Welcome to Gaia! ::

Liz seemed to seethe at the suggestion that Zack was somehow collaborating. "I swear if it wasn't for you knowing nothing about Zack I would have knocked you on your a** for that.

"And don't think I don't think people can't change given the chance. My mother wouldn't be who she is today without second chances. There are some people however, and I have learned this in only a few short years of dealing with the evils that dwell in the darkest corners of man's mind; there are some people who don't deserve that chance you might give them. Maybe some of your nemesis are just misunderstood but I can tell you that with my knife to a human slave trafficker's neck or my hand at the throat of a drug lord, I would feel no such compulsion."

Liz stood after that and in doing so was right in Victor's face as she finished, "Maybe your years of adventure and crime fighting have been dealing less with the real scum than my handful."

While ringing out a washcloth to replace the one on Tara's brow Chamberlain spotted Soul heading toward the store. About time, though not the best time I suppose...
He waved him up and went back to tending the fallen woman.

Chamberlain gave Soul a searing look and then ushered him out of the room. He closed the door part way and shook his head. "Her arm is in bad shape but it doesn't seem life threatening. And no I don't know what happened, she'll have to tell me when she wakes." He peered closely at Soul as he wiped the sweat from his brow with his rolled up sleeve. "What's kept you? Usually you're quick to get here when I send the emergency code. And Victor's not even answering."

Fenton sat in a large dark room, lit by small lamps that lined the wall. Across from him, behind a veiled curtain sat the silhouette of a large woman, larger than the average human female by a good head and or so to the astute. Also in the room, surrounding Fenton in a semi circle that put themselves between him and the speaker behind the curtain. Each of them looked as though they were judging him, and a few like they were thinking about how to best kill him if they needed to.

"So," said the woman from behind the veil, he voice both alluring like a sweet fragrance, but with a jagged bite to it that was to subtle for the unaware to notice; to those who did it was like her voice itself was a trap that their mind was at war with itself to resist or follow. All this, in only the first word.

"You have made the claim that you can remove a thorn from our collective sides, a claim so enticing that my business partners would not have cut your tongue from your mouth just for the suggestion that you might demand to broker this deal with me personally. I too find this claim to make the idea of allowing you occupy the same room as I very endearing.

"The real meat however, is whether you can deliver, and how. So, speak now, young master of machines."

The woman behind the veil waved and one of the men seated between them stood and delivered the laptop to the shadowy figure.

"It is not a matter of having tried and failed boy, it is a matter of resources and over extension. I have played this little game with a particular member of this group for much much longer than you might imagine and it is always a matter of waiting for a c***k in the armor, or a individual willing to share their way in for the right price. I do not waste my resources foolishly beating at a door that will some day be laid open for me. Once a strike has been made they will know if can be made again and again until their is nothing left and then they will be force to come to me and my own within my world and it is there they will have tackled more than they can handle."

"Now, let us see what hole in the wall you have provided me."

For a moment Fenton could have sworn he saw eyes and a crooked, evil smile spread across the face of the woman's silhouette, almost as if they glowed through the thin veil. Even as hardened as Fenton might have been he would have felt a wave of a sickness in his stomach if only for an instant, there was something inherently unsettling about this woman it seemed.

"Good...." she seemed to almost moan, "Very, very good."

She handed the laptop back to the man, who in turn returned it to Fenton before sitting again, hands palm down on his stone topped cane.

"Out of curiosity my boy, are you aware whom it is you sell off? Call it being cautious, but I would prefer you not gaining a conscience later after you find out, outside my immediate reach. Whether it be from sincere guilt or deciding you fear them more than you enjoy my money."

(when she smiles, think of how Medusa smiles when she's being evil in Soul Eater. That was what I was envisioning but I don't think I desicribed it quite right.)

A low chuckle emanated from the woman, almost like a self pleased purr but also a predatory growl. "Well, that is a desire for anonymity you share with your sacrificial lambs. They would rather be ghosts than paragons, which has made them all the harder to drag through the mud. Their insistence on being invisible has made staking them through the heart rather...difficult.

"If it weren't for my knowing their ways and being a rather constant thorn in my side I doubt even I would have knowledge of them. A random attack on my holdings with no evidence to the attackers here or there is a simple inevitability of my position...but a path of destruction with no apparent cause is in itself a pattern, like a shadow in the middle of a blaring light the complete lack of a 'calling card' is in fact their calling card.

"So tell me boy, how is it you came upon our brave 'hunters of the evils of men'? And I suppose you had at least a scuffle of a time with dear Tinker; even for someone like you, her intellect would make your task... formidable."

"You have an odd way of seeing things my child, odd yet amusing," the woman said. "How possible would it be for you to gain control of their moving fortress entirely? If you could lock down the entire thing and have it delivered to me I can guarantee you many more games to come."