Emerald City Bulwark
Posts 35
Power Level 22
|
Post by Rainfall on Oct 19, 2016 13:07:54 GMT -7
She stared down the twin barrels of the shotgun, desperately trying to keep herself from trembling with fear. This was the kind of situation nobody wanted to end up in, where the only choice was to die now or die a couple days down the line, depending on who you chose to piss off. She could tell, because the gun held mere inches away from her head wasn't shaking in the slightest. When you ran with Pandaemonium, you learned to recognize things like that. Everyone who dared set foot in the Docks was volatile, in their own way, so it was key to know who would threaten and posture at you and who would blow your head off without a second thought. The weak ones, the police and the Bulwark and those gang members just in it for the thrills, they always had cracks, little tics, small moments of hesitation that said no, I'm not actually going to kill you. She'd been running with Pandaemonium for a while, now, and knew how to recognize those signs. She looked again past the gun, at the woman holding it against her head, and saw nothing. Clenching her teeth, she tried to control her breathing. Nothing could be more harmful than losing her calm here. "Listen, I have no idea what you're talking-" She saw the finger on the trigger twitch. "-okayokay yes, I know who Azoth is, but she's a Keeper, right? I know some supers, but not those guys..." The gun pressed closer, forcing her back against the wall, as a low, dead voice interrupted. "Time. Place. Code words or safety measures." She'd known that someone would eventually find out she'd been passing information to a Keeper, that someone would come after her for it. Perhaps a part of her had thought she'd have time to make an escape, or that the enigmatic Azoth would have her back when things went south. Only this had come out of nowhere, and now she was left trying to decide whether to have her brains splattered all over a wall, or to take her chances after betraying a Keeper. At least one way left her with a slim chance at survival. She swallowed, and then spilled what little she knew. *** Rainfall let the woman go, in the end. Pandaemonium scum or not, she'd given what was needed, and probably wasn't worth the effort it'd take to drag her somewhere the police could find her. That said, Rainfall had left a marker on her, and was keeping an eye on its position with her power. If the informant tried to report to Azoth out of some misguided hope for clemency, the Bulwark would know.
Now, she waited in the supposed meeting place, the ruined attic of an old building left scorched and burned by Cetus's attack months ago. Looters had already cleared the place, and nobody had bothered to rebuild it since. The only people who came here now were the occasional group of drunks looking for a place to spray rude graffiti, and they rarely came all the way up to the top floor, which made it a nice place for quiet conversations.
Rainfall crouched in shadow, her clothes and face daubed with ashes to better camouflage herself. Other than her usual two pistols and a hunting rifle, she wasn't armed, but she'd made a few preparations before setting up. It had taken her a while to start weeding out informants, and she'd been meticulous in concealing her actions from both her own faction and anyone else who might have their eye on super affairs. Now, she'd just have to wait and see if she'd been careful enough and Azoth showed up to meet her missing informant- or, more worryingly, if the Keeper had caught wind of Rainfall's ploy and decided to come regardless.
|
|
The Keepers
Posts 234
Power Level 31
|
Post by Azoth on Oct 19, 2016 23:51:29 GMT -7
The informant would not have returned to Azoth. If she were smart, she would’ve fled the city hours after her run-in with Rainfall, get as far towards the other sea as she could in the hopes the Keeper would have more important things to attend to than tracking down a once-employee who would never return. Everyone who went to work for her knew the rumors, tacked on at the end of zeros written on their paychecks. Azoth did not keep informants that snitched. And when Azoth dismissed an informant, she took with her their head.
As such, to the Keeper, this was as normal a check-in with her informant as she could hope. She’d recently ordered some preliminary findings on the dragon - unlikely to be of any use, but she would take any of the scarce information she could get - and she was to be the middleman in the transaction. If the informant had done her job right, she would’ve dropped off the rare compounds in the requested amounts, and would be returning today with a packet of research results in hand.
She didn’t like having to come to the docks, but informants rarely felt comfortable going to Malachite Isle. When they did, they more often than not stood out like a sore thumb and had the eyes of at least two concerned families on them at all times. It was a necessity she didn’t care for, but a necessity nonetheless. This woman had favored an old building, left untouched since the dragon attack, and Azoth hadn’t seen the need to offer an alternative.
Azoth took the front door of the decrepit structure. She’d feared collapse their first meeting here, but it had continued to stand well enough that she’d accepted it as unlikely, and was now familiar enough with the simple layout that she walked comfortably towards and up the stairs. The woman’s promised pay had already been formed in her lab coat’s pocket. The woman was one of those who got skittish around the super’s powers, so she took care of any needed uses of it before and after their meetings.
The last step of the attic’s latter creaked even under Azoth’s pitiful weight. As always, she was thirty minutes early to their agreed meeting time (a habit all of her informants were aware of, but few took advantage of), and as expected, the attic was visibly empty. Azoth sent a quick glance around more for formality’s sake than anything else, and in seeing nothing, would make her way to the attic’s single, small window and make herself comfortable.
|
|
Emerald City Bulwark
Posts 35
Power Level 22
|
Post by Rainfall on Oct 21, 2016 13:37:53 GMT -7
A quiet noise of shifting wood announced the early arrival of Rainfall's target. Azoth had come well in advance, so much so that she might have caught the Bulwark mid-preparation, had there been a few minutes' difference on either side. It drew a raised eyebrow from the hidden hunter. Surprising, but not entirely unanticipated. Rainfall remained perfectly still and silent in her hiding place, watching intently and keeping her breathing slow and shallow. She'd positioned herself so that the faint light from the window wouldn't reflect off her pupils, which made it somewhat difficult to see, but she'd hunted in the dark before and could easily make out the small shape of the Keeper entering the attic and looking around. The gunslinger tensed slightly, ready to spring into action the moment she was discovered.
Azoth, however, didn't call her out, or even react to her presence. In the dark, Rainfall frowned, biting down on the edge of her tongue as she mulled over what the girl might be playing at. Did she really not know how to properly scout an area? Or was this some Keeper trick, an attempt to get the Bulwark super off guard and lure her into the open?
The Keepers thrived on this sort of thing. Mystery, paranoia. The unknown was a shield, striking fear in the hearts of their enemies and quelling attempts at opposition. Unfortunately for Azoth, however, Rainfall's wariness paled in the face of her drive.
With the graceful steps of a bobcat, she prowled silently from her hiding place, balancing her weight carefully and evenly, stalking across the short distance between them until she stood only a couple feet away from Azoth. She held one hand out awkwardly, at an angle that wouldn't quite make sense if she was simply balancing herself.
Then she took the final step, deliberately loud this time. As her boot slammed down barely a foot behind the Keeper, Rainfall emerged into the light of the window. There she stood, tall and menacing, orbs of blazing orange glaring out of a bony, pale visage stained with dark smears, which hovered almost ethereally over a worn and ragged cloak that swished to one side to reveal her skeletal form, clad in garb at least a century out of date. A long-fingered hand gloved in pitch-black reached out, in what might have been a wave or a move to grab Azoth by the throat before she could react. Thin, cracked lips opened up to reveal a mouth crammed with yellowed, crooked teeth, as the specter uttered a single word in a voice like fresh bone being scraped against a rough stone wall.
"Hey."
|
|
The Keepers
Posts 234
Power Level 31
|
Post by Azoth on Oct 30, 2016 1:18:16 GMT -7
Azoth paced to the far end of the attic, not caring to ease the creaking of the floorboards as there shouldn’t be anyone around to hear, and to a chair she’d taken a slight liking to in her occasional comings to the old home. She brushed off the dust that had gathered on it since she was last here. The floor seemed to moan with her every movement, making an already silent approach utterly undetectable by listening alone. Which Azoth was not.
And then, directly behind her, came a footfall.
Azoth visibly jumped; her upper half jerking upright and her shoulders knotting up and in her back. Her hands went to her chest and her eyes went wide - and, in the same instant, a fireball erupted between her and the source of the sound.
Her powers reacted faster than her other senses, and it was through them that she became first aware of the location and generalities of the other occupant of the attic. This was not so she could know who they were - her eyes were significantly better at gathering such information - but because she needed their location.
In less than a second, the fireball was large enough to encompass nearly ten feet in diameter, centered between them. Red-hot flames licked the floor, ceiling, and anything else caught within the blaze. Save for the two supers. About two inches away from and all around Rainfall, the fire seemed to just… stop. It didn’t even feel hot. Even as it rushed to spread out and around her, it couldn’t break through almost an invisible barrier. She, however, could - and if Rainfall reached so much as an inch closer to her, Azoth would not be protecting that hand.
As quickly as it had come the flames ran out of fuel, and the five or so second blaze played through its course, leaving behind only embers and the last whiffs of fire. The wood of the structure around them was blackened and charred. The floor directly between them, which had taken the brunt, would be crackling and splintering for the next while. Small circles of now starkly lighter wood around both of them were the only places untouched.
Having gathered herself, Azoth turned to face the person behind her. A super, specifically a Bulwark, she recognized, named Rainfall. She’d heard rumors that she’d been around for a while, but her presence in the city was recent. Why a Bulwark was out here in the docks or had any interest in a Keeper like her doing business in territory that wasn’t theirs, she hadn’t the slightest. Why she had chosen to get so close before making herself known, she couldn’t say either. Such was a show of power; a threat. Azoth had long ago learned that making threats to an enemy faction was very likely to result in exactly what had just transpired. Worse, even; Azoth had been under no obligation to prevent harm to her unexpected intruder as she had. Other Keepers wouldn’t have.
Azoth pushed up her spectacles and tried to keep the irritation from being startled and evidently soon to be distracted from her work from her voice. She eyed the Bulwark suspiciously, expecting with that entrance yet lack of follow up attack, that that had been a play at intimidation and thus this to be some sort of trap.
“What do you want?” She said bluntly, but not outright harshly. It was simply the shortest way to ask what she needed.
|
|
Emerald City Bulwark
Posts 35
Power Level 22
|
Post by Rainfall on Nov 3, 2016 3:17:54 GMT -7
The fire made Rainfall stop for a moment, holding still as the flames swept around her without so much as licking her clothes or skin. She raised an eyebrow at the display, but didn't try to move or resist, or even tense up. It was just a knee-jerk reaction, an attempt at intimidation, like a cat arching its back and hissing, or a dog raising its hackles and growling loudly. The Keeper wasn't actually trying to hurt her, not yet.
She waited out the short little blaze, her expression remaining dead as usual while the last embers died out. Carefully, she lowered her pistol back into its holster, before turning both her palms to face Azoth, fingers splayed. The gesture didn't serve to reduce the threat Rainfall posed at all, given her power, but it was the intention that mattered. Showing that she wasn't here to do harm.
"Just a talk." Though hoarse and quiet, her words were comprehensible, her voice beginning to adjust after seeing some use since her return to the city. The tone of them was just as blunt as Azoth's but a little calmer, a little less tight around the edges. Gently trying to ease tension. She took a step back, giving the Keeper some space, glancing down for a moment before looking up again, her eyes peering at the other super's dark goggles.
"Think you can maybe hold off on the fireballs for a minute? If I was here to catch 'ya, I'd have already done it."
|
|