Welcome to Gaia! ::

Leviathan had changed in the past day and night, his skin now a black scald across his features, his hair wire, mesh like and standing on end at all moments. Veins, thick and pulsing, ebbed at the corners of his sleep deprived eyes.
Every so often, his hand would twitch, literal crimson running the full length of his lithe form, himself muttering to himself.
The three, Rod, Blitz and Lev, sat in the house that only the previous night before Lev had spoken to Trinity, dragged her mind toward his will. But now? Now?
"Rubbish.." Leviathan muttered through a synthesized voice, more machine now, more crude god then man. "Aye, 'tis.." Rod spoke in his high accent, sitting on the far end of the couch the three now stooped upon. "Utter...RUBBISH!" Leviathan roared, all the lights in the home exploding, turning the glass lights to vapor, the central powering system fried within the home.
Lev cradled his hands together, putting his face in them. "I need to sleep. We, need to sleep boys."
Rod scratched at his lips, his metal fingers mutilated and changed. He had been eating some of the gunk, some of the power ooze off of the corpses..
Steel had begun running the length of his jaw, and even his hair was a tint of silver, changing ever faster. Blitz was the only one who hadn't eaten any, staring out into the nothing that was the wall to the front of them.
Then Blitz spoke for the first time in almost a day.
"I'll keep watch."
Lev nodded, and immediately dozed off, Rod following suit.

Stopping as he crossed the rusty rot iron fence that marked the boundaries of the park he turned towards Lily and smiled. “Intruding, that is just poppycock! You wouldn’t be intruding. It isn’t often I get guests, let alone ones as beautiful as you.” Rubbing the top of his head he laughed nervously as he closed his eyes. “I would take it as a personal insult to myself if you refused to come.”

Sensing something move off to his left and Lily’s right he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small shining silver handgun. Pointing it roughly in the direction of the movement he saw he gulped. “Lily, go, down the street to the left. House number 453, get going now!” He yelled as he pulled the trigger. An instant later all sound was lost as the gun went off, the slug burying itself in a tree not even three feet to Lily’s right.

Moving back towards the fence Alabaster looked around. Frankly, he didn’t care if he revealed himself to Lily right now; all that mattered was her safety. After all, no one would want a dead slave would they? Kind of took away from the curb appeal. “Show yourself whoever you are. You’ve got until the count of three before I start blowing the s**t out of everything in the area!” Reaching inside his jacket he produced yet another handgun.

Shane helps Annie up, concern paints his face. He looks to the ME and asks, "What did you bring me down for Doc? There has to be something you need a biologist for."

The ME nods and points to a microscope. "In there," he calmly states, "is a sample of the residue found in the bodies. I am merely a man who knows anatomy and death. It's people like you who handle the little things that make life."

Shane walks over to the microscope and examines the residue on the slide. It's a strange shade of green, one that he can't place a name on. The stranger thing is that the substance is moving. The cells within it are alive. He bites his bottom lip and ponders what he is looking at. It looks familiar, but he can't quite put his finger on it. He stands back up and looks toward the ME inquisitively. "Was this substance on the bodies, or did it come from inside of them?"

Dr. Acula thinks for a moment before answering, "More like it was being produced by the body for a few moments after they died. A secretion I would call it. From where I cannot say."

He looks over to Annie as an idea strikes him, "Excuse me Annie, but could you please hand me that flip-folder of DVD's on that table beside you?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Almost like a dog sniffing out something interesting, Gidget slowly rises from her chair and heads into the kitchen. "Something in here, isn't working. It's not working like it should be." She says in a flat tone.

She produces a small multi-driver set from her pocket and stares at the stove. Gidget's eyes become glazed over as she approaches the dials beside the burners, "The problem is here. Sometimes it wont work, something's slipped." She reaches into another pocket and pulls out something that looks like it comes from a Sci-Fi movie prop set.

Gripping both of her tools tightly, the pupils of her eyes dilate to their full extent. She sees everything that is wrong, everything that can be done to fix it. She can see exactly how it works. With a feverishly inhuman pace, she uses her tools to pry open the knobs and panels leading into the inner wiring of the stove. The strange tool actually turns out to be a combination cutting/welding laser. Nothing outside of her work has her attention now. Her power is in control.

In just a few minutes, she replaces everything just as it had looked before she touched it. Her pupils contract and her expression becomes that of the bright and happy girl that Mrs. Smith had met the night before. She beams at the mother and says, "One of the wires was knocking around whenever you set something down on the stove-top. It shouldn't do that anymore."

The doctor takes the DVD folder and rifles through the large selection of media as he speaks, "That's the thing, these people were no one of any real consequence. Transients, vagrants, whatever you want to call them they were squatting in an old building in the boondocks."

He gives a quiet "ah-ha" when he finally finds what he is looking for. Acula strides over to a computer connected to a projector. He loads the disc into the tray and double-clicks one of the many video files that lay within. A few keystrokes later and he is looking at a side by side comparison of the video and an image of what Shane is looking at. His eyes go wide with shock and awe. "This...there is no way this should be possible!"

Mrs. Smith watches as the girl uses her incredible tools to fix up the stove. There was a problem with it but she felt it was so minor that she didn't bring it up.

"So, is that your power Gidget? To fix anything? That must be handy." Mrs. Smith looks to the clock, "Do we need to make an appointment at the facility?"

"So it is 'purification'," Annie replied coldly turning her gaze to Dr. Acula, "One, every being does have some real consequence to the balance of the world, and two, these aren't just any old vagrants or transients, they are meta humans. Perhaps selective elimination is a better term for it."

Tapping her fingers on her legs she asked aloud, "Is there anyway to tell how powerful these meta-humans are from this purified source?" Smiling at Shane she said, "If need be, I am willing to provide a comparative sample from myself, as from what you made it sound I am one of the more powerful meta-humans you have come across."

Annie ignored the ME's apology and turned her attention to Shane. "What is it?" Annie asked him, narrowing her eyes at his appalled look. "I'm your assistant right? Among my special abilities, mind reading isn't one of them. Go ahead and say what you're thinking: I can take whatever you are about to say. I take openness a lot better than secrets, any day."