Futuristic H A D E A N

US Bank Tower, Los Angeles, California: March 20th, 2045, 7:50am

As the sister's spoke out their assessment, Moore let out a heavy sigh. "Yes, and your discretion of not destroying the entire building is greatly appreciated girls. That will look favorable on your report." He chided slightly, but also intended for them to understand that he was genuinely grateful for the attempt to minimize damage and casualties.

Moore felt himself stiffen as an unnerving voice whispered into his ear about killing Radovan. No, that was not the plan, but that seemed to be thrown for a loop a moment later when he heard his own voice call for lethal force.

He turned to face his doppelganger, his jaw setting firm as the sister's called for Amarok to return. A moment later, his vision became more colorful, as the copy of himself took on a purple hue. An illusion.

With a smirk, Anton turned away from the fictitious being, and watched as Sibyl worked their own magic. An onslaught was propelled directly at Agent Radovan, and if it didn't stop him, it would at least slow him down while further backup arrived.


Peter was a little surprised when the dog had expanded then shrunk a few moments ago, and as his eyes followed the trail of the beast, he watched as the sisters prepared another attack.

Kindle spoke in his ear again, urging greater violence, to kill. He chuckled slightly, but said nothing.

If he wanted them dead, this would already be over.

No, childish as it might seem, Peter Radovan liked to play with his food.

He watched as the sisters launched a psychic blast at him, and the guards a volley of rubber bullets and containment foam.

Well... This was going to mean showing off more than he had intended.

Before it reached him however, a wall of yellow erupted in front of him as Avery, who'd been soaring around the room just a moment ago, landed in front of him.

His eyes dropped from the Sibyl sisters and Moore, and now rested squarely on Avery.

Peter watched as she strained from the exertion of her powers, his eyes narrowed, calm. "Miss McCulloch..."

He rested a hand on her shoulder. "I am the gun in this fight."

The hand patted her on the shoulder as he stepped closer. "And let me dispel something for you."

Now the hand glided across her shoulder, and to her neck, before fingers wrapped around it. Peter lifted her off of the floor with one arm, pulled her closer so he their eyes were directly across from each other.

As Avery dangled there, she felt everything change. All she could feel was... Emptiness. A void. Something that was supposed to be there, but wasn't? Or perhaps something that wasn't supposed to be there, but was? A strange presence of an absence, and an absence of a presence.

The sensation made no sense, it was nothing she'd ever felt before, and yet it was so strangely familiar, something that lingered in the back of the mind, and in the body, but went unnoticed. An instinct that was dealt with perhaps without thought.

Everything in her vision changed. She was no longer seeing the illusions of Kindle, or the inside of the containment zone of the US Bank Tower.

Now she gazed upon fields of blood.

Bodies strewn about, their innards torn apart like a mass of ribbons and streamers, splayed out like a ticker tape parade in celebration of the worst kinds of evil and debauchery the human mind could muster to the imagination.

Most of the bodies were unmoving and dead. Some were different.

Some were charred and burnt. Others mutated and deformed.

What was this? Where was this? When was this?

"There is no one like me." She heard whispered in her ear.

The visions of death disappeared, and she was once again looking into the eyes of Peter Radovan.

Peter was smiling softly, but his narrowed eyes spoke of a sort of confident, animalistic sense that the fight was already over.

"Shouldn't have interrupted your friends. I was gonna enjoy all that. But... I suppose there's still fun to be had today."

He pressed Avery's body against the shield she had created, which began to dissipate as the two walked through it.

Avery felt her body go limp and the pressure on her neck release as she flew through the air and crashed into Emiri, both collapsing to the floor.

With incredible speed and agility, Peter leapt over the foam and sprinted towards his opponents, dodging from side to side to avoid bullets and other attacks, before finally reaching his target.

Cadence felt her breath catch as a hand slammed into her throat, and she was dragged from the floor and into the air.

As her eyes adjusted to look at Peter, she saw that his right hand was wrapped around her throat, and his left hand....

Held his Pistol.

Looking over to where it had been lying on the floor before, she noticed it had disappeared. Every part and piece he'd disconnected had simply vanished. As had the bullets.

"Waddaya say Moore? I'd call this checkmate."

US Bank Tower, Los Angeles, California: March 20th, 2045, 7:53am

Peter grinned as Kindle circled both him and Cadence, before moving on to Moore. After she had made her final points clear to everyone, the room began to return to the containment center it usually was, everything suddenly feeling like their was a weight which had lifted.

Moore watched after the disappearing figure of Kindle, before casting his gaze back to Radovan. Perhaps he should have told her to beware of who she accepted promises from, and whom she made promises to.

As the magazine fell from Peter's pistol, and the bullets danced through the air around Cadence. The trigger pulled itself, and the last bullet in the gun floated slowly in the air, picked out of it by Cadence. Emiri now held a pistol leveled at Peter's arm.

The look on his face turned into one of amusement as he listened to Cadence, her fingers clasped tightly on his arm, his fingers clasped tightly on the psychic barrier she created.

"Buy you dinner huh? Is that what this is all about? I swear, women these days come up with the strangest ways of asking a guy out. Could have just asked for my number." He let out a low chuckle as his gaze turned to Emiri, looking from the gun she held, then looking her directly in the eyes..

"And how about you? Are you into choking too? Cause that's a quick way to encourage it."

He turned back to Cadence, her fingers still wrapped around his arm. His lips parted in that 'hungry animal' type way.

"A stalement, huh?" He whispered. "That's pretty cute. But sure... A stalemate."

Cadence felt her grip close around... Nothing.

Peter's arm had entirely vanished from her grip. He hadn't pulled it free. There had been no tugging, no resistance, no fight. It was simply there one moment, and gone the next.

He now waved it freely around as if it had never been between her hands at all. As he did this the bullets that danced around her disappeared as well, along with the magazine that had clattered to the ground.

Peter grinned widely as he pressed the release on his pistol, and the clip (or another clip?) fell from it and into his hand. He let her get a good look at it to see that it was still full, and he pulled back the slide to eject another, unfired, bullet from the chamber.

"Now you..." He turned back to face Emiri. "You better put that thing down before you hurt yourself. Didn't your parents ever warn you? 'You'll shoot your eye out'?"

He began cackling uncontrollably again, tears beginning to well up in the corners of his eyes as he truly lost himself in his utter delight with the moment.

Moore, however, felt considerably differently. Between the Kitsune's escape and her attack (and in some cases murder) of some of the security forces, Peter's following assault on top of it, and now a disintegrated suit jacket, he'd had a pretty unpleasant day overall. And he wasn't going to end it empty handed.

With the object clutched in his hand still, his jaw set firm, he rolled up his sleeves and marched over to Peter.

Peter looked to Moore now, his face still filled with amusement. "Oooooh, someone looks a little peeved! What's the plan Moore? Gonna scold me? Tell me I'm a bad bo-"

His voice was cut off as Moore landed a solid right-hook at Peter's mouth. There was a tiny arc of red droplets that sprinkled across the floor, and Peter reached into his pocket to pull his handkerchief out.

The look on Peter's face was one of surprise, but also giddiness. "Well well well, I didn't know you had it in-" Peter was cut short again, but this time by realization.

As Peter had turned to face his superior, Moore had seen something that sent a chill and rush of anxiety through him, struck by realization. He watched as the split lip he'd given Peter began to disappear.

But Peter wasn't looking at Moore, he was looking at what Moore had wrapped around his right knuckle. A piece of metal, with sharp protrusions, that sparkled with electric energy. Peter's face went from amusement, to a placid one of contemplation, and quickly, as his eyes looked up and into Moore's, into rage.

Moore felt his stomach sink even more.

The lip, which had just begun healing, had begun to split open again. As if 'unhealing'.

Moore finally had his answer. Peter wasn't a Super. He had no idea what Peter Radovan was.

"Agent Moore, I congratulate you. You've somehow managed to do the dumbest thing you could have possibly imagined doing." Peter let the lightly reddened handkerchief fall to the floor as he stood upright and faced Moore directly, nearly toe to toe.

Moore stood stationary, not buckling, but feeling in about as much danger as he had staring face to face with the Kitsune. He didn't fully understand the Kitsune, but... He probably understood her better than Radovan.

The object Moore held, while tiny and seemingly innocuous, was designed to disrupt the powers of Supers. One hit, and a Superpowered Being would be unable to properly use their powers for a short period of time. Typically there was also a strong reaction in the body, convulsions, as if being electrocuted.

There were two types of beings it did not function on:

Regular humans were the first.

The second were anomalously powered individuals. Those in this group represented an unfathomably tiny minority of supers on Earth, those whose powers seemingly were 'supernatural', or 'otherworldly'. An alien likely wouldn't experience a reaction to this. Nor would a ghost. Nor an extra-dimensional being.

The number of beings that fit this category was so small that their was likely only a few thousand (at most) of them on Earth. And the higher likelihood was closer to the low hundreds.

The room began to fill with sound again as the sound of heavy boots hitting the concrete floors drew closer. There were already some guards, those who managed to still be conscious, who watched Moore punch Peter. The others who now entered the room included other security guards, as well as six men dressed in combat gear that was unlike anything most US forces wore.

Six was a lot for Task Force Gray to send in.

Peter let out an annoyed sigh as the soldiers and guards began shouting at them to lay down their arms, and all kinds of other non-confrontational nonsense. He turned his gaze back to Moore and smirked.

Moore stumbled back as Peter landed a right-hook of his own, splitting his lip now too. The agent quickly recovered into a defensive position, only to see Peter turning away from him and towards the SINS guards, as well as Task Force Gray.

"Nothing to see here folks, everything's fine. Me and Agent Moore here had a little disagreement, but we've settled it like gentlemen. This is how we ought to be solving our problems. HR just gets in the way and muddies everything up." Peter chuckled as the soldiers drew closer.

"Radovan, Moore: Where is the target?" One of the Task Force Gray soldiers asked through a voice piece in their helmet's environmental mask.

"Gone unfortunately, because of this-" Moore began.

"Unfortunately, containment protocols were insufficient folks. Me and my team TRIED to deescalate and recontain, but certain interruptions prevented this." Peter nodded his head in the directions of Moore, Sibyl, and Avery.

The Gray Agents, despite their faces being covered, seemed unamused. "Perhaps it would have been worth considering installing a kill switch in your containment units for exactly this reason." The one Gray Agent responded in a monotone, but the underlying message was one of great annoyance.

"Well sorry to bother you all with this." Moore responded as he dabbed at a little blood on his lips. "You're free to return to base, or give chase, whatever your plan is."

The Gray Agent didn't move. "Negative. Other forces will be gathered to begin an investigation. Our mission parameters have changed however. This should have never been allowed to happen. Not one escapee. And my intel is informing me that there's been potentially three."

Moore felt a headache building. "Three?" Did the Kitsune manage to release some others?

"Affirmative. We're determining who exactly escaped still. But it's become clear that there is a serious lack of discipline and proper strategy in SINS. And for that matter, various forces in the United States. That is going to be changing. That is my new mission parameter."

Peter looked a little annoyed at the chiding, but Moore was feeling a sense of concern. Defending America was his top priority, but he wasn't interested in needless casualties. That was part of why he joined SINS, to help make positive changes from within.

Task Force Gray was not designed for that.

"Fan out. Deploy BRD's."

The Six tossed metal spheres onto the ground, and watched as they rolled autonomously into the halls and corridors of the containment center, creating walls of arcing electricity that so far seemed harmless to organics. All of the Task Force Gray soldiers followed behind the BRD's, taking a few of the SINS containment guards with them for additional support.

'BRD' stood for Battlefield Realignment Drone. In other words, a device that allowed Task Force Gray to transform an area they were deployed in to be more suitable to regular human combatants.

At this point, Kindle and Hex were already gone, but the measures would help ensure anything they left behind was made inert.

Nina and Hudson had reappeared from deeper within the containment zone, and the looks they shared with Peter assured him their own mission was accomplished. The three of them, as well as Moore, the five Sibyl Sisters, and Avery, all made their way back out of the containment zone, and towards the ballast door.

A Cafe, Los Angeles, California: March 20th, 2045, 7:50am

The woman moved fast, much faster than Richard had anticipated. Things had been a blur in the fight so far, with an explosion of pain erupting in his nose, as a trickle of blood began to make its way down. He heard her muttering something about not taking a stance too early, evidently quite confident in herself. And cocky.

Of course, it's easy to have such high opinions of herself when she moves so quickly. Super-speed maybe? Hard to tell for sure, but it made it more difficult to come up with a proper response. He'd have to get more creative.

He charged and attempted a haymaker, and after she managed to dodge it, attempted to go for his throat. No good, her hand was now frozen to his. Richard pulled her to the ground, but rather than landing on top, she managed to hit her side. As the two grappled for a few moments, Chizuki approached them, calmly explaining that she had to go, before leaving something in Richard's back pocket.

What?

Richard was a little taken aback by the nonchalance of the encounter, particularly the card that now sat in his back pocket.

He wanted to say something in response, but his 'sparring partner' made it rather difficult to say much of anything. Chizuki was a so far surprising person, and he couldn't help but like that.

Richard quickly flicked his gaze back to Emma as she ripped her hand away, skin peeling off. He shuddered and winced at the sight, only... She seemed pretty unperturbed. Instead, her focus had now turned to some random bystander.

There was that heart sinking feeling in Richard's chest as he watched the mountain of a man march over to whoever this other guy was, flanked by another super it seemed. Without so much as a second though, the giant smashed the man into the ground, boring out a crater.

He turned his gaze back to Emma, still in arm's length.

Out of her peripheral, she saw a faintly red glint, and quickly leaned far to her side to avoid being sliced by a reddened ice dagger Richard had formed, evidently from traces of his own blood.

But cutting her had not been his goal.

As her weight came off of his leg, Richard quickly pulled it out from her grip, rolled closer to the cafe, and planted a foot into a table.

While it came crashing down, so too did drinks on it. Emma tried to close the distance between herself and Richard again, going for a kick, but Richard had launched one of the drinks towards her, it quickly dissipating instead into a sharp, bitterly cold air that irritated her eyes. Richard rose to his feet, throwing a quick punch that she tried to grapple, but he had already pulled back before she could. Instead, his other arm grabbed onto hers, freezing in place again as Richard spun around so that her arm was now pulled over his right shoulder, and her torso was pressed against his back.

The Waza he performed quickly sent her to the ground again, but rather than going for another strike, Richard backed off to create more distance.

"Fighting's fun and all, but to be honest Emma, the whole goon potentially murdering a civilian look here is a bit of a turn off." Richard turned to face the hulking monster that stood over the crater, now almost 100% certain he knew who he was dealing with.

But when he saw what happened next, he couldn't help but look on in horror.

This was turning out a lot like that morning at Atomic Anne's.

The man with the Red Bandana seemed unperturbed by the arrival of the hero next to him.

"¿Alguna vez te has cansado de la sed de la humanidad por la guerra y el dinero?" He sighed, as it seemed the group was now alerted to him, and the biggest one approached, the one he'd been eyeing down hatefully.

"In nomeni patri et fili spiritus sanceti."

The monster was now mere feet away.

"Perdona mis pecados Dios."

The world flew by in a flash, and before the man knew it, he could feel his body shattering as it was plunged through concrete, dense soil, steel pipes, and more. His flesh was pierced and impaled by the materials the lay beneath the streets, as face of the green monster stared down at him.

He looked up, a grin on his face, blood pooling from his lips. There was a blood filled choking escaping his chest, like he were drowning, right up until he began laughing weakly.

"Así que eres exactamente como pensaba. Otro Monstruo al que aún no hemos llegado."

There was an odd crunching sound at the bottom of the pit, like shards of glass tinkling and moving around.

"Afortunadamente... Te has colocado exactamente donde te necesito."

A fold of his jacket fell open, and what appeared to be a tactical vest underneath came into view.

Every inch of it was covered in little vials of strangely colored liquids. Vials that were all now completely shattered. All now leaking their contents into the blood of the man with the Red Bandana.

"Hoy... La muerte es roja."

The vest suddenly was shredded to pieces as the man's chest exploded open, ribs opened up in a wide, macabre display, like a cocoon being opened.

All at once, the torso began to open and close, like a great maw stretching itself, getting comfortable with its newfound ability to move.

Scourge was taken by surprise as thick, vine like ropes shot up and wrapped around his arms. They were a red and brown color, fleshy, vein-like appendages that grew thicker, and wrapped tighter.

Along these vines, little white protrusions began spiking out, like the bony or toothy hooks, sinking into the green flesh of their newfound captive.

The Red Bandana man began to rise up from his grave, as his arms and shoulders began to rapidly expand in size, the fabric of his shirt and jacket being ripped to pieces as skinless, sinewy, white muscles began to protrude.

"A veces, para matar a un monstruo, debes convertirte en uno. Los males que te crearon... Son imperdonables. Ya no les permitiremos destruir esta Tierra."

Scourge began to lift from the ground, the vines that held him carrying him higher up into the air, before finally bringing him crashing down into the pit of his very own making.

The Red Bandana man turned his gaze now to Emma.

"La arrogancia de ustedes en estos días. Paseando con tus monstruos a plena luz del día. Obviamente nunca aprendes la lección."

A Cafe, Los Angeles, California: March 20th, 2045, 7:55am

This was starting to shape up much like the beach in Atlas City. Less broad chaos and destruction, but the bizarre looking monster managed to carry with it a very unique type of existential dread.

As it stood over the pit it had thrown the tall guy into, something had pierced its arm and created a small explosion of super heat, gore, and over the Red Bandana monster, a smattering of liquid metal.

This guy needed some kinda name, and he didn't seem partial on giving his actual one.

Roja seemed fitting.

Richard watched as Roja's arm hung in loose strands, like a string of twine being undone. But Roja seemed unperturbed. He merely turned his head in the direction where the shot had come from.

"Un francotirador también. Veo que nada ha cambiado, igual que ustedes siempre han sido."

The tendrils and strands of the arm began wrapping around each other, pulling themselves taut together, but after only a mere moment, the big green guy had bounded out of the pit, grabbed onto Roja, and pummeled him into a delivery truck of some kind.


At this point, Scourge was now without the same facial coverings that hid his identity. Richard felt his chest swell with pure, vile, hatred. The woman next to him then... She hadn't been at either of the battles from what he had seen, but she KNEW this guy, and his group.

He really should have brought a gun.

A sudden snowstorm next to him dissipated as Chizuki suddenly reappeared next to him. Had it really been that long since she was gone? He could have sworn it was only minutes ago. Perhaps the snowstorm helped with that. Either way, he was still a little surprised she had ice powers as well, not exactly like his, but it was still quite fortuitous he thought.

"Absolutely zero clue who he is, but I'm calling him Roja. Keeps speaking Spanish, and he's clutching a Red Bandana, so..."

Vic and Ezra had walked out of the cafe again, evidently having decided 7am was a good time to moonlight as Baristas.

Richard quickly jogged over to them from the fight. "Actually yes, I did order these."

He looked sympathetically between the two of them for a brief moment. "Sorry."

Richard knocked the drinks tray out of Vicky's hands, and as he did the cold liquid and ice began to quickly disappear from the air, and form instead around his hands.

As the ice formed, he grabbed the tray from Ezra's hands, and threw the drinks in the direction of Scourge and Roja, the liquid forming into a slight, foggy mist in the air.

"Appreciate it."

He turned back to the two monsters and charged towards them.


Roja grinned up at Scourge, eyes locked with each other.

"Buenas noches."

The axel at the bottom of the truck snapped, and the long metal pipe swung far to the left, smashing into Scourge's skull, sending him tumbling to the side.

Pavement and concrete on the street began to crack, bursting open as more veins and muscley sinew pushed the stone up in the shape of a wall, facing the direction of the sniper.

"Dos pueden jugar a este juego amigo."

For the last few minutes, the liquid slag had been pooling into a hollow cavity in the monster, forming into a long, thing, curved shape, with small amounts of space inside.

The maw in Roja's chest and stomach spat out what appeared to be a boomerang, which he picked up in another limb that had formed, more lithe, but incredibly muscley. He pulled back, before launching the melee weapon through the air, into the direction of an apartment roof.


A few feet away from the sniper, the metal boomerang crashed into the ledge of the roof, shattering and bursting open, the metal creating a small explosion of brittle shrapnel. None of it posed any risk to the sniper, however its payload did. A lump of white flesh, with black veins, pulsated as it quickly grew in size, wrapping a few tendrils around the left leg of the would-be assailant.


Before Roja could turn his attention back to Scourge, a sharp pain erupted in it's left arm as a blade of ice pierced through it. He turned a hateful gaze towards Richard, who's arm had a long blade of ice attached to it, like a gauntlet with a short sword attached. The area around where the blade pierced began to freeze solid, and as Richard brought his other arm down onto it, the area began to crack and break, before finally severing entirely.

The cool mist from before began to attach itself to the veins that had been crawling up from underground, and soon a pipe that had been nestled under the steets burst open, pouring water into the streets like a fountain.

"You're in MY battlefield now." He grinned.

Roja swung the steel axle towards Richard, which he ducked in time to miss, before planting a firm, icy uppercut into Roja's nose.

But rather than having the initiative, it seemed Roja and Richard might become deadlocked. More veins burst from the ground behind him, and as he dodged to the left, to make his way behind Roja and add some distance, he noticed the veins seemed to pursue him of their own accord.

What WAS this thing?

The clothes, the bandana, that apparatus that had been on his chest... And the barely noticable shards of glass that didn't belong to the vehicle, and didn't show up during their prior fight with Tik and Tok.

Was this some kind of Bio Weapon?