slipped back over the edge, draopping down in hopes of putting distance between himself and Aya. To his dismay, however, his arms threw themselves up and sunk sanguine claws of steel into the supports of the building, anchoring himself and causing his downward momentum to swing him forward. He curled around the beam, his arms lengthening even as they slipped around the metal, creating large gashes from his claws. He came back into a crouch on the beam, his shirt strentched by what seemed to be metal plates expanding from his now broadned shoulders. The caustic stench returned, increasing from the diminished intensity of that of the man's belch as he began flexing his arms, the short sleeves of his tee staining with fluid.

Blood red eyes locked upon Aya, and he looked hungry.  

[-kola-nut-]

Aya took a deep breath, through her mouth, to avoid the sudden, but rather awful stench of the belch. It didn't help so much, but at least there was still that strong horizontal wind to carry it away, and she thanked the monster with a thought for finding some vertical distance between them.

Her body arched, her legs coiled and like a spring. Then she took off at a superhuman speed along a horizontal length of iron with her tail keeping balance, her body fighting the horizontal force of wind, and her feet, gripping the metal with a cat-like ease. There were vertical beams along the path she took that broke it up, and she would simply maneuver around them. As Hezrou would coil around a vertical length of iron, she would herself above him, and the stench would grow more awful.

The air around her would begin to condense into tiny snowflakes, still quite invisible to the ordinary human eye. She watched the creature, and what it can do against the engineered steel. Eyes locked, and what would return the hungry gaze would be a blank empty soul, simply carrying out orders to the start of a sick, and cruel game. With both hands, she grasped the vertical length of iron upon which he had coiled himself upon. Then with a water-magnetic will of telekinesis and a sudden absorption of latent heat, she created a 1"-thick layer of ice running down and around the metal towards him. It spread out across the horizontal members just less than a foot, and would go all the way down 10 stories of the structure if nothing got in its way.