Fantasy [Open] Derika: Land of the Gifted

[IceSolstice]

[Eliza]


Hands in her pockets and smiling, Eliza hums a song to herself. Today is the day when the Factions usually obtain a huge influx of Gifted into their ranks. Hopefully it would be a good haul again this year.


She mingles into the crowd of Gifted and watches as the screen flickers on.


Oh my. That would reflect poorly on the Factions. It was unfortunate that Vivi had diverted from the script. Ironically, this only happened because Vivi was too passionate about her job and too hateful towards the ETG. And that would ultimately cost the Factions that she loved so much.


Eliza wasn’t disgusted or shocked by the footage, but she holds a moment of silence for the fallen, closing her eyes and dipping her head for their service. She never really liked the battles. They don’t affect her, but too many innocents die each time with new hate stirred up.


As Alice makes her final remarks, Eliza shakes her head slightly. Oh, Alice. She had all the good intentions in the world, but she was never really quite the right person to deal with people. But what could you do? It was Alice after all.


She figures she might as well slip out of the crowd before things get heated up. The whole assembly must’ve left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. Although, Eliza reflects, this meant that only the more courageous would join and discourage the ones looking to mooch off of the Factions. But of course, it also meant that there would be a larger proportion of desperate people and potential sociopaths. Eliza shrugs, in the end, it balances out.


Edit: Pageclaim for the tastiness of salmon sashimi. Gimme a mountain of it.

 

[Pixilated]

[ Asta ]


Asta over looked the after math of the battle before she raises her Z-watch fiddling with it before she finally finds the sort of Brinkhaven 9-1-1 option and calls that, supposedly medically talented gifted begin to show up to quickly fix and treat wounds of both the bad guys and good guys while more of the 'police' start to put power nullifying cuffs on the bad guys after getting told by Asta who had blood streaks in her hair. After everything had been sorted out she looks around for her crew stretching slightly as she slowly walks over to where the medic's had brought them "I think that went fairly well" She says softly before looking to the side as the big boss lady Veronica is carried away on a stretcher "I handled the big bad boss lady there, you guys killed the grunts...all in all...nice" She thinks before slowly giving a thumbs up.

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Gwen~





"Hm?"


She looked up at the sound of a greeting, gently holding the small cat still in her lap. A small, polite smile graced her lips as she made her reply.


"Hello."


The cat was far more important to her however. So her attention went right back to it. No cooing, no silly baby talk, just the peace of a purring kitten and calm happy person.


Gwen you're a dork.


Hopefully you're not going to scare off someone who'll be useful to you with these antics.

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~





Melody examined the request for finding the lost jewels. As she read it, her eyes lit up. It sounded like a movie, and it sounded very, very fun. The fact that it was listed as very difficult hardly bothered her.


"Oh, uh, yeah! Let's do that one."

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


"Alright!" He tried not to be fazed by the difficulty level stated. Hopefully, they could do it, though. He realized in a moment that he didn't even know what her Gift was, but he didn't ask for fear of being thought rude.


"When do you want to go?"

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~


"Uh, I mean, now, works, if that's cool with you.." Melody said, "Um. I mean, what's the point of getting clean to go out and get dirty again? The dirt is from a couple days spent stowing away on a ship, by the way.." She didn't offer up any explanation of what her gift might be, the notion that people might think her odd even here still with her.

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


"A-alright! Sounds good, then. Where do we have to go for it?" He checked his watch for that information as he asked the question.


"That makes sense, I don't blame you." He added after her next statement.


Looking back up at her, information in watch, he added: "Looks like we have to go to the guy who got stolen from for it first." As he spoke, he showed his watch to her and indicated a location on a small map.


"We can use the GPS system to get there, I think, then figure out what to do?"

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~





Melody nodded, looking at the information is her own watch as well.


"Er, sounds good. Should we just...go, then?" She fidgeted with her watch out of a nervous habit.

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


"Yeah, sure, let's." He nodded, starting toward the door, following the GPS prompts on his watch. He also fidgeted with it, adjusting it looser and tighter again, wondering if he should go ahead and bulk up a bit more, just in case.


"I wonder what we'll run into..." He murmured aloud.

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~





"Who knows...But I'm sure it'll be an adventure, whatever it is." Melody followed, setting the GPS on her watch as well.


"So ah...We should probably know each other's Gifts, if we're to fight together."

 

[DynastyFlormai]

[Jayce]


Holding his bullet wound still despite it having gotten patched up a bit by the medics, Jayce looked to Asta before giving a weak smile and a thumbs up, trying his best to play it off as nothing too bad. "Y-Yeah. No problem. I t-think I'll n-need to start carrying a gun or something too now. I don't wanna get pinned like that again." he says as he looks down at himself before going to bring his watch up to check some stuff, like where the points where appear and stuff. "So uh, w-when do we get rewarded? And what should we get? I think points would be p-pretty cool." he shakes a bit, still seeming a bit shaken up about getting shot.

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


"Yeah... I'm sure it will."


He opened the door for her, then once she exits will walk with her, following his GPS.


At the question, he looked up again and with a slight pause responded.


"Good point. I can shapeshift, you?" He replied lightly, looking to walk on, only a little nervous.

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~





"Oh, uh, really? I guess out powers are kinda similar then. I can...kind of shape shift, I guess? Provided the right materials are available...Er, maybe a demonstration would work better." Melody looked around for a bug or some other organic matter. She found a butterfly, and putting her hand up for quiet, she approached it and gently lifted it onto her finger. In an instant, she had the soft orange and black wings of the butterfly she was holding.


"Uh, animals, plants, people...I can take some stuff from them."

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


Well that's certainly a lot cooler than your Gift Lucas.


"That's awesome!" He paused, staring at the wings in amazement.


"I can't do that... I can just change my body."


Demonstration time. He closed his eyes a moment, holding a finger up for quiet, and molded his face into a simile of Melody's.


Opening his eyes, he went on- "it's not just cosmetic, though. I can enlarge muscles and such too."


Closing his eyes again, he changed his face back to Lucas's.

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~





Melody blushed, quickly evaporating the wings when Lucas was done gazing. She jumped slightly when Lucas demonstrated his power.


"Wow...that's...that's pretty cool. I can only take what's available, like uh...well, I can do this...um, pardon, sorry.." She gently reached out and touched Lucas' arm with one hand, taking Lucas' hair color into her own blonde locks. Quickly pulling away once she has demonstrated, she scratched her head.


"But ah, yours is more complete. I like it."

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


"Eh?" He initially shied back slightly as she reached for his arm, but let her anyway.


"Ah... I see."


He spent a moment mulling over the potential uses for her gift, and decided he was very glad that he had her help on this task.


"Well, now that we have that sorted out, should we go on to the place?" He asked, starting to walk onward.

 

[Mercuryrose]

~Melody~





Melody returned her hair to the blonde color.


"Ah, yeah, best do that. I wonder how long this will take..." She trailed behind him, a little bit embarrassed. However, she was still very excited for this mission.

 

[WitchOfTape]

~Lesley Lucas~


"I have no idea."


He continued on, following the GPS to the home of the person who'd been stolen from.


This might be interesting. Why did you go on this mission again? Surely there were other, easier things you could have done. But no, you had to go on some dangerous jaunt with this girl you just met.


Going to have to be hella careful, Lucas.


They'll soon arrive at the place.


((And dcat assumes we will move to the PM))

 

[Pixilated]

[ Asta ]


Asta curiously looked at Jayce as he shook and stumbled over his words before she weakly pats his arm as she walks over to him before shrugging a bit "The money should be enough for a gun" She says quietly before she runs a hand through her hair combing some blood from her hair which she wipes on her normal seeing very calm and collected, she rubs her stomach a bit feeling bruised from some of the hits that were connected by the big boss lady but other wise A-Okay "After the people are fixed up...which I think they are....we can go turn them in...also Ill go get the stuff we came here for" She says clearing her throat before heading inside to collect the notes and stuff they were told to retrieve.

 

[Computing Magus]

Marcus and Sylvia's orders came in by a waiter as they still hang around Bobert's Bread. Marcus grabs his slice of pie and slowly chews it. No matter how much Sylvia might wonder, his neck is cover by his sweater's collar so he doesn't really know how he digests food like a normal human being except that he eats like one and feels like he is eating like a human. After eating all of the pie, he grabs his wallet to search for money to pay with.


"Say, should we head for the mission after you're done or you're heading to somewhere first?" Marcus asks. He wonders what would the mission be like since it had a medium difficulty.


(@beeb because I think I realize our character's are taking a bit too long here already)

 

[Ryik]

Ceft


Lesua...


Out of commission as you are, your standing is in jeopardy. You've got no time to worry, to even think. The bottom line is that you need artifacts, and that's all there is to it.


Joining the factions isn't an option, so the only reliable way you're going to reach the end of the rainbow so to speak is to get into a portal and become a dungeoneer immediately, equipment be damned. If it really comes down to it, you'll punch monsters to death. Wasting time getting equipment in order to get equipment just seems like a manner of procrastination to you.


When you finally arrive at Binkhaven's portal center, you don't bother checking which one you enter. Picking one out is too time-consuming. You need to hurry after all. You are reliable, aren't you? Any portal that leads to a dungeon is fine, since every dungeon is supposed to have an artifact.


Come on then!

 

[Mattie]

[Abbey]


The recruitment assembly left a bad taste in Abbey’s mouth. The gore and bloodshed shown on screen wasn’t what was disconcerting--she’d been accustomed to far worse for years now. Her parents had her experiment on humans both alive in dead, for almost as long as she could remember. No, it was the relative unprofessional-ism of the Factions that put her off. Abbey would be entrusting her research and safety to the Factions, and if they couldn’t keep her safe from ETG, who would?


Herself, she supposed. Still, she needed vast amounts of resources to get anything accomplished, at least initially, and utilizing Faction resources were her best bet. Confident that she could always leave the Factions after she’d found her balance and established a workshop of her own, Abbey follows the remaining stragglers of the assembly to the testing building. She pushes down her increasing anxiety that she’d be limited--or worse, betrayed by the Factions once they saw her true value. Sensing his master’s worry, Judas nudges Abbey’s leg affectionately. She smiles and pets and rubs Judas’s head fondly. Judas was here for her, it would be okay.


The air inside the building was crisp, cool, and perfectly filtered to be odorless. The air literally gave off an air of professionalism and order that somewhat allayed Abbey’s fears. An attendant hands Abbey a form that she quickly fills out and hands back. She is then led into a small conference room where she is interviewed informally, asking questions such as her age, why she’d like to join the Factions, and what her Gift is. Abbey answers the questions calmly, already anticipating the final test--the test of her Gift.


To conclude the interview, as expected the interviewer asks Abbey to demonstrate her Gift, asking if she’d need any materials given her particular Gift. Nodding yes, Abbey is led down to a testing room filled with a massive variety of basic materials and resources. The room was part mechanic’s garage, part chemistry laboratory, part machine shop, and everything else too. Abbey gets right to work, not wanting to waste any time. She decides on a booby trap, one of her latest designs, meant for preventing ETG entry into her old home.


One of the problems of pressure plates were their visibility--unless the floor itself was modified to incorporate the trap, the plate sitting raised above the floor would be very obvious. Abbey’s solution was a literal paper-thin pressure plate. It was a folded newspaper set to transmit a signal to the offensive part of the trap whenever enough pressure was applied the folded pages of paper for a long enough period of time. The technique also applied to magazines, letters, folders, and any other miscellaneous pieces of paper. A soldier sweeping a house wouldn’t stop to investigate every single piece of paper on the ground, and if it was dark enough, it might even go unnoticed.


Since it was such a simple design, it only took Abbey fifteen minutes to make--the majority of the time spent on the signaling and actual explosive, rather than the trap itself.


Once done, Abbey gently sets down the rigged copy of the daily newspaper and retreats to a safe distance, behind blast proof glass. Beside the newspaper is a small chemical explosive with a small red blinking LED light. After nodding to the tester, she switches on the explosive and pulls a string, tipping over a mannequin onto the newspaper. A fraction of a second later, the explosive detonates with a sharp crack, sending a cloud of smoke into the air. When the smokes dissipates, the mannequin is revealed to have been thrown a half dozen meters to the side, less than half of its body remaining.


Abbey grins and looks up at the tester expectantly. She receives a thumbs up in return. Thanking her for her time, the tester hands her a badge, Z watch, the keycard to her room, and directs her to the Mental Faction on the way out.


“I did it!” The young Gifted shouts triumphantly as she exits the recruitment building. A bystander mutters “It’s not a big deal...” under his breath, but Abbey acts like she doesn’t hear him as she skips off toward the Mental Faction, Judas loping along not far behind.


--


“So you’re telling me that I’ll be supervised 24/7, I can’t keep anything useful and helpful I make, and I can’t bring anything at all out of the lab. Oh, and if I want to further develop existing Faction technology, I have to be mindwiped afterwards!?” Abbey shouts, outraged. And why wouldn’t she be outraged? These conditions were tyrannical to the extreme!


“No, not quite...” The guard starts uncertainty, backing and surprised by the sudden outburst. “You can keep things you make, just not anything dangerous to the Factions is all.” the poor man continues, desperately trying to contain the scene. People were starting to stare, and the guard definitely didn’t like the way the girl’s dog was glaring at her with bared teeth.


“...Fine, I’ll join.” Abbey snaps. These limits are nearly unbearable! She thinks miserably to herself. Mentally shaking her head, she promises herself this only until she gets a little more money to buy her own place to live. Recollecting herself, Abbey crushes the anger in her body and sets it aside, straightening up to smile at the guard. “Where can I get started?” She asks with fake perkiness, impatient to stop wasting time.


The guard directs her to an empty workshop and unlocks it with a keycard. “From now on this workshop will be registered to you and you alone, and your room keycard will double as your access card to this workshop. The workshop is already stocked with most materials, but you can submit a request for less common things. Provided the request is reasonable, we can usually supply it.” The guard states as he flicks the lights on, revealing a large, well-lit workspace.


10 by 10 meters with an 5 meter ceiling, the room seemed almost too large for her alone. Oh, right, she wasn’t alone. The guard from before stood silently by the door, watching her impassively. To one side of the room is a large worktable with an array of tools hung neatly above on the wall. All along the rest of the room are other tools, machinery, cases full of chemicals, laboratory tools, and other such devices. Talking further about what could obviously already be clearly pictured would be pointless.


Studiously ignoring the guard, Abbey pulls her laptop out of her backpack and sets it down on the desk, getting to work organizing her files and research.

 

[DynastyFlormai]

[Jayce]


Rubbing his abdomen a bit more as he slowly gets up from a wall, Jayce seemed a bit more relaxed now that some time had passed since he'd gotten shot and thanks to a bit of Asta's comfort. He figured he wouldn't just leave all the heavy lifting to her though as he heads inside, going to look around curiously a bit before picking up the metal thing the dude with glasses was looking at, curiously turning it over before shrugging and setting it onto a box. "Do you think we should call for our faction to pick this stuff up or lug it over ourselves?"

 

[Pixilated]

[ Asta ]


Asta curiously overlooks all the papers after finishing gathering them up and shrugs a bit raising her Z-Watch to look at it before tapping away to tell the person that posted the assignment that it was complete and the criminals were...relatively intact and in custody, the papers and other objects were in safe-ish hands. With that sent she looks to Jayce nodding a bit before motioning for him to follow before she heads out her arms full of the papers of supposed research and stuff, It seems Sven must have wandered off as she hasn't seen him since he hasn't shown up after the fight-AND so Asta and Jayce would make their way slowly to the Physical factions headquarters/lobby thing to turn in the stuff. It would still be night time (Presumably) as they made their way towards it her smoke seeping slowly around behind her and around her body.

 

[IceSolstice]

[Alice and Vix]

Spoiler

Alice glances around for the woman they saved, except she was nowhere to be found.


“Vix, did you see where that woman went?” she asks the slime.


She turns around, a flailing rat embedded into her side, “No I’ve been a little busy.”


“It’s rather strange to find rats mutated that much around here though,” Alice comments thoughtfully, “Maybe there’s a request for something about it?”


Vix’s body ripples for a moment before the rat-thing stops its twitching and falls to the ground. By this point, Vix is mostly dyed brown, “Well even if there isn’t we may as well finish what we started.”


Alice giggles a bit, “You’re starting to look like melted chocolate.”


She checks her Z-Watch and flicks through the requests.


Vix looks down, “OH GOD DAMNIT, I forgot about that part. UGH, it’ll take forever to metabolise all this blood.”


“Hey, it says here that they want us to ‘Clear out their property’ because the police won’t do anything about it,” remarks Alice.


Vix aggressively sighs, “Fine I may as well get paid for this.”


Alice cautiously walks up to the house and stops a good five feet away from it. She hears sounds of movement inside. Looking back at Vix, Alice says, “Why don’t you go in first? If they ambush me I may not even survive.”


“Oh and if they rip me apart? Just go spin-to-win through the door.”


“If you really insist, I might as well bring the entire house down,” Alice states, cracking her knuckles.


Vix backs away slowly knowing that Alice is indeed crazy enough to do so.


“Watch my back,” Alice flies up and to the side of the apartment building, giving herself ample space. She looks at her surroundings for things to use as a potential wrecking ball. Parked on the far side of the street by the sidewalk are cars that Alice could make use of, but that would wreck the poor person’s car. Aside from that, there weren’t any convenient nearby heavy dense objects that could be thrown around. Maybe a dumpster in the alleyway? The alley is too dark to clearly make out its confines.


Alice is sorely tempted to use the car. Sorely. But she didn’t really want to be yelled at again so she slowly descends into the alley to allow her eyesight to adjust to the poor lighting and has her ears open for any potential danger. The alleyway is nondescript and plain, with a trash bag against one wall and other small trash bits strewn around. A single dim light attached to the wall illuminates poorly drawn graffiti. A single dark green dumpster sits pristinely, filled with trash.


Alice approaches the dumpster with caution and lays her hand on it. Focusing on the metal container, she concentrates for some time; all the while metal wings grow from it. Once the process is finished, she goes back to Vix, taking the dumpster with her.


“I got something to try and knock the building down!” she exclaims.


“I was afraid you were serious about that, shouldn't you be a little more concerned about collateral damage?”


“This building was supposed to be torn down anyways. So we’re just helping them speed up the process!” Alice replies, brushing off Vix’s concerns.


She once again flies up to the building and examines for any particularly rotten or weak spots. There are none, this wasn’t a game--weak spots aren’t obviously highlighted with a red bullseye.


She frowns, making the dumpster ram into the middle part of the building. The wall crumbles partially, but that is all. A brief flash of colorful scales are seen. Alice decides that this venture is best tackled from above where they couldn’t be ambushed. She goes down to Vix, grabs her, and manages to lug her up to the roof.


“Ready?” Alice calls to Vix.


“The pay for this better be amazing. Ya lets get this over with so I can stop being brown.”


Alice gingerly drops Vix on the ground and unsheathes her sword. The pair notice a door leading to the lower floors.


“Slimes first?”


Vix SHRIEKS WITH THE FORCE OF A THOUSAND SUNS quietly sneaks forward expecting every rat in the building to jump her and start ripping her limb from limb. Alice follows behind her, watching her surroundings. No rats are encountered. Vix sneaks down to the next floor. Alice does the same. Again, no rats are encountered, although scratching can be heard from below. Before the pair descends to the next floor, Alice searches for anything she could use as a weapon in combat, preferable metal. All around her are abandoned apartment things. She whisks away some pots, pans, and kitchen knives. Behind her a rat, nearly silently, approaches. Alice hears the faint sound of claw over wood and whips around to find the rat. She throws one of her knives at it, while keeping the pots and pans close around her, like a shield. The rat dodges to the side, allowing the blade to glance harmlessly off of its scales. Hissing, the rat backs away around the corner. It’s going towards Vix!


Vix suddenly notices that Alice is infact not behind her, because who needs reliable teammates anyway? In her place is a rather angry rat.


“Welp time to strangle the shit out of another one I guess.”


Glancing at Vix in an almost human-like manner, the rat instead scampers farther down the hallway away from Vix and disappears down the stairwell.


Alice rushes back to Vix with her assortment of kitchenware floating around her, “Did it get you?”


“Yes. I’m dead, can't you tell?” Vix says voice dripping with sarcasm.


“Hi dead, I’m Alice,” Alice answers cheerfully.


“Di-did you just dad joke me?”


“Let’s keep going,” Alice positions the kitchenware in front, reaches for the doorknob, and slowly opens the door. Thunderous scratching and thumping sounds resound from all around the pair. Behind them, a flood of rats burst into the stairwell, seemingly filling the already small room. Ahead of them are rats as well, the floor becoming a multicolored carpet as rats race toward the pair.


[media]

[/media]
Vix puddles herself and drops down through the floor. She falls into more rats. She continues to drip down through the floors until she reaches the ground floor. The rats give up on trying to eat Vix and ignore her, instead massing around Alice. Alice swirls the pots and pans around her, hopefully keeping them at bay. She poises her wings to deflect any incoming attacks and grips her sword in her right hand tightly, waiting for the rats to make the first move. The rats continue to collect until they fill the doorways with wriggling bodies. The horde of rats press forward at Alice, not caring that their front-most members are struck and wounded by the swirl of winged metal odds and ends. Alice decides that she must take action and aims with her knives at the eyes and mouths of fallen, wounded rats. Deep enough wounds to the eyes of the wounded rats kill them, but for every dead rat, five more take its place. But they were fuel for Alice’s Gift because they were dead now. She obliges, sprouting sharp wings from the armored portions of the fallen rats, piercing through the armored shells of surrounding rats. Pierced rats screech in pain but don’t die immediately, very few wings directly piercing the brains and hearts of the rats. Rats not stabbed grab onto the wings, tying them down and allowing even more rats to press forward. When Alice notices the rats attempting to tie them down, she dissolves them, making the rats fall face forward onto the armor and repeats the same process of adding wings, except this time directed at the rats’ heads. The rats do a decent job dodging, but many still die from the stabs, giving Alice even more surface to use her Gift. Just barely within her view, Alice might have been able to make out debris being piled against the doorway to the next floor. Far above Alice, rats weaken the entire stairs and floor structure, working in tandem to eventually bring multiple stories of debris on her head.


On the ground floor and seemingly being ignored by the rats Vix proceeds to find a stove and start a small fire making sure to leave a trail of burnables to the walls, knowing that Alice is also in the process of getting the fuck out. While the rats had been ignoring Vix, or even giving her a wide berth, a few were still in the room with her, watching her. They seem content to stare for the moment as Vix preps the pyromania. Vix finds a rather large bottle of cooking oil, seems someone liked to buy in bulk. While Vix is looking away, a rat disrupts the trail of burnables leading to the wall. Vix pours the oil on a new stove and lights it, running off into yet another room to start yet another fire. A rat hurriedly jumps up onto the stovetop, alarmed. Without anything else to put the fire out with, it sticks its own body overtop the stove, cutting off the air to it and suffering terrible burns in the process. Had the rat been uncontrolled, it would never had remained, but this rat had no choice in the matter and silently suffers.


Vix then finds a small yield thermonuclear device absolutely nothing, “Well shit. ALICE YOU FUCKING OUT YET OR WHAT?!?”


As much as Alice enjoyed carnage, she wanted to check up on how Vix was doing. She wasn’t pissed at Vix for ditching her cause she figured the slime might have had a plan. They were friends after all, right? Alice doubles her effort into reaching the next floor below. She pushes outward with all the dead rat bodies to knock them back. And she uses this precious amount of time to reach the door while quickly clearing the debris towards lower part of the staircase. Alice sweats, she was exerting her Gift a bit more than she wanted to. Alice draws the miscellaneous metal (and some dead rats because who knows how useful those could be) towards her body, opens the door, and enters the next floor. The rats allow her to enter the next floor unimpeded, dragging away as many of their dead brethren as possible down the stairs to the next floor.


The fastest way to get out of the building would be to jump through a window. Alice uses the remaining dead rats to break it and she escapes the building. She didn’t know which floor Vix was on, so she breaks a window in the floor below and calls for Vix. Hearing nothing, Alice repeats the process down the apartment floors.


Vix notices a distinct lack of fire and goes to check on why that is. She notices the rats have been intervening and extinguishes the stoves and embers only to turn on the gass full tint and remove the knobs. Stymied, the rats hiss at Vix in frustration before one twitches excitedly and scampers behind the stove. The rat bites and tears at the gas line until the stove ceases to work. With the gas supply gone, the fire sputters out.


Vix has ran into another room and uses a remaining stove to light a wad of paper on fire tossing it onto the now gas filled room and running like hell. Unsurprisingly, the flaming wad of paper ignites the gas immediately, causing an explosion far clother to Vix than was probably planned. The room explodes and catches fire, but without the gas having built up much past the room, it was confined only to that room for the time. Rats flood into the room shortly after to put out the fire, some carrying non-flammable materials to smother flames, others just ripping up burning bits and smothering the flames with their scales.


As Alice goes down the building, she hears shaking and what seems to be like muffled explosions, “Vix! Where are you?!”


Vix gets tossed out the front door, slightly aflame, answering Alice’s question. Alice dumps some rat bodies on Vix to smother the fire.


“Let me catch a quick breather or two before we try and tackle that again,” Alice remarks, “Completing this request is pretty tough.”


Muffled noises emerge from the pile of dead rats. Alice manually pushes the rats aside, eventually unearthing Vix.


“That did not quite go to plan, and why did you use corpses to put me out?”


“I didn’t think putting you out with cookingware would help too much,” Alice replies, sitting down, “I know rats are smart, but can they pull off ambushes? I think I even saw a few drag away dead bodies after I used them to kill more rats.”


“Nah there's definitely something fucky going on here, bail or nah?”


“A hero never gives up!” Alice exclaims, pumping her fist into the air.


“Ya well a hero didn’t just get exploded and lit on fire.”


Alice looks quizzically at Vix, “How did that explosion happen?”


“...dun worry about it.”


“I’m going to run off to the nearest food place to grab something to eat, want anything?” Alice asks.


“To have not been on fire”


“Alright, I’ll grab double of what I order! Make sure nothing weird happens while I’m away!” Alice responds cheerfully.


“Out of snarky comments…...nehhhhhhh”


--


Alice returns with two large take out bags from Bobert’s Bread. Handing Vix a bag, Alice begins scarfing down her own.


“Gib food.”


Alice glances at Vix’s hand containing the bag and decides that Vix meant ‘I give food.’ So she yoinks the Bobert’s Bread bag out of Vix’s hand and starts to eat it as well.


“You know I don’t like bread.”


Alice ignores Vix’s last comment and eats all but one baguette. Perhaps she could lure the rats with this? Or at the very least, it could show whether they were acting out of their own free will or not.


“Ready for take two?” Alice questions, “Let’s start from the floor we haven’t explored much of yet.


“Ugh. You mean the half exploded one?”


“No, the floor two floors below where we were ambushed,” Alice corrects Vix.


“Shouldn’t we call in backup or something?”


“But we’ve done this much already with us two, can’t we finish it by ourselves?” Alice queries.


“Says the unexploded one.” Vix says finally working her way to her feet, “Fine let's get going.”


Alice wraps her arms around Vix’s waist and the two take off to the floor Alice mentioned before, landing there as quietly as they could. Alice’s Gift fodder also trail after her. A few rats watch warily in the shadows of the apartment floor, but none approach.


“Hey, are you guys actually normal rats? Or are you controlled by someone?” Alice calls out to them. What was she expecting? The rats don’t respond. They are rats. Being controlled, but Alice doesn't know that.


“Let us rephrase, are you normal rats or is someone going to have to die now?” Vix adds still quite annoyed that she was lit on fire.


Again, the rats don’t respond, not that they could or would even if they weren’t being controlled.


“Exterminatus it is then.”


“We might want to check out everything before we try to kill all of them,” Alice whispers to Vix. She waves the delicious bread, “I’ll give you this if you take me to your master.”


A rat approaches Alice. It puts out a paw expectantly.


Alice breaks off a piece and flies it above the rat, tantalizingly.


The rat doesn’t move.


Alice makes the piece of bread smack into the rat’s face.


“Alice what the fuck are you doing?”


The rat slowly reaches up for the piece of bread and grabs it. The rat then


Threw it on the ground!


The rat sticks up a middle finger before leaving.


“Negotiations have failed,” Alice states cheerfully, “Let’s go.”


Alice grabs Vix and yanks her out of the building and goes down to the first floor, “Vix do your thing.”


“Turn into a puddle?”


“No, light things on fire!”


“How is that my thing?”


“That’s how the explosion happened, right?”


“I don’t wanna talk about it.”


Meanwhile, a group of rats finish lining a pallet of bricks up against the edge of the roof and tip it off all at once. The collection of bricks hurtle toward Vix and Alice silently. At the same time, a pack of rats prepare to jump out the second and third story windows once the bricks hit.


Alice was walking around with her metal stuff for a good place to put the explosives that she had acquired when she went to go out to get the bread. She wonders whether it was better to bomb all four foundations or maybe just bomb the floors so it was unusable for anyone occupying the building. As she looks up to consider the second option, bricks hurl near where Vix is standing, “Watch out!”


Alice diverts some of the first bricks to try and shield Vix.


As Vix hears Alice’s yell she runs forward which just so happens to be towards the building.


As the bricks fall, rats jump from the windows moments later, 15 in all. While Alice and Vix struggle, a separate pack of rats leave the building looking for hostages to take. The Gifted controller was getting desperate.


“How many of these are there?” Alice questions, holding tightly onto the bag and wielding her sword with the other.


“There's gotta be at least twelve.” She says before grabbing a rat and filling its lungs to bursting.


Alice controls a good amount of bricks to cluster around the rats. Rats dodge around the bricks but Alice surrounds and tightens the cloud of bricks around them. She makes them learn how it feels to be very, very high up. And the bricks let go off the rats. They fall and die. The pair are now surrounded by dead rats. Only 170 to go.


Alice shouts at the building, “We can keep doing this, or you could come out and tell us what you’re after.”


But nobody came.


Vix grabs and lung bursts another rat.


Alice just rushes in and swings her sword at the closest rat. It dodges but a wing sprouts from the sword and pierces it. The rest of the rats back away from the pair, especially Vix. No rat will come near Vix if they can help it. A second wing appears on the sword and goes through the head of the rat.


“Hey Alice, you can put wings on buildings right?”


She looks at Vix, “I could. Should I go do it right now?”


“Well I’m getting real tired of dyeing myself brown.”


The controller calls her bluff and sits tight. If he died, he died. But he didn’t.


“Just see if you can pull one of the walls off.” She continued, putting quite a bit of distance between her and the building.


Alice leaves Vix and goes up to the roof and starts focusing her power on one side of the building, a large mass of brick forming slowly on the outside. The rats do nothing, since they can’t do anything. They are rats. Wingless rats. That have died in droves uselessly earlier.


Alice eventually just creates a giant brick wing, which rips free from the wall on its own, creating a large gash in the brick facade.


The Gifted controller suppresses a scream of indignation and orders the hostage to be brought in. The pack of rats that left in search of a small child return with one. The small child cries, as they fully expect to be eaten, and are correct in that expectation. The child’s clothing is badly torn, and rats hold the child fast all over the body, one notable rat with its teeth clamped over the child’s throat.


A rat hurriedly runs out of the building with a handwritten note as well. The note is deposited a reasonably safe distance away, stating that “if the pair leave immediately, the child will be released unharmed. -- signed, Rat.”


Vix picks up and reads the note, then stares down the rat, “Tell your master that we don't negotiate with terrorists. ALICE GET DOWN HERE!”


In response, the left pinky finger of the child is bent back past the breaking point. The child howls in pain, tears streaming down its face


Alice rushes over and lands next to Vix.


Vix whispers to Alice, “Let the factions know we have a psychopath holding children hostage.” Before walking around a corner of an alley way. A few rats follow cautiously, watching. “You want go poppy pop?”


Alice flies off and starts pressing several buttons on her Z-Watch, notifying the Factions and the BPD of the hostage situation.


Given that Vix was remaining stationary, and Alice was completely out of sight, more rats spread out around the vicinity of the building looking for her, checking if she had left.


Alice settles down on the roof of another building.


The BPD show up, surrounding the building and the child is remotely teleported away.



MISSION FAILED


((Aerose go do something about this))