Welcome to Gaia! ::

Kalis had carefully taken note of where he was and what was where inside the city on maps before entering. He'd tried to figure out how he could get where and attempted to figure out where people might hold up, who were still okay, though it hadn't amounted to much.
From there, he had taken to following sounds, away or toward, guiding himself and mostly rellying on luck to run him eventually into Owle, jumping from roof to roof top for the height advantage eventually. It had worked.


That was to say, but this point, he'd completely lost any bearings and forgotten the landmarks on the maps.

"...if we go in a straight line long enough, we'll eventually get out. Just go straight as long as things don't start getting more urban...."

Well. Looked like they knew which way their luck was about to turn now at least.

"Right. I guess that's it then." Kalis shifted a little, making sure he was hanging on, and sighed.

Well, he still had his sword. If something came at them he could always.... hold it lance style and have Owle run them down with the motorcycle? It was a funny image, but more likely than him suddenly hopping around on his feet and swinging. Maybe, he could just hold it out and the nasties would all impale themselves for them. He thought they'd earned the courtesy.

"Let's get moving then. I'm hungry."

((Ok, when I get a few moments freed from HoH gonna be giving this a bit of a boot up again. Just have to ask one question, do you want to:


A) Move time forward a bit so everyone can just start in one place.

or

B) Tell me where you are now and continue from there?))

((I'd vote for the first. Most of us were on our way out of the city, and can be officially considered out. Those stragglers are Vahn and Sumo...Vahn can figure out what he's doing on his own, and Sumo's thing should never have existed in the first place.

But mostly, I vote for the first because it means we don't have to worry about all the people in the jeep who decided to stop posting here.))

((Ok, I'll leave it up to you guys then. Either you can be back safely in camp or still in the city. We'll just fudge time to make sure it works.))

Somewhere in the centre of the city there was a skyscraper owned by Alpha through Epsilon to house all their subsidiaries in the city. Accountants, call centres, cubical upon cubical for eager little code monkeys to type away their days... But more importantly there were underground labs, containing some of the most strange experiments you've ever seen.

But I'd pay attention to that were in the last sentence.

As of now those labs were gutted and their contents transformed into the creatures that roam the streets of Agrippina this very day. The building itself has been transformed into something far from the economic core of the city that it used to be, now it was the viral core. The building had become a sick spire of cancerous growth spurred by the Omnipraga's emergence into the city. Here more than anywhere the twelfth variant had taken root, nowhere else did tendrils reach this far into the sky or roots spread so deeply into the ground. Here was where the most hideous organisms were incubated and the hive mind of the Omnipraga broadcast its sinister message of consume, consume and then consume some more.

It was no surprise that this mastermind wanted a body once more. A long time ago a demon had destroyed his first host. Only the bodies of two brothers had survived his first massacre in one piece, at least survived enough to serve as suitable vectors. The human form of the man once known as Lewis Five became Variant Twelve's body for many years. The Thirteenth had taken the body of the other unfortunate soul, and so together they escaped that hellhole in which they were born.

It was rather unfortunate he was complete now, he no longer needed Thirteen around. The imperfect strain. The benign strain. Exactly like Twelve itself only lacking the will to carry out their purpose. Together they could have elevated Gaia to its next evolutionarily level, and they would have thrived in a world free of humanity. Once again unfortunate, Twelve would think, that the Thirteenth was destined to be destroyed due his imperfection. What could you do though? Thirteen's compassion would be like a virus infecting the virus.

Droll.

It was about that time a grand cocoon began to pulse on the upper floors of the tower. Grand veins of viral bile pumped into it, and it had grown like a cancer on the building. Mile long nerves stretched across the city and into this hideous cyst, whatever had transpired in Gaia this cocoon knew about it. Was it the brain of the Omnipraga? No, the brain existed in every single one of those creatures was the brain of the Omnipraga. As long as one single strain of RNA existed the Omnipraga could create itself. It was the ultimate weapon, unlike the atom bomb the Omnipraga left itself behind rather than useless land.

The cocoon's purpose was to simply recreate one of two children of the Omnipraga that knew of this potential. A primary creature, not a secondary pawn like the rest of the city.

That is why the first thing to break through the gray-brown mucus of that cocoon was a human face. Perfectly replicated to match one that had been destroyed by a careless demon long ago. The face was followed by a hand, and then a foot, and then when the whole body was outlined the stretched membrane finally broke. Viral embryotic fluid spilled out from the deflating cyst, bile ceased to be pumped and the nerves would slither elsewhere. They had created the body now walking across the room towards a balcony.

Stark naked and well muscled it made confident steps despite being covered head to toe in still fresh sustaining fluid. Long colourless hair was plastered to its face and all the way to the back of its neck, that would need to be cut. For now it simply pulled the sticky hair away from its eyes. No fingers though, hands were replaced by a cluster of five long grey tendrils. Twelve's improvements on the human body were careful to keep to the original blueprint in general so he could still blend. But as of now a trail of tendrils erupted from his back, dragging behind the figure in the emperor's new clothes like that same rulers old cape.

A soaked foot fearlessly stepped over long broken glass onto a balcony so it could see its empire. A city being consumed and this humanlike figure was aware of every single cell, it was every single cell. It was the city.

It was the original Variant Twelve.

"Hello world." Escaped from a quickly growing grin.

Twelve had recovered from its defeat, and it was confident that it was greater than all of its opponents this time around. Not only had he absorbed Thirteen and become the complete Omnipraga... But he had taken a piece of the champion that had killed him in the basement of a godforsaken building ages and ages ago.

Grown from the larval form that escaped the clutches of that bedamned Demon, there was one more difference between the Twelve of old and the improved Twelve.

The eyes the creature had so carefully uncovered were no longer the dead grey from before.

No.

Emerald green.

((To that question, I really don't mind. Gabe isn't involved in HoH, so it doesn't affect me either way.))

Gabe had recovered from his little conk to the head rather well, it seemed. He was already up and moving around the camp, checking on the others that he thought were still with them. When he was satisfied that pretty much everyone was safe, Gabriel was content to retire to what passed for a barracks and check over his equipment as best he could.

He was seated at a bench, rifle resting on its stock as he checked various parts of the gun, wiping it down with a rag even though the instrument of death would probably be used again in a short while, or whenever he actually received word from the people who hired him.

It was kind of weird. Just moments ago they were tearing through the city, despite the fact that the last thing he wanted was to go in there underarmed and underprepared.

Instead, he fell in with a thief, a one-eyed swordsman, a walking radar, a wounded soldier, and a crazed hermit, and actually ended up walking further into the city where a building nearly fell on top of him, where one of those things almost ate his face, and where a walking tank nearly blew him apart.

And he wasn't even getting paid to do any of that.

"Really hope we get organized soon, or this place is as good as gone."

What was he talking about? Everything inside the city was gone. This was a quarantine operation. Stop whatever was in there from getting out. He wasn't saving anyone. Just protecting those that wouldn't recognize him, probably would never even know that this whole situation occurred. But the pay was good, and this sort of thing was what he did best.

Fame wasn't something that he should have been worrying about, anyway.

Survival, on the other hand, was.

((Sure, you don't have to auto-escape if you don't want to. That's all cool.))

Coming to on the medical bed, Brody looked around for a moment, worried first about where the hell he was. It wasn't that he had forgoten the bodily injury, not likely he would in awhile, but he was more worried about being out of that hell hole of a city more. As recognition of his surroundings swelled, so did the realization that his side no longer hurt so damn much. It still hurt, but now it was more of a dull throb. Calling over the nearest nurse, Brody inquired if he was under any form of pain meds.

"Not much," the nurse replied. "Just a bit to help you sleep."

Finaly looking down at his right side, he found half of it bandaged, the other half somewhat scarred but not bad.

"You should be good enough by tomorrow. Scarring will be bad, but most of you come out with enough tattoos to hide any amount of that."

Smiling weakly, Brody turned over to see his gun and rapier waiting for him. WIth not much else to do till tomorrow, he decided to try and sleep a little more.