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Post by DrTentacles on Jun 21, 2020 20:56:43 GMT -4
 Where was Ishtar? It had been many dusty years since a question had burned in Kafka’s brain with the same intensity. A man like him drifted through life, following a blood-trail--a shark. Ancient. Cold. Uncaring. Swimming from meal to meal, an apex predator carried from prehistory, unchanging, unchallenged. A sleepwalker. It was not the riots that had awoken him. Tokyo had been through a dozen riots. Nakano. Kabuchiko. Shinigawa. Nakano again. Waves cresting on the surface of the water, sound and fury. Ships bobbed and capsized in storms such as those, but below, a shark only thought of their next meal. A contract with the Yakuza. A contract to fight the Yakuza. Help the Railway Union. Kill Plutocracy. Boring. Dry. Habit. Fuchu could have been the same. Prison break--fun. Quirkers escaping. Some good, some bad? Did Kafka care? Did it matter? No. The city would not change. The waves crashed, and below, the city remained intact. It had weathered many storms. It would endure. The Police would bluster and threaten, the new Pro Heroes would seethe, like the Vigilantes before them. The Yakuza and “villains” would gloat, unaware they were simply shadows. And Kafka could have endured. But he’d seen her. A garbled face on a staticy screen in a bar. White hair, like an elder, like a youkai. And a voice like a chiming bell. Too short, too full--not a famish rail, but-- Kafka remembered. “It’s not over, Apex. She’ll live on. Through her quirk, through her DNA. And one day, there will be a new Maiden. I might be dead, but you’ll be there. Promise me. Promise me you’ll be there.” Kafka had promised nothing. But he’s gone looking. “Where is Ishtar?” He’d asked the man with a face of glass, but there’d been no answer. “Where is Ishtar?” He’d asked a bull, a snake, and a frightened girl, but they’d tried to kill him, and Kafka had laughed. “Where is Ishtar?” He’d asked a webweaver, but she’d only held lies. Perhaps he’d panicked. He should have known--the Maiden had always been where the trouble was thickest. Why would Ishtar be different? The riots had not died down. Tokyo still smelled of smoke and rubble, but the heroes walked the street, police behind them, and they said they’d won, and perhaps they had. But Kabuchiko was beyond their reach. In Kabuchiko, the fires still burned bright, even if the police tried to douse them. And Kafka had followed Ishtar, as she followed four children who wanted to stop her, until that fight was done. But now--but now--the police closed their net, two teams of black-armored special task forces, guns in hand, shields ready. Ishtar was not their target, though--their target was a delinquent gang, six bold youths, lizards, a star, a young man with claws that looked painful, and three others. But Ishtar was there, and the net was closing. Kafka watched, and remembered what happened next. Someone was going to use a quirk. The guns would sound, bright and loud. And then, blood. And then, one, two, five, six dead delinquents. Did Ishtar care? |
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506 Posts
3 EP
EXP
Total
25 Years
Female
"Ishtar"
Bandit-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Sonya Chernova on Jun 22, 2020 1:40:45 GMT -4
She stood at the edge of a precipice, a harsh blast of air sent her hair fluttering about as an explosion rocked the block. Flames danced at her feet, teasing at the tips of her boots. She beheld the ruination and savored it like wine from a glass. It was made even more sweet by the thought of the stories the students would bring home with them as they fled home to UA High. She closed her eyes and replayed the chase through her artificial eyes. Paused, replayed, reassessed, considered, analyzed, every detail a focal point to find some exploit, some clue. She opened her eyes and pulled out her phone, downloading the footage to it. A cruel smile twisted on her lips; yes, this would do nicely. She was almost ready to pursue the next step in her-
Crak! Krakakakakkk!
Gunfire.
She looked down from her perch at a group of villains fighting back against the encroaching mob of police in near-military grade gear. Those villains that would earn her respect had already fled into the night, having earned their keep in the ensuing chaos and faded into the darkness. Those that remained out of the street through lust, greed, or wrath were nothing more than animals at this point. Squandering their powers. Yet still they fought, and died, to satiate their base desires. Ishtar's lips formed a thin line as she turned away, walking to the other side of the building and peering out. More of the same, though the sight of the bridge that held up a portion of the Chuo-East line was a pleasing one. She was on track to reach the dead center of Tokyo by daybreak.
More gunfire. This time near the bridge. She scowled and began to turn away only to stop when she saw two armored vehicles lumbering toward the violence that was just at the edge of the theatre of battle. The Chuo line was the northern edge, most of the criminals dispersed by that point. There were very few who- more gunfire. Ishtar tilted her head and narrowed her eyes before stepping off the side of the building, catching herself on a plate of pale light that formed again beneath her next footfall just a few inches lower. Without even looking down she descended in the sky, stopping at ground level and glancing around. The sound of rushed footsteps caught her ears and she let out a breath, her respirator turning it into an angry hiss.
"You! Hands where I can see them! You're under-" The policeman's voice caught in his throat. "...Ishtar..." He gasped. She turned and looked at him, a flash of light erupting from her body that left him momentarily stunned. She strode forward on heels, the gentle click, click, click, sounding like a gun being loaded. She stopped and reached down, something whirring underneath her sleeves as she grabbed him by the shirt and hefted him to his feet as easily as a grown man.
"Tell me about what's going on at the bridge," Ishtar rasped. He struggled to move but his limbs failed him. He grunted once and looked away. She sneered; "Heroism will get you nowhere, do you want to live, or not?" She asked, her voice calm.
"I have nothing to te-AAAUHHGHH," His scream was bestial, agonized, as she drove a glowing finger into his side, his blood atomizing. She tilted her head and lowered him a little so he could look into her glowing eyes. "W-wai-AUGUHHHH!" She twisted her finger, curling it inside him as his innards flash froze and rotted. She held his eyes, unblinking, unfeeling. She stopped moving and he let out a sob.
"Now. I am done, try again," She said with a cold warning in her tone.
"...strike crew went to pursue some juvie escapees from the youth section of the prison... all quirkers, dangerous..." He murmured, whimpering, "P-puh... puh..." He stammered, She let him go and he collapsed with another garbled cry onto his ruined side. Something metal glinted over her hands and fingers. She looked down at him and he looked up, "I t-told you, n-now please..." She nodded and knelt down, touching his cheek.
"My quirk is radiation, you were dead the moment I touched you in anger..." She whispered sweetly, "This is a mercy."
In a flash his head turned black, foulness leaking from it as putrefaction set in almost instantly, his head lulled and he collapsed in a heap. She got to her feet and brushed off her hand before turning to the bridge, her shoulders set. She marched towards the edge of the fighting, the most dangerous place for her to be. Where the police and hero presence was at its strongest. Even so... something told her to go that way, she had to, she needed to. Her lips set in a thin line and she marched.
Ishtar arrived at the camp where the juveniles had hidden to wait out the riots from the south while the two armored vehicles had already settled in east of the camp. The children had created a marginal defense, a few barricades made either by their quirks or hastily moved pieces of concrete and road equipment. Behind them the city spread out but from the looks of it any attempts to run would be met by lethal force. These damn police had no interest in taking them in alive. Ishtar frowned, her eyes glowing as she surveyed it all. There were about twenty men in combat gear, all carrying assault weapons. She glanced up at the children again, all around high school age. She knelt and leaned on her knee, trying to listen. The men were moving into position and putting their flanks to her.
She glanced back over her shoulder. No sign of anyone coming to back them up. Good. She stared, those young people had the potential to become future villains. Even if their quirks weren't up to snuff for whatever reason their minds could be honed, perhaps one would invent a new power enhancing drug or a cure to some quirk related disease. There was no way she was going to allow this to happen. They'd already been rejected by society, juvenile delinquents destined to return to prison for the rest of their life after making just one pitiful attempt toward freedom. They didn't even know what freedom meant yet. What real freedom meant. What it meant to be a true villain.
She grit her teeth, this was far too dangerous though. She considered calling for back up, but there'd be no point. They wouldn't arrive in time. These children were dead. Not a hero in sight either to intervene. Typical. Heroes were no good for anything other than building a society in which she and her kind could thrive. Glorified henchmen.
A cry of pain.
She hadn't even heard the gunshot. Silencers? Why? They were children.
Ishtar got to her feet.
They were children.
Another cry.
She could see the kids, they weren't even lethal shots. No mercy. They would suffer through whatever injuries they received for days. Ishtar grit her teeth, a glow wreathing itself around her body. A snarl escaping her lips in a rasp through the ventilator.
"...its up to me then..." | TAG WORDS NOTES
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Post by DrTentacles on Jul 10, 2020 22:07:09 GMT -4
How many times could a body regenerate before Kafka became a new man? Perhaps blood and bone was eternal, or perhaps there was a soul. There should have been a point, just like grandfather’s axe, just like the ship of Theseus, when he became someone new--when all the chopped-off bits, all the scars faded away, and something better emerged from his christilis of flesh and chitin. Instead, day by day, he felt like he decayed. Imperfect copies. Each regeneration is more twisted than the last. His conscience? A tattered flag floating amid the wreckage of a ship.
The police moved with bright, jittery intensity; fear, excitement, and exhaustion all wound together, a spring twisted too tight, about to snap. One squad on each side of the pass, with a command center parked straight above, bright, blaring spotlights illuminating either side of the bridge.
Below, he could barely see the delinquents--rats, holed up in the shadows. They’d tossed bricks on the riverside sidewalk to make it harder to walk, upended bicycles and the lids of a dumpster like a shield.
Lights at the end of pistols, the kindest thing to ever grow out of the barrel of a gun, glared at the rats as the squads moved closer, slow, hesitant, like they had neither numbers nor power on their side. But they did. They had overwhelming force. So cautious. Fear. In the end, it always wreaked of fear. That’s why this happened.
A voice on a megaphone blared through the wail of sirens and distant sound of gunfire, a new back-track to a city gone mad.
“LOW SECURITY BLOCK 3S. PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND LAY DOWN ON THE GROUND!” The robotic cop-leader chanted. The mantra of mercy. Lay down. Let us step on your back. Surrender to the boot. We are right. We are kind.
Just stop fighting.
Someone in the delinquent block tried to say something back, but Kafka couldn’t hear it. He was too far away.
He smelled something. Ozone. Cooked air. Hauntingly familiar.
Somewhere close.
Somewhere.
His antennae bristled, and Kafka dropped into the shadows of the riverside walk behind the police, a shadow in a ragged coat, antennae peeking out of a battered hat. He could have been a drifter, a derelict, one of the people who lived and died under the underpasses in the shadows. It wasn’t the worst guess.
Under the bridge, something flashed. Light off the bicycle? A quirk? Something--
The crack of poor trigger discipline, and poor decisions. Was it a tear gas canister? A bullet?
Kafka didn’t know, but he knew what hell was about to be unleashed.
Something inhuman and beastial roared, under the bridge, the entire system shaking, stones and rust raining down from above. The shadow of a massive, reaching arm emerged into the light, holding a dumpster lids like a knight’s shield. The cops barked into panicked orders.
Crack.
Crack, crack.
It began in truth.
Tear gas canisters soared through the air, landing under the bridge, little reeking, burning balls of hate, and the underpass vanished into thick, stinking smock. The cops became stick figures, shadows, little toy soldiers, as muzzle flashes began to appear en mass. Someone yelled “Hold Fire” and someone yelled “Fire at Will!” and neither seemed to command attention. Atop the bridge, the communications checkpoint frantically tried to figure out what was going on as the cops surged forward, a wall of pistols, batons, and riot shields.
The smell was stronger.
Kafka felt his insides twist in agony, the memory of pain--the pain of a thousand suns surging through his gut.
He limped toward the back of the police line, and as they advanced, reached out, a gnarled hand folding around the helmet of the cop in the back of the ranks. He pulled, snapping the stunned officer’s head back like a child’s doll, and carried through the motion, dropping the man backwards, headfirst into the ground hard enough that he bounced off the sidewalk.
Kafka reached down, and plucked the unfired revolver from the cop’s hand with a secondary arm, and clicked off the safety, staring at it. Something stirred inside him.
Find her.
He kicked the cop--or his body--into the water. He didn’t need anything else from this man.
Ten on this side. Ten on the next. And six kids.
None of them mattered more than Ishtar.
On the direct opposite side of the bridge, Ishtar saw the situation mirrored. A thick fog of tear gas leaking from under the bridge. Ten cops in close formation, backs to her. More atop the bridge itself, manning spotlights, frantically trying to get control of the situation.
And in the center of the trap, fish in a barrel, six escaped children.
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506 Posts
3 EP
EXP
Total
25 Years
Female
"Ishtar"
Bandit-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Sonya Chernova on Jul 13, 2020 1:38:17 GMT -4
Military grade multi-situation ocular devices were comprised of sixteen lenses. The amendment to the Geneva Convention restricted the number of lenses in a device used for combat to no more than eighteen. There were thirty varied-use, paper-thin lenses in each of Ishtar's eyes. Each lense swiveled on its own, carried by a complex cascade of mechanisms that adapted the point of view to even the smallest details or shifts in overall lighting. As a girl, Sonya Chernova had grown accustomed to perpetual twilight. She could not perceive the daylight sun the way others did. She was ever, forever, separate. Living in eternity.She watched the police move from her vantage behind them. Two armored cars had emptied and the first group had moved in to begin engaging the children. There was a shout, some sort of alarm raised. She kept her stead gait up, not willing to raise the sound beyond a simple clicking of her heels against concrete. Those men would not take notice of her right away. Yet it was the sound of a voice over the initial movements that drew her gaze. A machine spoke; "LOW SECURITY BLOCK 3S. PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND LAY DOWN ON THE GROUND!" Something about those words... they cut a little deeper. Unkind, unfeeling, just demanding surrender, just demanding obedience. To crush that freedom she so desperately sought. That they so desperately sought. The children. Tear gas began to spread. A cry. A scream. Shouts. Ten of the tweny men poured into the cloud to engage. Something... huge moved in the darkness of smoke and night. She paid it no mind. All she could feel was rage. Children they were children. Young, with potential, a chance to be pardoned, whom had been swept up in her actions. She'd offered her clemency to any who escaped the battleground and found hiding and here they were at the very edge... just about to slip into safety.They were so close.Her teeth clenched beneath her mask. She could turn away. She could treat them no differently than the other villains who fought and bled for her attention, for her favor. Who had no idea that she was out here, at the edge, watching as a man in a uniform marking him as a protector of the people fired a silenced rifle at a non-vital area of a young man's leg. Something trembled in her heart and she began to dig deep. No. Deeper. Even deeper. All the way down. How long had it been since she'd reached for her depths? How long had she held back for the world? She reached up to her throat, to the device that Axel had given her that amplified her voice.She twisted the knob until it cracked, snapping in place. She drew out a deep, rattling breath, her respirator making a terrible, trembling hiss. Her voice broke out into the world like a terrible crack of thunder. Her rage underpinning every syllable. "KNEEL. PRAY. WEEP. I AM HERE." The first thing the spotter atop the armored car saw was a flicker of something white in the distance as the voice caught his attention. He turned, his brothers on the ground too focused on what was in front of them to immediately react to what was behind. He pulled up his binoculars and tried to make heads or tails. From what he could see it looked like a woman was on fire, and walking toward them. But the fire looked... odd. It was white, pale white, like the color of the moon. It whisped around her, her entire body glowing so brightly it looked like she was some ghastly shilouette. Her hair fluttered up into the air, caught in an unseen wind as she approached. She didn't collapse, or suffer, or write, she just walked. He reached for his walkie talkie and something glittered in the air. Then came the pain. He gasped, clutching at his throat with bare nails, scratching at the glass-like thing that embedded in his voice box. A dozen more struck his body, needles of off-white glass that dug in deep before exploding into a dozen rings of black boils and blisters, his skin bubbled, his flesh sizzled, his mind reeled from the horror of it all. Pain ripped through his entire body like a million needles piercing his body and plucking him apart cell by cell. Organ failure settled in immediately, then respiratory failure, then his body collapsed in a heap. He could not even scream as he suffered.Ishtar lowered her hand as she kept walking, pink eyes burning with an unholy light, her body wreathed in the shroud of her quirk. She was at full power for the first time in years and she would not waste an instant of it. One man shouted as she drew close enough for her body's light to draw their attention. He turned and fired a shot from his rifle. The bullet dissolved in the air as the radiation burned the soft metal it was made of into nothing more than dust. More shouted, more guns fired, more bullets dissolved. She raised her left hand this time, palm down, and a pair of ribbons of light lanced out from her body.One man screamed, a pale tendril grasping his arm as the radiation began to rot his flesh on contact. He howled in agony when she pulled, ripping the limb off and casting it aside. Though he was far more fortunate than his friend who had been pierced through the chest by a tendril, the ribbon sending radiation through his entire soon-to-be corpse, blood vessels exploding in his eyes as his veins turned black while he rotted from the inside out. Panic settled in as one shouted; "ISHTAR! IT'S ISHTAR!"Ishtar bore her teeth, "That's right. I am here." She hissed, sweeping her hand to the left and releasing a pulse of white light that washed over the remaining eight men. They buckled, their bodies wracked with fatigue and ache but managed to force themselves to stand. She sneered and broke into a run, charging forward. More shouts, more confusion. She pirouetted, dipping low and bringing her right hand up and across a chest. Screams, the smell of rotting flesh, she turned and pointed her finger, a narrow beam of light pierced a man between the eyes. She clicked both heels to the ground and released a spray of needles, her victim collapsed to the ground, his hands raised in a plea for mercy. She turned around, more men aimed their weapons at her, their backs to the cloud of tear gas and whatever was inside. She tilted her head;"Are you afraid?" She asked.She rose to her feet."So were those children." She said, and moved in, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. | TAG WORDS NOTES
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Post by DrTentacles on Aug 12, 2020 20:20:18 GMT -4
Quick, ugly, and brutal. Four wiry arms, brown smeared with red to the elbow. Easy. Easier than thinking, or remembering. Kafka hadn’t always fought like that. Once, Kafka had believed in books, and logic, and the power of arguments and better ideas. But now? His arguments were so-called “last of kings,” ration regalium. His premise was a knuckle-spike, red to the fingers in a cop’s chest. His retort, the bark of his stolen revolver as an officer turned at the noise of his partner collapsing. His defense was the spray of ichor that splattered on the concrete of the waterfront as the next two riddled him with bullets, finishing remarks the flutter of his ragged wings as he surged forward, catching the barrel of gun in hand, squeezing until he felt the bones of the holder break in his hand.
Instinct, clarity. Perhaps it was simply because he was deathless that he felt like a sleepwalker. This was no longer exciting, nor did it horrify.
His attention was on the other size of the bridge, on the smell of ozone, and something unfamiliar. Frost?
A woman’s voice. "Kneel. Pray. Weep."
“Umeki! Good evening!” He called out, voice booming, his eyes fogging over for a moment.
Such artful death.
For a moment, Kafka stood transfixed, ignoring the remaining cops even as a few more shots ripped through his body, or bounced off his carapace. He took a deep, deep breath, then coughed as the tear gas burnt his lungs, jarred back to the present.
Unkind. Rude.
The roach man dashed forward, grabbing a fallen riot helmet from the ground, slamming it into the face, then stomach, of the first cop he encountered. He shoved another into the water, limbs quick, jerky, maniacal, frantic. Spikes for the next. A shoulder-check into the concrete for the next. Alleyway brawling, ugly and deadly. A heatbutt, a nose crunching under his brow, then blood salty and hot in his mandibles. Grab a gun, fire it, then pound the butt into a jaw until he felt bone twist and shattered. Shove his fingers up a cop’s nose, and pull. And keep moving, and hitting.
Until there were no more cops to hit.
Then Kafka stood, panting, arms limp at his sides, cloak soaked with fresh blood, at the base of the tunnel.
A hunchback goliath with a single, giant misshapen arm started at him from under the bridge, eyes wide in fear, and confusion.
Kafka raised his hand and waved. Manners make man. Someone had said that once, hadn’t they? Best to be polite after murder.
“Haha! That was joke!” He said boisterously, holding out a hand to shake.
The goliath-arm stared at him, confusion deepening, slowly starting to think he’d found a madman.
Suddenly, Kafka spotted her on the other side of the bridge. Wrapped in white light. Masked. Familiar, but strange.
His laughter stopped, and he felt himself grin. A grimace, really, stretching across his face.
Before the mutant he’d “saved” (or any of their friends) could say more, Kafka’s wings buzzed, and he flew forward, bursting out of the tear gas like a ragged angel, right in front of Ishtar.
He twisted into a bow in midair, face flashing in her radioactive helllight, old, scarred, and twisted, grimacing like a loon.
“REJOICE!” He called out, pulling off his hat, and sweeping into a deep bow.
When he came up, he was holding a stolen gun, point it at Ishtar’s stomach. “FOR YOU ARE HERE!”
SHOW ME! SHOW ME UMEKI!
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506 Posts
3 EP
EXP
Total
25 Years
Female
"Ishtar"
Bandit-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Sonya Chernova on Aug 13, 2020 0:40:05 GMT -4
The devastation that the Bleak Goddess left in her wake was undeniable. Corpses twitched on the ground, flesh rotted, and pain, so much pain. Ishtar paid it no mind. Her thoughts focused on destroying those who would oppress her children. Yes. Those youths were hers. They would be hers. She bore her teeth as she drew closer to the policeman on the ground, he struggled with his weapon but all it did was click uselessly. She drew her hand back, eyes spinning rapidly, and was about to bring it down when something... huge landed on top of him. Crushing the hapless man in an instant.
Ishtar staggered back, wide eyes spinning rapidly, trying to take in the full scope of what she was looking at. The...thing...no the man before her was grotesque but magnificent in one breath. HIs body was twisted and broken and injured but still... whole. Strangely whole. She could feel it. How far away from death he was. The sensation made her... uncomfortable. He looked down at him as he called out to her with a twisted, insane grimace.
"REJOICE!" He bowed, sweeping the ground and drawing off his hat.
Her eyes narrowed and her lips raised in a sneer. She drew her quirk around herself like a veil, wreathing her body tightly. Her sneer erupted into a snarl when he rose;
"FOR YOU ARE HERE!" He fired the shot. She cupped her hand at her abdomen. At point blank range she had to concentrate a bit harder for a bullet. Her hard light wasn't ready to handle this kind of damage just yet. She hissed as it sizzled in a burst of pale white light, frost wreathing her fingers. The bullet dissolved and fell to the ground as so much blackened dust. She shot her gaze up at him, silver dripping from her eyesockets. The mercury again. Her god damn quirk was failing her...again... not now. Not now. She bore her teeth and pushed harder, drawing on her strength and projecting outward.
She rose to her full, if diminutive, height and looked at him as if he was the insect he appeared to be.
"Who are you?" She demanded, releasing a solid pulse of radiant death from her body. The cold chill of cell death eating way at the bodies caught up in the wave. "What the hell do you want?!" She howled, her fingers tensed and ready to lash out at him with ribbons of white violence if that's what was necessary. | TAG WORDS NOTES
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