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After quite a few moments, Steel’s circuitry recovered enough to properly function. The blow she’d taken from Chaos and the concrete ground was enough to temporarily knock out some of her programming on impact. Carefully, she rolled herself onto her knees and tried to get a gauge on what had just happened and if she had sustained any damage. If she hit the ground hard enough to be incapacitated for a few minutes, she wanted to make sure she had no other damage. Nothing immediate caught her attention, so she changed her focus onto her surroundings. Things were broken, debris everywhere, and it looked like a few buildings had managed to catch fire.

Then she spotted Chaos a few feet behind her. Encased inside a glowing green cocoon, and seemingly unconscious. He wasn’t moving, or showing any sign of life inside the stone. Whatever the black stuff was all over him seemed to be struggling to break through the encasement. After a few moments of staring at him, and trying to find a program that might be able to help her, she realized that the man inside really was in trouble. The stone had gotten extremely hot, and both life forms inside of it were past their tolerance level for such heat.

Jumping to her feet, Steel hurried over to green chunk of rock and ran through whatever programs she had that would be useful. The first helpful program identified the rock, pinpointed weak spots in it due to the heat and pressure being put on it by the Blood, and calculated where and how hard the spots should be struck so to break the encasing open. The next helpful tool began sliding out of her arm and encased one of her fists, making a nice little drill-like weapon. Which was a lot better than what she had planned on doing. Punching the stone would probably set of numerous pain stimulator in her hand.
Getting a lock on one of the weaker points, Steel pulled her arm back, and slammed it as hard as she could into the cracked part of the stone.

As the liquid made its way deeper into the stone, thin black tendrils began forcing their way through the cracks and into the open air. The Blood creature inside the kryptonite cocoon began forcing as much of itself as it could through the cracks to try and break open the heated stone. With quite a bit of effort, it managed to break the stone in half, forcing the green rock to fall away from it, and it’s still unconscious host. As the cool air hit it, the Blood curled around in the air for a few moments before falling very still over it’s host.

Steel stared at the scene with wide, worried, uncertain eyes. When the thing became all to still, she looked over at the red haired girl. ”Is…is he okay? Should we do something? A hospital?”

”No, he won’t want a hospital. And I’m not sure they’d be able to do anything for him anyway.” she replied, putting a finger under her bottom lip in thought. ”I could probably take him home. I’m sure we’d be able to do something for him there. Doctors won’t know what to do with the creature on him. People back home will know how to handle it.”

Steel paused uncertainly and stared at her, then back down at the unmoving boy covered in chunks of green rock and inky black…stuff.

”Well then…” Steel began. ”Let’s just…get him some help. What, what happened anyway? One minute everything was fine, and the next…this”. she said, motioning around at the buildings and broken glass around them.

The girl looked up and frowned. ”I really don’t know. Some kind of burst of power or something. Completely shattered the glass in the store window.” she replied.

Chaos groaned and began to stir on the ground. The black ooze covering him and the ground around him began to snake to life as well. ”…is…is anyone…hurt…?” he groaned quietly.

”Well, you for one.” the girl replied. ”Lot of people and cars got knocked over or pushed a few feet away. Glass busted, things caught on fire, -”

As if to add emphasis to her words, a firetruck blared past with its sirens screaming. Chaos let out a growl and the black tendrils curled close to his body in pain. ”What…what do you mean…things caught on fire…?”

”Well, it looks like there are about three buildings just around this area that are burning.””She replied. ”That building has one room with smoke rolling out of it. That one has the top of it covered in smoke, and that one is….oh…”

Chaos froze at the girls sudden hesitation, and forced himself to sit up enough to try and see what she was looking at. He found an apartment building…much like the one he used to live in…with the center of it engulfed in flames. People were rushing out of the bottom of it, and those caught in the upper floors were trying find windows away from the smoke that was rolling out. Chaos froze, and just stared with wide, horrified eyes.

Steel stared on as well. She looked back at the girl with worried eyes. ”Is…is someone going to help them?” she asked. She of course had no idea. She’d spent her entire life and creation inside Murder World. Only thing she knew was that fire tended to kill humans.

”The firemen might be able to get to them. But I can’t guarantee anything for the other buildings.” the girl replied.

Steel stared at her for another beat, then turned her attention back towards the buildings. After another moment’s hesitation, she sprinted off towards the buildings. ”Watch after him for a while.” she called back. She was supposed to be a good guy now…so running in to try and save people was something she should do, right? She’d just…have to figure out what she was doing as she went along.

Chaos’s attention flickered from the burning buildings, down to the woman racing off towards it. His eyes widened further, and he forced himself to his feet. The young red-head took a step back. ”Whoah, wait a minute. What are you doing?”

”Can’t let her do it. Not again.” he mumbled, trying to call his new Blood form back together.

”….what are you talking about? I thought you two just met.”

”Can’t let her leave someone behind. Not again. Not again.” he muttered. The black being wrapped itself around the young man, covering him in a dark, second skin. Kryptonite exoskeleton reformed around his back and limbs as a tendril shot out to latch onto a nearby building. A moment later, the young vigilante was gone.

The teenager was left standing there staring. After a few moments, she pulled out her cell phone and pressed one of her speed-dial contacts. ”Hey, it’s Rose. I just ran into this kid with a…kryptonite Blood form. …uh-huh. …uh-huh. …Yeah, that’s him. What’s the deal with him and that robot girl that walked into our shop earlier? …I don’t know. There’s a fire, she went running after it, and he kind of zoned out. …Seriously. The look on his face was a complete ‘I’m not here, leave a message’ kind of thing, and he was mumbling out replies, then he raced off after her. …I don’t know. It was odd. So, do they still want the robot? …uh-huh. Memory banks, gotcha. And the other two who walked into the shop? …uh-huh. …uh-huh. Alright, well I’ll just see what I can do with these two then. If I live that long that is. We do have the whole aged cloning thing good, right? …Well, yeah. But I mean, I’m not going to turn out like Octo-2’s last aged clone, am I? I know, I know. Still… Alright. Later.”

Steel made it to the block the burning building was on, and stopped a few buildings short of it. She looked up at the rooftop next to her, and aimed her arm towards it. A cable shot out of the upper part of her wrist and landed a few feet from the edge of the rooftop. The end of it exploded, allowing a few hooked ends to sink into the roof while a special gel and suction pad helped to anchor it to the cement for a few seconds. The cable made a small snapping noise, and suddenly began zipping itself back into the robotic woman’s arm. In doing so, it catapulted Steel up the side of the building at a swift speed, and easily pulled her onto the room. She made it onto her feet just as the gel began dissolving around the suction cup. The hooks retracted, and with a good yank, the cup released, and the whole thing retracted back into her arm to be fired off again.

Chaos, meanwhile, was “web-zipping” his way from building to building to try and get to the burning tower first. He caught up a bit each time Steel stopped to load and unload her mode of scaling buildings, but the thing made her zip up buildings faster than he could. He was about three buildings away when she finally reached the tower’s roof. From there, she flipped down into one of the open windows and disappeared inside.
With a disapproving growl, Chaos armored himself up a bit more and aimed himself for one of the windows above the barreling smoke. He’d save who he could on the way, but he needed to get up to the robot. She should be able to handle the fiery levels. He couldn’t. And he was not making the same mistake Sapphire did.

Well…technically it was his Blood that literally forced her to abandon his parents in the fire. Not Sapphire herself. But still. He knew enough now that the Blood couldn’t handle such heat, and he wasn’t going to leave anyone here to die. No matter how much this robot looked like Sapphire, it wasn’t really her. So…maybe she’d be able to save the people in here better. He certainly wasn’t going to risk her doing this on her own. That was another mistake Sapphire made.







ENTER from New York City


From atop one of the tallest buildings in the city, the small group of Seraphims and their two training Arcanes solidified. The young girls glanced around the city a bit, then frowned disapprovingly before glancing back at the two older Arcanes. ”This is the place that Lantern woman had the fight.”

”Yes.” Viollca replied. ”Assess the area, current and former problems, and get ready for another round of questioning.”

Chaos hurried through the room he had entered and tried to rush through the halls to get to the upper floors. His Blood was letting him know that it was not capable of handling such heat already, and he didn't have to be told twice. He needed to get upstairs, away from the heat, find Sapphire's double, and send her down onto these floors. Metal could take the heat, right?

Before he'd even made it off that level, he heard someone screaming from inside one of the rooms next to him. Pausing, he glared over at the door through the thick smoke, then growled something under his breath as he ripped the thing from it's hinges. Alright, get this person out, then he'd get on with going higher.

Inside the room, he found nothing though. He looked into another, nothing again. Nothing, nothing, No- ah. There. A little kid hiding under his bed. What a brainless thing to do. Even at this kids age he knew what to do when there was a fire.
With his Blood urging him to go faster, he reached under the bed and pulled the kid out. "What were you doing under there?"

"Puh-please! My mommy and daddy! I lost my mommy and daddy!" the child cried.

Lost his...oh. Oh, no, no, no, no. This was not happening. Not again!
"Are they on this floor?" he asked with a patience he didn't feel.

"No. They went downstairs to see their friend." he replied.

Chaos paused. "Downstairs...as in the level that's burning downstairs?"

The child was quiet for a moment, then began to cry harder.

Chaos groaned, then tucked the child under his arm and lept out the window. He'd just put the kid on a nearby roof, then...as much as he hated the idea....go back in after the kids parents. He just couldn't let the kid become an orphan. And he WOULDN'T let the Sapphire toy do it. He just...ugh. Not again.

Chaos dropped the boy off on the roof of a building that should be a safe distance away. "Stay put." he said as he turned and jumped off the building once more. A bit of movement caught his eye.

One was Steel Spider. She was on the upper floors, and had created a web of...some thing. Metal? Shiny webbing whatever it was. People were sliding down it like it was just a playground net onto the rooftop of a lower building.

The others were people he'd never seen before. Looked like they were trying to handle the fire as well.

He glanced at them and back as he landed on the building. After a moment of thought, he crawled back into one of the windows. Whether there were people here or not...he couldn't just let the kids parents go. He wouldn't do that to someone else.

((Scott Dane-Summers debute!!))
Scott sighed as he placed in the nozzle into his bike. Waiting for the gas to be filled up, he leaned on his bike and thought about his decision to leave Mystique back in Iraq. Was it the right thing to do? Should he have finished her off? The sunglass wearing male gritted his teeth. No, if he were to kill her like how Fury ordered him to, then he'll be no different than Sinister and his goons. It was the right thing to do to leave her alive. Besides, he already killed off too many people. Scott looked at the blue sky and slightly smiled.

Lorna...don't worry, I'm coming home soon...

...Speaking of going home...he usually recognize most of the cities, but the place he stopped now was completely new. Even though he lived in New York, he'd never seen Metropolis before. Never even heard about the city. Was he that reclusive from the city that he didn't knew about this place? No, that can't be right, even if he did, a city wouldn't be made in just six to seven years. Something is going on...

An alarm rang across the street as three burglar came out of a bank, carrying bags of money in their hands. Scott Dane-Summers, former X-Men, X-Factor, and X-Force member, the one who faced Apocalypse, Green Goblin, Sentinels everyday, and sparred with Wolverine, even faced the Hulk, blinked. A burglary? Doesn't that stuff usually happen in movies?

The nozzle popped, indicating that the gas has been filled up. Scott took the nozzle out of his bike as the robbers began to drive away with their cash. Staring up the ignition, the man known as Cyclops closed his eyes as he changed his glasses to visors. Getting on his bike he kick the support-pedal up and let the engine roar before speeding out of the gas station.

Time to hunt down some robbers.

Cyclops was quickly reaching to the car when all of a sudden a blue streak of light pass by him. Behind his ruby quartz vizors, his eyes widened in shock. Not because of the speed that pass by him (he was only going 50MPH) but the fact that what stopped him mid track in his brain was the fact that this woman...wasn't a woman, but...an alien? It doesn't look like a skull, nor does it look like the Kree, whatever it is...it's new in Cyclops eyes.

Cyclops isn't really fond of aliens, no sir. Not after his and Lorna's mind were being controlled by one of them, he almost became xenophobic if not for the fact that Nova was considered an alien in a sense. Scott's eyes narrowed when the alien stopped in front of the car and projected something out from her ring. Scott's mind quickly processed as he growled when realizing that she was about to do something to the robbers. He doesn't care if those fools decided to rob the bank, but no one should ever be susceptible to whatever the hell an alien going to do to them.

"As if I'm going to allow that to happen." Cyclops changed the focus of the view to a shorter lens as his eyes focused on it's target. Without missing a blink, Scott fired, as a blistering concussive beam shot forward, hitting the car's tire. The car's fate was inevitable as it flipped in the air, the three men snapped out of their calm trance and screamed in terror they realized that they were suddenly ten feet in the air.