Fandom Belle Reve Means "Sweet Dreams" // Suicide Squad RP // RP Thread

[Aviator]

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In one of the infinite universes created by Barry Allen's tampering with time, General Zod has successfully killed the legendary Kal-El, known as Superman to the public. During this time, mankind is beginning to understand time travel only at its barest bones, but they know enough to realize that in 98% of universes, General Zod is successful in his attempted invasion to dominate Earth and subjugate humans to Kryptonian will. In a last-ditch attempt to save Earth 1966 from meeting the same fate as so many of its predecessors, the guardians of Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary have reached a crucial (but not altogether novel) decision: Just as the Suicide Squad was once deployed to thwart Enchantress and destroy the Jotunheim laboratory in alternate timelines, a different ragtag group of criminals, supervillains, and psychopaths will be deployed against the invading Kryptonian force. How the Belle Reve authorities justify such ridiculousness, you ask? Well, since in 98% of timelines military intervention fails anyway, it's time for a different solution; most importantly, one in which low-life criminal scum are at stake, rather than American war heroes. As was the case in previous timelines, the criminals enlisted in this likely death trap are being bribed with reduced sentences... and supervillains have a convenient knack for bloodlust, anyway. Should they egregiously disobey their superiors' orders at any time and go rogue, they will be destroyed via the nanobomb implanted in their necks.

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Setting: Modern-day Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana… although the prison has miraculously managed to keep details of its location hidden from all inmates, current and former thus far. Only the prison staff—who as you can imagine go through a highly rigorous selection process—know where to find Belle Reve on a map. As aforementioned, this RP is located in Earth 8344, a universe in which all of the Justice League have fallen at the hands of General Zod’s forces.

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Characters: In terms of characters, my only request is that everyone play an OC… in other words, no canon characters other than our villain of all villains, General Zod and cronies. Even Amanda Waller and Rick Flag do not exist in this universe, or if they do they are not associated with Belle Reve. The prison houses a completely different group of inmates and is operated by completely different staff. You may play as either inmates, guards, or both! All non-NPC guards will accompany the Suicide Squad on their mission as their handlers. In accordance with the DCU and DCEU, your characters may indeed have superpowers or just be normal humans with a penchant for troublemaking on a large scale. All that I ask is that your character not be too OP with their powers and have a few legitimate weaknesses, either physical, psychological, or some combination thereof.

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Rules and expectations: While it’s not required that you’ve seen or read the DCU/DCEU to join this RP, please be aware that it is the source material! It definitely can’t hurt to familiarize yourself with a few comics or movies, but we will also be willing to help out newcomers to understand the universe as necessary. On another note, please be aware that this is an advanced RP, so 3+ paragraphs per post! It’s A-okay if English isn’t your first language, but please do try your best with spelling and grammar unless it pertains to dialogue. Please be able and willing to post on the RP thread at least once every two weeks; don’t make me have to hunt you down for RP posts. Lastly, feel free to come up with NPCs and side plots on the fly! I love RPers who have an imagination and take initiative to keep the story rolling!

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Inmates: (6/∞)
- Rachel Livesey // "Imago" // Parasite Queen
- Violettin Hojo // "Cadenza" // Musical Ghoul
- Adam Shirazi // "Green Thumb" // Photosynthetic Scientist
- Sebastian Park // "Flux" // the Face-Stealer
- Shi Cavillo-Holmes // "Moon Prism" // Rainbow Rider
- Liling // "Verdigris" // Artificial Acrobat

Guards: (3/∞)
- Nouvelle Tiamo // "Shine" // Shamanic Supersoldier
- Levina Noe // "Maelstrom" // Lightning Goddess
- Cyrus Njeri // "Janhari" // Scourge of the Seas
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[Aviator]

Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri // “Janhari” // Age 30 // Interdimensional Messenger // Former Privateer
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The ex-privateer formerly known as the feared Janhari and nowadays humbly referred to as Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri, was preparing himself, mentally and physically, for what was simultaneously one of his favorite and least favorite duties of his newish post. Favorite because the fact that he had been chosen for it cemented his importance and trustworthiness in Warden Hallows’s eyes, this appointment as her knight of choice. It made him look good. Coveted. Least favorite because of, well, pretty much everything else.
Interdimensional travel itself was—at best—disorienting, and it was common for those new to the experience to lose their lunches all over their shoes. At worst, if done improperly, it could result in severing one’s appendages across numerous galaxies like a grisly scavenger hunt, and while it was possible to reconnect the severed parts once reunited with the main body, one such scavenger hunt had never been completed successfully. In 2011 Dr. Brody Allison and his team had proven as much when they’d recovered the leg of a comrade who’d suffered simultaneous severance and reattached it to his body, but the team had been lost while trying to hunt down the nose, eye, ring and middle fingers on the right hand, and the entire lower left arm of their fallen comrade, never to be seen again. Allison and his team had been regarded as pioneers and tragic heroes of their field ever since. Needless to say, great care was taken in all future attempts at interdimensional travel to avoid simultaneous severance.
Technically, it wasn’t sanctioned by the United States government, meaning that there was a lot of grayness where its legality was concerned. Although there was a widespread attempt to squirrel away evidence of its existence from the public eye, a considerable fraction of government representatives made their opinions known to top military officials on the topic, arguing for caution and the unnaturalness of beings traveling back and forth across worlds and timelines in which they hadn’t been born. But Warden Hallows had selective hearing when it came to receiving orders of those above her. She seemed to rule Belle Reve with the mentality that it was her private island isolated from the rest of the world, so she was exempt from a lot of the rulings that came from up top. Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri thought her logic for such boldness went something like this: If Belle Reve Penitentiary were to come under thorough investigation, other breaches of law that were being committed on a daily basis would make the penalty for occasional interdimensional travel look like a day at the sauna.
Unbeknownst to her, she and Cyrus were rather alike in this way. Cyrus had already come to terms with the fact that, should she crash and burn for arranging missions to other universes, he was going down with her for acting as her emissary. His decision to implicate himself alongside her had been easy, really. It came down to whom he had more reason to be afraid of: Warden Hallows, whose dark hand of fate hovered over him every day of the four months he’d been stationed at Belle Reve, ready to come down with divine retribution at the smallest excuse, or the United States government in the nebulous future on a variety of conditions. All in all, such logic had culminated in his decision to act as her emissary (wherein he’d only been given the illusion of choice), but what she didn’t know was that he was more than just a messenger between worlds. Sometimes he was also a smuggler.
The target location today was Earth 8657, one of Hallows’s favorite partners for gathering information on multiversal threats and bargaining on the off chance that interdimensional trade was more widely accepted than Cyrus’s private back-alley deals one day in their lifetimes. Cyrus, however, despised this alternate timeline, and as disillusioned as he was with mankind as he knew it, Earth 8657 was living proof that the human race’s potential for depravity and injustice was endlessly deep and twisted. He felt a vague sort of gratitude not to have been born into Earth 8657, painted over by a top coat of wanting to burn that whole world down from the ground up.
Essentially, Earth 8657 was a warped timeline in which Napoleon conquered Western Europe in 1819, instead of suffering exile on the island of Saint Helena. Rather than be paraded in chains through the street, the British monarchy fled to their American colonies, which they’d retained after quashing the rebellion that had failed to make history as the American Revolution. Due to America’s sheer size and being in the center of all their smaller colonies, it made for a convenient home base after a short yet brutal series of executions of the leaders of the American rebellion and local government officials. The country was renamed Castillon, after the battle that had ended the Hundred Years’ War in England’s crushing defeat, as a warning against future hubris that would end in downfall. The royal family had ruled ever since, and Castillon, the E.U., and the Chinese Federation were the three dominant superpowers in the world, all of them set on ruthless campaigns of imperialism.
While interdimensional travel may have been accomplished by additional means unknown to the inhabitants of Earth 1966—the one Cyrus knew as home—the way that Cyrus had been using it under Hallows’s direction involved taking an object from the target world and crushing it so that its “essence” was expelled. Then, one stepped through a mirror within the next few seconds, which would reopen to the exact location throughout the multiverse that the item had been collected. This method produced several inconveniences, the main one being that it was exceedingly difficult to travel to new, unexplored worlds. Unless, of course, one of that world’s interdimensional travelers was intercepted on this planet and a relic from their world was won in a friendly tavern game of dice. Or, more likely, a bag was thrown over their head and they were tossed into a dark car with tinted windows, never to be seen again, every last item they’d been carrying preserved in a vault not unlike those within Fort Knox until the time for usage arose.
Today, the goal of the mission Hallows was sending him on was to acquire as much information about a semi-precious gemstone native to the unique soil of Castillon, viridium, and what might Emperor Maximilian be willing to trade it for. The bluish-green stone was all the rage there, regarded as a status symbol fashioned into jewelry, ornaments, ceremonial weapons, and incorporated liberally into the design of new mansions.
It was an old room in an old building that Cyrus stood in. Plunged several stories below the ground, it was circular and made entirely of stone, reminding him of the bottom of a well. Similar to the bottom of a well, the only audible sounds were an endless dripping of water, making the whole room smell of stale moisture and a light coat of mildew, and the scuffing of his own boots. Both these sounds produced a slight echo. Cyrus reached inside one armhole of his coat and turned it inside-out several times until settling on a side that he deemed respectable: a simple black coat lined with silver thread and two columns of silver buttons. It was his preferred choice for Castillon, to avoid offending the local royals or drawing attention. Fitting snugly on his hands was a pair of black leather gloves. If one stared closely, one would be able to deduce that the fingers on his right hand were slightly longer than those on his left, with massive knuckles and joints.
The mirror he stood before was no gilt-framed masterpiece. Rather, it was the cheap, skinny kind that you buy at Walmart for twenty bucks with a plastic blue frame and hang on the back of a college dorm door and not care about too much when it got stained with various kinds of residue. Well, in this case, he would care, since a cracked or overtly stained mirror made interdimensional travel impossible, and a somewhat sloppily maintained one made it risky. And Cyrus Njeri did not want to go the way of Brody Allison’s comrade, his body dissected and scattered across myriad worlds.
Straightening his coat and spending the better part of a minute ensuring that he looked respectable, his dreads tied back in a loose ponytail, Cyrus opened one gloved hand to reveal a daisy. The tiny flower was rumpled slightly from having been kept in a pocket, yet miraculously unwilted in the two weeks since Cyrus’s last visit to Earth 8657, due to preternatural means he did not understand. Then, very deliberately, he crushed it in his palm. Visibly, the mirror did not change, reflecting Cyrus’s raven-black coat and the colorless stone behind him. But when he pressed against it with a hand, and then with a foot, concentric ripples spread out in slow waves, as if it were a pond made of semi-liquid metal.
But this time there were no sharp metal buildings poking into the sky like the prongs of a crown, topped by the glorious Citadel where the royal family lived. There were no cars gliding along the roundabout in which the fountain statue of a long-dead empress brandishing two crossed swords was nestled. There was no trolley merrily clipping along the cobblestones, and there was none of that strange, slightly burnt caramel popcorn smell that he had come to associate with Castillon.
Instead, there was devastation as far as he could see.

 

[BuggaBoo]

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Shi - The Rainbow UNICORN!!

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In Shi's Cell...

A sharp inward hiss she let out. Dang, was it ever swelling up fast. Another wince as she wiped at her puckered lips, clearing it of the excess blood. The taste of copper illicited a disappointed click from out the side of her mouth. A heartbeat later, she spat blood into the stainless steel basin. Great. The insides of her lip and gums were still bleeding.

But Shi knew that if anyone knew who she really was-- what she reeeeeeally was when not the little tatted up rainbowy headed girlie, then yeah, the beatdown should have been worse. Much, much worse. The Not-Shi had soooooo many enemies in here. They just didn't know it.

Speaking of worse...

Blue eyes popped wide as she looked over her shoulder in the shined up slab of metal that passed for a mirror. 3 orange-jumpsuit figures moved into her cell. 2 blocked out the entrance. Great. They were all guys. Big, bad inked up dudes too. Co-ed cell blocks cuz yay feminists wanted equality. Ughs. This place sucked.

"Eyoooo... fellas. I don't think this is my cell. I don't remember owning a little rainbowy squeeze toy to chew up in here."

The sounds of barking hyena laughter sent chills down her spine. It was 'Bricks and his Boyz.' She was trapped and alone in the midst of these mangy scavengers.

**TW: inappropriate conduct
Shi grit her teeth to steel her nerves. But nothing could stop her from feeling the slimy cringe as 'Bricks' himself hunkered down and slid up close and personal behind her. And like the gentleman he was, the mountainous ogre inhaled noisily and deeply, a finger's width away from nape of her neck. Slowly savouring her scent, he traced all the way to top of her scalp. The little multi-colour headed thing failed to supress a nervous squeak of disgust as calloused ham sized hands clutched greedily at her waist. Both her tan hands balled into fists, knuckles white soon thereafter. A rough sound just could not help but rumble from her throat; a sound not unlike one desperately keeping projectile vomit at bay.

Oh, how she wished she kept her goddamn'd eyes shut. But instead, her chin raised ever so slightly and through flickering lashes Shi dared a glance at the reflection of that man towering above her in the shined up slab of metal that passed for a mirror. And there she met his shark's eyes. So terrible were those black, predatory eyes, framed by that red hot, sweaty face. Thirsty with desire, dripping with intent to do many, many unspeakably bad things to her. Shi forced herself to break away from his penetrating stare and her eyes fell upon the the tattoo high up on his cheek. A tool of some kind...? No. A hammer and nail.

"Time to make my squeezy toy squeal..."

Ughs. If only she could shift, she'd pound him into a bloody pulp like a hammer, horn piercing him like a rocket launched nail. But instead...

"Clear the cell, inmates. You are in clear violation of several codes of conduct," the voice reverberated from behind them, wafting into all ears, dead calm yet diamond firm. A promise so dangerous and feminine, "Clear this cell and no citations nor playtime revoked. I don't tell you twice. Now move it."

Bricks tossed Shi aside like a ragdoll. She bounced off the concrete wall and landed awkwardly on the floor. He then turned, cracked his knuckes and spat at the floor near Shi, "Whatcha gunna do, Wizzie? You ain't shit without your broth--aaaaaarghAYAAAAAAAAGHHHH!!"

It was cold. So cold in here now. And black. Shi rolled over to her hands and knees. Several blinks she took, shaking her head to clear out the cobwebs. Once she managed to look up, her jaw drooped low as everyting around her was sucked into what looked like a negative black and white picture. The 3 men were writhing around on the floor, their bodies rippling with static like a broken TV from the 80's . Ghostly black rocks pelted them but did not bounce off their bodies. They sizzled as they melted into them only to worm back out and wriggle away like rabid black tentacles. The guard seemed to siphon them into her body, dark hair flowing up and away from her shoulders, arms waving about like a maestro presiding over an orchestra of chaos. Entranced, the diminutive inmate crawled closer and grunted her way up to a kneeling position. Curiosity bit her just then and she reached out to catch one of the black stones--

"Touch my hail and end up like them. I don't tell you twice. Eff around and find out, inmate." black energy exploded out of the guards eyes as she glared at Shi.

As if scorched, Shi recoiled back her hand and held it clasped at her chest. Her eyes slowly averted the abyssal gaze and turned towards the floor. Dark eyebrows furrowed as she witnessed the inmates screaming in silent throes, victims of body wracking pain. Blue eyes lit up as ahe regarded Bricks in particular. A small smile of wicked satisfaction could not help but pull up at the corners of her mouth. Wait. Was he getting smaller?

Just as quickly as it began, the negative image photo world disappeared. Shi was left in blackness alone with the nega-energy manipulating guard.

"You okay, inmate?"

"Uuuhhhh... yeah. Yeah, well like I am now. Hurtin like somethin fierce right now, but gunna live. Thank you. Like soooo much."

"Who gave you the fat lip?"

"I uhhh... well, I... it was... I. Sorry but I.. I don't know who."

Black energy just crackled as she stared at Shi. But the guard knew what 'I don't know who' really meant. Snitches get stiches and all that.

"Ey. Eyo this is like twice now you just showed up and intervened. But wow, like i din't expect you to go all out on Bricks and them. Sooooo... why me?"

The enveloping blackness evaporated like a waking dream, returning all to the normalcy of her cell she called home for the past 2 months. "Get to infirmary. You have 2 minutes at most."

"Hey but wait! I--"

"I don't tell you twice." The guard took a breath before doing an about face and stutting out the entryway For good measure, she started kicking the 3 men's feet to them hurry up as they crawled out from Shi's cell.

"Gotcha. Ey. I appreciate you. Uhhh... 'Wizzie,' right?"

Both females stood bolt upright. Shi felt like she said something wrong. The guard did not turn around.

"I don't let anyone get away with calling me that. The name's Wither. I'll give you a redo cuz... 'Innie.'"

Shi caught the hand towel Wither had tossed at her. A heartbeat later, the last word the guard spoke registered in her thick rainbowy head. Shi's jaw dropped once more.

"90 seconds, inmate..."

A literal bite of the tongue. It was better for all questions to wait for later cuz 'I don't tell you twice' and all that. "Yeeeeah... Yeah, okay I see you, Wither. I see you."

Shi took one last glance behind her, pressing the towel to her mouth. A sigh then she half limped, half ran hell for leather to the infirmary.

In the infirmary waiting room...​

The moment she entered through the door with the cracked transluscent window, Shi paused and shook her head. Images of Bricks and his Boyz flashed through her mind. A before-and-after splitscreen finally made its way into the clearing of her thick skull. Yeah, all 3 were definitely smaller. The guard really did earn her name; Wither. But how could a guard know about 'Innie...?!' Shi never knew anyone who could siphon--

Blue eyes popped wide, spine straight like an exclamation point. Neath her breath: "Noooooo... wait. Wut? Could that be...? Naw, man, I mean..."

Shi turned around and stared out the open door. Dark eyebrows shot upward at what she saw. Hunchbacked, she scuttled over, gingerly grasped the handle and closed the door behind her. But gently so as to not attract any attention; more of Brick's Boyz were prowling the hallways. As if it would help her go incognito, Shi pulled up her orange lapels as she shuffled over to the elevated reception desk. As if she thought she was some kinda super stealthy spy, the young woman pulled the towel from her mouth, deepened her voice and spoke in a gravelly, harsh whisper giving up her Belle Reve inmate number. "...and I'm here reffered by Agent Wither."

"'Agent'? What are you playin at, girl? You think you a spy for Warden Hollows? On the DL, on a covert mission? Psssshhh...! C'mon, now. Stop playin. So. Whachu want?"

"Facial laceration, blunt trauma to the head, internal oral bleeding, possible concussion, lumbar--"

"Yoooo... slow down there, Wikipedia. Just tell me in plain english. And giiiiirl, puh-lease. Real talk; can we stop with the: "I'm Batman...!" voice?"

Shi sighed, shoulders slumped, cheeks pink not because she got punched. "Ahem. I gots curbstomped. Okay...? Sheesh."

"Another Beta Null getting beat down... what else is new? Go on take a number and take a seat..."

"Ey! Yo! Chill..." Shi got up on her tippy-toes to inspect the name tag of the middle-aged woman behind the desk "...'Edna', is it? I am sooooo not a Numbie. Listen, I am somebody--"

"Riiiiight... Spoken just like a legit Numbie. A beta one for real, for real-- Nuh-uh-uh-uhhhh! Don't you try that attitude with me! Listen. I don't see Wither here, sis. You really wanna press me into revoking your referral...?! Din't think so. Now. Take a damn number and sit your ass down, inmate!"

An exasperated rough exhale of disdain. But Shi didn't argue. She just snatched a number, grumbled little 4 letter words, dragged her feet on over to the cracked yellowed leather seat and flumped on down. A full on face palm and extended groan she let fly as she compared her number to that of the one on the red digital read out board.

"Bruh. What the actual eff in the face. I'mma be here till next Tuesday...!"

"Is that attitude...?!"

Another rough exhale of disdain as she closed her eyes. A deep breath then both tan palms collected her rainbowy haired head, trying to will the world to just go away. But the erroneous pain all across her body and face kept her in the here and now. Shi just had to whine out her distaste.

"This place sucks..."

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[PlusUltra]

Field Officer Deckard shifted his gaze to a half-empty bottle of scotch that rested on his table before returning his attention to the files in front of him to review once more.



Outside of the initial processing and orientation, Prisoner 24601-T had strangely been the model prisoner much to the continued frustration of the criminal psychologists who had been part of the teams assigned to her capture. For all their assessments, they had been of little use in stopping her or her team in their crimes, the hundreds of hours spent planning her capture had proven to be wasted when just as she seemed to accomplish her ultimate goal she just gave herself up, and the profile was completely different from the girl without the mask. No large-scale sting operation, no big flashy raid or takedown, absolutely nothing they could use to redeem the countless failures that had come before. The fact she was finally behind bars should have been a point of celebration, but they couldn't even claim a real win since with her last act she had stolen it away, and her entire team had vanished completely!. The field office swear jar had overflown that day.

Deep down some of them had hoped this had all been a trick, the evaluation that a entire city had been taken over by a damn teenager made them look ridiculous. even the mug shot and background were just too damn normal, a lost and uncomfortable girl that even he struggled to believe was the infamous warlord of the Bay that took out the Amazon of all people. Maybe they had been outsmarted again? The real Imago had just given their costume to a fall girl and mimicked the powers? Hygieia pulling some crazed power BS to fool the DNA? or did she have some Jekyll and Hyde power as well that had been missed?.

The opening the reports of the first day in prison threw most of that away but instead raised new questions. One from a power egghead showed that outside of all the biological fuckery Hygieia had pulled on the girls body, all they found in relation to powers was several weird signals coming from her brain but they were still certain it was in fact Imago.

An attached report showed while an inhibitor collar had been fitted regardless and no reactions were shown from insects within her proximity, the entire prison compound had been 100% insect-free shortly before her arrival. So now they didn't even know if the fancy necklace even worked!. Just the mere existence of the girl was an ever-escalating headache to him.

Back to the "model prisoner" reports, she had been respectful and reserved spending most of her free time either reading or writing with provided...there must have been an error here. The images showed the girl writing with a quill of all things and ink from a small paper cup but nowhere on the list of items given to her were either of those. Sure a quill could have just fallen from a passing bird but where did she get the ink?. Christ this was going to give him an aneurysm, what was she even writing? The number of papers stacked up was thicker than War and Peace.

He logged that for later, he was getting distracted. The only incident report he could find that marred the perfect model prisoner record had been a report from the first day with an attached video. An altercation between one Przemyslaw Frankowski and Imago within general population led to the former mans hospitalization. Pressing play on the video showed the bane of his existence walking casually along to her cell before being stopped by a man over seven feet and nearly as wide. Words were shared, there was no Audio but the expressions on the faces gave a good idea of what it was about. Imago was fresh meat with a reputation that didn't fit her appearance, Przemyslaw was all about appearance in the prison, so the standard shakedown of new meat.

When the large man's hand came to rest on Imagos shoulder, it was then that he once again saw the Villain that had occupied him for the better part of a year. He couldn't help but wince before the video ended with Imago walking away, Przemyslaw in a fetal position on the floor, and a good amount of the remaining population giving her space. It then seemed like the Video feed was the only thing that saw anything that day from questioning the other inmates.

Deckard poured himself another drink, once again this was going to take all night to go through.

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Rachel was carrying out another day of her self-imposed exile within the walls of Belle Reeve, the place she needed to be. Her orange prison jumpsuit was furled down and tied around her waist as she continued to write at her desk in the cramped cell.

She wondered how the others were doing, Sarah should have gotten them somewhere comfortable by now, Taylor would have wanted somewhere rural, and Riley likely the same, Sarah, Madison and Tammi thought loved the more urban city life so that meant good transport links on the outskirts of a metropolitan area. Far away from Badger Bay, but still in America, likely more north too in event something went wrong.

Sarah would have considered all the details and more, but if she had to take a guess...Detroit would fit. She really have would liked to have joined them there now her home was safe, but as much as she wanted that she couldn't, her actions had a price and she needed to be here, to be able to do the work until they could see each other once more.

Leaning back on her chair she cast her gaze to the ceiling letting her thoughts wander before deciding on taking a break from her work. Pushing her chair neatly back in she laid down on the floor and began to go through her exercise routine as she simply detached. Her body in motion, her mind would be reaching past the countless entities within her vast view to the waters as she simply listened.

 

[Jigajig]

Levina
Location: Unknown/Belle Reve Gym
Interactions: N/A



The sea crashed below, rolling back and forth so far below, the sound carrying upwards to the edge of cliff. Upon said cliff a figure watches the sea. Watches the waves. Watches as the clouds roll and run. They watch it all from the perch on the edge of the world. The figure stood still, arm raised slightly, index and middle finger by their ear as message is relayed to them via a link. One whole hour to wrap this up. The figure sighed and then turned their attention to to the figure standing a good thirty feet away. They were holding their arm as it bled, specks dropping down upon the floor. "The Crimson Blade" wanted criminal and super villan. Their opponent, Levina Noe, Captain at Belle Reve, Deity and all round good person. "This isn't going to end well for you, you know if you keep on resisting. It would be better if you surrendered!" The Crimson Blade merely stood there before rolling their shoulder and seemingly popping their shoulder back into place. Sighing Levina shook her head as she tightend her gauntlets. "Well.. don't say I didn't warn you.." In a blink and you'd miss it moment, both figures suddenly moved at speed towards each other. Drawing back opposing fists they met one another coming to a standstill. Nothing happend at first... that was until the ground under them cracked, and suddenly split, a crater being created from the result. A shockwave rippled through the air as their fists hit one another, dust exploding forth. They drew back and traded more blows. Blow after blow, the two fighters going at it with a ferocity that shook the foundation of the ground they stood upon.

Levina's oppenent suddenly ducked and delivered a deft uppder cut to her jaw, sending her reeling backwards. As she staggered, they spun on the heel and booted her in the chest. Levina went skidding backwards her heels digging into the dirt as she stedied herself. The Crimson Blade was already upon her charging and going in for a punch. Levina struck out and with a quick twist of her body grabbed her adversary's neck and hoisted them into the air, before slamming them down into the ground, the resulting devastaion paramount as the ground exploded beneath them, a massive crater being formed. Letting go Levina rose her arm into the sky. "I think I've played around enough.. time to take you down."

Lighting cracked over her hand as an arc shot into the sky, spreading through clouds. Grinning she curled her hand into a fist before suddenly striking, slamming into her foe's face. As she did a bolt of lighting rained down from the sky, as if God has decided to rain holy judgement down upon this villian. The Crimson Blade's armour cracked and then broke as their body was wracked with Lighting. She sighed as she looked down at her foe. Tapping the side of her helmet she noted the time. "Heh... only took ten minutes" Hauling the unconcious foe over her shoulder she then proceeded to leave the area.




Some time later


"Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine... Ten thousand" With a sigh a rather tall imposing figure dropped down from the metal bar they were doing pull ups on. A resounding thud resonated through the gym as said figure hit the mat below them, followed by one more thud, then another and another as numerous weights were removed from their body hitting the floor. "Need to up the limit.." Glancing around the gym the figure made a move to the changing room. This figure was Levina a guard a Belle Reve, or to be more precise the department captain. Levina had only joined Belle Reve not that long ago, having been there for a short time and yet here she was overseeing quite a fair bit. She had been recruited personally by Warden Hallows, not long after Levina had taken down a rather powerful individual in a highly telivsed fight that had occured in a remote location. The fight had lasted about ten hours with Levina claming victory in the end. After that she found a letter adressed to her at her home. The rest was history.

After changing Levina made her way through the halls of Belle Reve. Passing through yet another hallway she made her way, walking with purpose hands clasped behind her back. Her gaze ran over each cell door she passed, makng some mental notes for later. As she walked her shoes tapped upon the ground, the clicking the only sound within the halls. She made her way to her office and entered, sitting down behind her desk. Opening a drawer and pulling out some files, she proceeded to review them, going over various inmates profiles. It was quite impressive the amount of people here and the variation too. She leaned back into her seat and gazed at the clock upon the wall. She wondered to herself if anything new was going to come in..

 

[Aviator]

Liling // “Verdigris” // Age 9 // Inmate // Artificial Intelligence // Cat Burglar and Pianist
​

Spades was a simple game, with simple rules: Make your bets, so you wouldn’t have to pay up when you lost. And then, if you lost, pay up or get beat up. Of course, there was a little more nuance to it than that, but like all stakes games, this was at its fundamental core.

They were playing with a lovely wolf-themed deck of playing cards, the backs depicting a crimson wolf’s head surrounded by smoky coils of gray, gold, and red, bordered by a fanged maw. Perhaps lovely wasn’t the right word to describe the deck’s artwork so much as edgy with strong undertones of emo, but Liling tried to appreciate the little things within the stone-cold, drafty walls of Belle Reve. It was the little things or nothing, she’d come to learn, and sadly, her pathetic existence had devolved to the point where few things excited her more than playing with a novelty deck of playing cards that she hadn’t seen before.

Unlike some stakes games, spades was a partners game. You worked with the player across from you to achieve your bets, and if possible, to “set” your opponents, meaning make it impossible for them to do the same so that they were penalized. The scorekeeping was a little mind-boggling to new players, but it was nowhere near as complicated as bridge, a game that Liling still didn’t fully comprehend despite having all the free time in the world to learn. She just wasn’t that interested.

Her partner for this game was the lovely, mysterious Sebastian Park. His features were angular, androgynous, and perfect, with midnight-black bangs that fell into his eyes. There was something mesmerizing and glorious within his molten gaze. Rumor had it that he was quite popular among the ladies—and sometimes the male inmates, too—but Liling had never been one of them. She had mixed feelings on this topic.

Of course, after a series of tumultuous love affairs that conformed to a pattern wherein Liling either killed the object of her affections, was betrayed by them to the local authorities, or both, she had forsworn further relations, both romantic and sexual. So far, she had kept this internal vow for the entirety of her stint at Belle Reve, but eighteen months was a long time for a species with such a short memory. Liling was starting to have second thoughts. Not so much because she felt lonely and hungered for companionship, but because she was bloody bored in a six-by-six cell with little to occupy her time besides card games and reruns of American Ninja Warrior.

She’d been born in a cage, and unless something drastically changed to break her out of the world’s most secure prison, it seemed she was destined to die in one, too. Assuming her prototype was ever supposed to “die.” If Sir Bryson Penhallow, OBE had programmed her with an expiration date, it was unknown to her. Or perhaps in a few decades society would move beyond the lithium batteries that sustained Liling, and she would be sentenced to an unceremonious phasing-out in which she was simply unable to find a charging place. Or, some lucky bloke with a shank would get the drop on her one day, and she’d meet a similar fate to Humpty Dumpty, with her metallic innards spilled out in a wave of silver and no engineer or mechanic knowing or caring how to put her back together again.

It used to be nigh impossible to sneak up on Liling. Except for in densely populated urban throngs, she had the ability to pinpoint exactly how many living things were around her, their relative proximity, size, and the velocity with which they were moving until they exceeded a quarter-mile radius of her. But with the inhibitor collar that was practically a staple of her uniform whenever she was permitted outside of her cell, that ability just… ceased to exist. Liling felt her power lurking in a corner of her mind, but whenever she tried to access it, it was like reaching a limb that was no longer there. Of course, it was much easier to relax without the constant flow of extrasensory information, and perhaps relaxation would have been enjoyable anywhere else but prison. As it was, however, not keeping your wits about you could get you killed. Or make you wish you had been killed.

And right now, the biggest and most immediate threat to her and possibly Sebastian’s mortality lay in the form of their spades opponents. On her left, Petra looked like a woman who might have once been beautiful, but early middle age and prison life had simultaneously softened and hardened her. Her dirty blond hair was streaked with gray and piled atop her head in a messy knot, and deep lines from a lifetime of smoking creased the tan skin around her mouth. She spoke with a Central European accent that frequently intermixed foreign swear words with English.

Across from Petra was Q, a man who appeared to be of mixed African-American and Latino descent. He was in his early thirties, had a very round head covered in dark stubble, and a heavily tattooed face. If Q was short for something, Liling didn’t know what and had learned better than to ask. Q’s typical reaction to comments or questions about his name was to bare his unusually pointed teeth and ask if the querent preferred to be struck with his open palm or backhand. Behind his back, almost everyone in Belle Reve called him Q-Tip or Quicky.

It was Q’s turn to deal the cards. As he shuffled, Petra lit up a cigarette with a lighter that she had managed to win in a past game of spades, at least until it fell under the unfortunate notice of a guard and was confiscated. Smoking cigarettes was a contagious habit, Liling had learned, because the visual stimulus made her crave one too. Of course, she probably shouldn’t be dipping into the stash that she had bet and would have to pay with if she lost, but it was her only stash. Moreover, she was short of the Cheddar Cheese Combos and Little Debbies Cosmic Brownies she had staked against her opponents’ mostly-functional CD player and radio, so she already wouldn’t have the material to pay up, regardless of the game’s outcome.

“Gimme a light?” she asked Petra, the cigarette bobbing between her lips. Petra’s only response was to grunt and reluctantly extend her lighter toward Liling, watching her with a suspicious eye as if Liling might try to snatch the hard-won lighter out of her grasp. Liling took a drag of her cigarette and relished the buzz of nicotine through her system as Q extended the cards for Sebastian to cut and dealt them.

It was Petra’s bet first, and being the player on Liling’s left, it meant that she had the informational advantage of betting last. Collecting her hand of thirteen cards, Liling turned them over. Her first impression as she sorted them by suit was the sheer abundance of clubs. Seven of them, and almost a perfect straight from three to ten minus one card. Two low spades. A singular diamond, the nine. And three hearts, the highest card in her hand being the jack of that suit. It should be an easy nil hand; the only minor security risk was that, on a diamonds book, she’d be forced to play the nine, regardless of what her partner played. But the odds were probable that Sebastian had at least one card between the ten and ace of diamonds and could cover. A bet of nil was a high-risk, high-reward strategy, in which the successful team was awarded a hundred points. However, if the player bidding nil took even one book, it was a hundred-point deduction.

When the betting reached her, they equated ten, meaning that there were three books still on the table. Liling scoffed; someone was underbetting, and it was usually Petra. Because if she tried, the most she could take with her jack-high hand was one, which, in her eyes, was a wasted bet unless absolutely necessary. “Zero,” she declared with confidence. Sebastian, their scorekeeper—likely because he was the only one in the group to have received a formal education and could add and subtract with relative ease—sustained eye contact with Liling for an uncomfortable moment. His gaze was like dark velvet, and whatever thoughts roiled in that soft blackness were betrayed only by the almost imperceptible lift of an eyebrow. Liling coached herself to breathe, and although she technically didn’t have lungs and therefore no need of air, it was a mechanism to ward off a blush. Spades forbade partners from communicating their hands to each other, verbally or otherwise, so that was the extent of their silent conversation before Sebastian turned his gaze to their scoresheet and jotted down her bet, the last one of the hand.

It was a nil that they dearly needed to pull off. They trailed Petra and Q by seventy-nine points, and if their opponents made their collective bet of seven, they would break five-hundred this hand and subsequently end the game. However, if Liling made her nil, and Sebastian made his bet of three—which shouldn’t be a problem, since there were three unaccounted books still on the table—they would end the game with a higher score and win. So it all came down to this.

The first few books passed uneventfully, and in this case, uneventfulness was a good thing. Petra and Q led with low clubs and hearts, trying to catch Liling off stride, and Sebastian played high cards when it was his lead. And then, halfway through the hand, Q played the first diamond. The six. Having no other option—you’d gotta play the suit if you had it—Liling threw down her nine with gusto, playing over him. Petra, as expected, played a four, so that the book was still Liling’s. Figuring that there were five diamonds higher than the nine and that it was likely Sebastian had at least one of them, Liling took a calm inhale of smoke as she waited for him to play. And almost choked when he threw down the two.

Petra crowed with delight. Q jackknifed to his feet and threw two victory punches, as if shadowboxing an invisible opponent. “Bitch, those combos are mine, a-haha!”

Yeah, about that… Liling thought awkwardly, her lips pinched together around her cigarette. Inarticulate shame flooded through her like a sudden fever as she reached out a hand to collect the book that wasn’t supposed to be hers but was. Her eyes met Sebastian’s, and she saw the disappointment she felt reflected in their cold, abyssal depths. She didn’t want to take accountability for her failure, but she knew if he could have covered her, he would have. She couldn’t blame him for playing the only cards he had.

Out of tradition, they played the rest of the hand, though Petra and Q’s victory was inevitable. After Q collected the last book, both he and his partner looked at Liling and Sebastian expectantly. “Time you cough up my Combos, girlie!” Q exclaimed, loud enough for a few others in the rec room to turn their heads.

“And my smokes,” Petra chimed in, her dusky accent pronouncing the s’s more like z’s.

Liling’s eyes flashed about the room, taking stock of the situation. Unfortunately, there was only one avenue of escape from the rec room, the door that led to the first-floor cell block, and Q was the closest one to it. She stood up slowly and cracked her knuckles, having a funny feeling about what was to come. Sebastian was on his knees, pushing his wagered items into the center of the circle, not paying attention to her. Liling cleared her throat conspicuously. His head snapped up.

“I don’t have ‘em,” she declared with an insouciant shrug. She wasn’t one to mince words, especially when the outcome would be a violent one no matter how diplomatically she tried to break the truth. “I’m missing the Combos—and the Little Debbies for that matter—and I’m down one cigarette. Maybe in a week I’ll have ‘em. Maybe not. You’ll be the first to know if I do.”

Q, as was his custom, drew his lips back from his teeth and began to issue a low growling noise that sounded vaguely canine. With a shiver of disgust, Liling wondered whether without the collar if he was half dog or something. Suddenly the wolf-themed playing cards made a lot more sense.

“That’s cool, dead girl,” he snarled, a throaty rasp that sounded like smoldering embers. “So long as you got blood to bleed, we’ll settle your debt here and now.” He rose into a half-crouch, and for such a stocky guy, he moved with sinuous grace. Like a predator.

Liling gave an unladylike snort, unable to resist. “Well, actually—”

But she never got to finish her retort. Out of the corner of her eye, Petra shot to her feet, and she was unsure which of her cheated opponents lunged first.

 

[youngiiie]

Sebastian Park

"Flux"

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Inmate #10406

Belle Reve

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Their worst nightmare, they still dreamin'

In a prison stuffed full of the most fearsome criminals in the world, one might wonder what Sebastian was doing mixed in with all of them. He couldn't manipulate fire or move objects with his mind. He couldn't fly or lift weights the size of a car either. So what made him so dangerous that he found himself residing in a stone cold cell in Belle Reve amongst the worst of the worst? His ability was arguably just as dangerous. While not overtly destructive like many others, he possessed an ability that if used properly, could go undetected. There was a psychological element to it and Sebastian just so happened to have the perfect mind for it. He had the ability to perfectly copy the genetics of anybody around him. He could shape himself into the perfect replica of someone from their build, to their voice, down to the amount of hair they have on their head. With a darkly twisted mind, Sebastian relished in the mental intelligence required to use his ability. He regularly walked in the lives of others, effectively playing God. He could step into the life of a millionaire and donate all of their savings to charity. If he was in a bad mood, he could cause a family to fall apart. He really had unlimited options. However, what he was caught for was theft and locked away in Belle Reve for murder.

It was only once they had arrested him inside of a bank during a failed heist that they learned of his ability. Only then did they piece together a string of murders where the suspect was never found. That was because Sebastian had shape shifted in order to evade suspicion. The fingerprints matched random men and women miles away from the scenes of the crimes. A power like his was understated yet extremely effective when placed in the hands of someone as intelligent and manipulative as Sebastian. He loved the rush of intruding into somebody else's life, playing a role, and exiting with no consequences. If he made a misstep, he'd exit just as smoothly as he entered and leave that poor unfortunate soul to pick up the pieces for actions they didn't know they committed. He had an extremely lack of empathy or care for the lives of the people he intruded upon.

Belle Reve was awful, the worst place Sebastian had ever been. Interestingly, he didn't regret the actions he committed, he instead regretted getting caught. It took one mistake in a heist to land him in the most safeguarded prison in the entire world. He was there and there to stay. Murder was no small crime and he had multiple life sentences that he was doing time for. He knew, like most of the other inmates inside, that Belle Reve was where super powered criminals came to die. You go in and you don't come out. However, Sebastian made the most of his time in prison. He worked out everyday to stay in excellent shape. He drew all over his cell, beautiful abstract designs. Sometimes he would sketch his fellow inmates. Additionally, he was popular with the male and female inmates. Pretty privilege was a real concept and especially in prison, where the pickings are slim, Sebastian stood out. That being said, the male was for the most part uninterested in the advances or occasional stares that he got. He wasn't looking for a prison husband or wife. Instead, he'd rather partake in something that challenged his mind.

That is how he found himself sitting beside an android, playing cards. He chewed gently on a toothpick that he had carved out of wood. As the game progressed in front of him, the male remained silent. He preferred to study the scene, analyzing the movements of his opponents. However, he also had to study Liling too. Considering they were not allowed to communicate with each other, he had to rely on studying her body language, the cards she placed down, and what her eyes were saying in the brief moments when their eyes met. He would be lying if he didn't look down on the two sitting across from them. Petra, a chronic smoker, sat directly across from him. If one was looking at him closely, they'd see the corner of his lips descend into the subtlest of frowns whenever she blew a puff of smoke. He did not like the smell nor did he want the unpleasant aroma lingering on his clothes when he returned to his cell. To her left and his right sat Q. Q was an intimidating man whose actions matched his words. He wasn't one to make empty threats.

Unfortunately, the cards he had were not great. While newer to the game than the others that were playing, Sebastian still knew when he was fucked. And in this moment, he could see very clearly that he was. It helped that he was the scorekeeper as he did the math in his head of what numbers he needed in order to stay afloat in the game. He and Liling had been trailing Petra and Q but if he had the right cards they could have passed them. However, Sebastian did not. He threw down a two, his lips pursed together out of frustration. He had really been hoping to win this one. The inmates didn't have a lot going for them in Belle Reve so he would take his wins where he could get them.

With a sigh, Sebastian pushed his wagered items toward Petra. It was a shame, he had really been hoping for the colored pencils Petra had wagered. They didn't have a lot to do in their cells so Sebastian passed the time by drawing and sketching on anything he could get his hands on. Sometimes it was paper, sometimes the wall, sometime himself. Hearing Liling's declaration, Sebastian froze. It was the first time all game that he had had a visible reaction to anything that had been said or done. She didn't have her wagered items? She must've had a screw loose or wire crossed because he knew Q did not play around when it came to betting. The male watched as Q and Petra lunged at Liling. For a few moments, he stood still and watched the ensuing fight. While powerless due to his collar, Sebastian missed the adrenaline rush he got from the heat of a fight. For some, they got their itch scratched from cigarettes. For Sebastian, it was adrenaline. After a moment of thought, the male made up his mind.

"Fuck it."

Sebastian removed the toothpick from his mouth and lodged it into Q's neck. It likely wouldn't kill him, but it would certainly hurt. Afterwards, he tackled Q to the ground. Q was ferocious and Sebastian had never gone up against him before. There was probably a reason for that as the man flipped them over so Sebastian was pinned on the floor. He placed his arms in front of his face to block the incoming punches. Sebastian was no stranger to a fight and Q fought like a basic thug. Not an expert in combat. Instead, he utilized his raw power to try and bludgeon his opponents until they couldn't stand. However, Sebastian bided his time as his arms bruised. When he got an opening, the male quickly landed a swift and sharp jab into the other male's throat. He didn't give Q any time to react. He landed a punch in his stomach as Q instinctively wrapped his hands around his neck. Sebastian kicked Q off of him and stood up. He glanced over at Liling, hoping she was fairing well against Petra. Q wouldn't be down for long so he was hoping that she was fine.

/* ------ credit -- do not remove ------ */

© weldherwings.

youngiiie

Aviator

 

[Aviator]

Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri // “Janhari” // Age 30 // Interdimensional Messenger // Former Privateer
​

As he took in the smoking ruins that had once been Castillon, Cyrus’s soldier instincts kicked in. Absolute terror jump-started his thoughts, and those thoughts carried his body three quick steps behind the corner of the nearest building. In retrospect, building was a generous word. While it might have been one until the very recent past, it was more like a collection of sharp, metallic edges reduced to a fraction of its original height with a distinct lean to the left. Thick clouds of smoke and plaster had rendered the air an unbreathable stew, and Cyrus’s eyes watered as he tugged the collar of his shirt up over the lower half of his face, willing himself not to cough. Whoever or whatever had leveled this city hadn’t done it long ago, and he was willing to bet that, unless a freak once-in-a-hundred-years earthquake had swept through and emergency services were just abhorrently late, the threat was still present.

Sure enough, through the fumes of destruction, something that resembled a massive black beetle squatted in the middle of the Corso, the broad storefront-filled avenue that served as the main thoroughfare in Castillon. It was a black monolith, sleek and low to the ground, at least when one compared its height to its length. Its front half jutted out like a spear, and then halfway back, its sides bulged and the roof domed, creating a spherical pocket. It sat mostly on the ground, with a slight downward slant because the rear of the ship—at least, the rounded part that Cyrus understood as its rear—was parked atop a Lexus, crushing it into the ground like a tin can amid the wail of an alarm. Blue-white lights blazed along its underside, stabbing outward like little cones of fire. And indeed a veritable puddle of metal had formed around the Lexus.

As he continued to stare, Cyrus’s astonishment gave way to absurdity. Did no one stop to think that this ship—if that’s really what it is—looks like a big black cock? Or do its pilots have such massive anatomical differences from humans that they really didn’t know any better? His levity broke off when, from some distance behind him and around the side of the building, there came an insect-like chittering, growing gradually closer. The only thing that differentiated it from a completely animalistic noise was the way it pitched up and down and paused completely for stretches of several seconds, as if the speaker were having an animated phone conversation. It reminded Cyrus of the references to demonic languages in the tales about the wicked Aicakamuyu Clan that his mother used to tell him at night, some twenty-plus years ago.

As the hissing and clicking grew louder, Cyrus flattened his back along the side of the building and inched along its perimeter. He’d only gotten two steps when his foot snagged on something and he fumbled for balance, clawing at the building for purchase. He looked down. And his heart leapt in his chest like a stick-poked frog.

The body of a maid in black-and-white skirts and lace lay facedown on cracked pavement. Or rather, her outfit had been black and white before its saturation in blood. There was a smell like burning hair, and sure enough, the ends of hers were still vaguely smoldering after she’d received a lopsided haircut. But most frighteningly of all was where her left leg ended in a bloody stump, the ground around her wet with blood. No maggots had gotten to her yet, meaning that Cyrus’s intuition had been right: The destruction had occurred recently, likely within the hour.

The voice was alarmingly close now. Moving carefully so that he wouldn’t slip on the blood, Cyrus retreated around the far corner of the building, unwilling to ambush the speaker until he knew what sort of beings he was up against. His imagination conjured up some sort of enormous scuttling thing with a dozen legs and long antennae that probed the ground, and Cyrus, a man who had sniped countless enemy combatants remorselessly, felt his stomach clench. His hand closed around the grip of a Glock on a holster at his waist, and as he thumbed back the hammer, he snuck a peek around the building, expecting to see a walking nightmare.

He was almost disappointed to find that the figure, while dressed eccentrically, was surprisingly humanoid. In fact, so humanoid that Cyrus wondered if this was really an alien invader and not some nerd that had stumbled out of Comic Con in full cosplayed regalia. It resembled a middle-aged white man with close-together eyes and pouchy jowls. He was clad in bulky black armor that would have made a knight from the Middle Ages look underdressed, and the fact that he was maintaining an effortlessly brisk pace in it was a testament to the creature’s strength. The armor must have doubled as a spacesuit, because two rows of tubelike cables encircled the neck, to which was attached a snug-fitting transparent bubble that encased his head. Cyrus’s pulse was hammering, yet he was curious to find out what exactly would happen if the bubble was compromised and the alien was exposed to Earth’s atmosphere. Forcing his hands to remain steady, he took aim with his Glock.

The alien seemed like he’d set a course for the Dick Ship. Barring his way, however, was an ambulance turned on its side, jagged teeth remaining where a windshield had once been. Making no move to sidestep the vehicle, the alien approached it head-on. He threw up an arm and proceeded to walk straight into the ambulance, giving a powerful twist of his shoulders. So powerful, in fact, that the ambulance careened down the street as if a Mack truck had collided with it, where it skidded into a white Toyota disturbingly close to where Cyrus was hiding and set another alarm to blaring. Upon impact, the corpse of a teenage girl in a magenta hijab slumped half out of the passenger-side window, her arm dripping at an unnatural angle down the side of the vehicle and eyes staring glassily.

Do not engage in hand-to-hand, Cyrus noted, bewildered, sending up a brief prayer of thanks that he hadn’t been standing two meters more to the right. He seriously hoped it was the armor that acted as a kind of super-suit, magnifying the physical abilities of the wearer by a hundredfold, because he couldn’t come to terms with such ungodly strength naturally being packed into a being about the same size as him. Also, if it were the armor responsible for the physical prowess, armor could be taken and worn by someone else. He aimed his gun again, lining the sights up with the back of the alien’s plastic-wrapped head, which appeared to be the only target with any vulnerability. Let’s see you stop a bullet from behind, motherfucker.

He was about to pull the trigger when came a voice from behind, this time in fluent but slurred English, like a college kid who’d gotten drunk for the first time. “Halt, child of man.” Cyrus whirled, pistol still brandished. Behind him was an advancing figure in black armor, this one a woman with blond hair that disappeared beneath her helmet. In her hands was one of the largest rifles that he had ever seen, some obsidian monstrosity with a sharp attachment to the barrel that was presumably for stabbing at close range. “Manchild, lay down your weapon and turn and face the building. You will not be immediately harmed for your compliance.” The female alien spoke with a strange stress pattern, alternating between accentuating the wrong syllables and not intonating at all.

Not liking the sound of immediately harmed—was this really how the space invaders negotiated with the victims of their conquest? No wonder all of Castillon had chosen to perish in the initial wave instead—Cyrus put his hands at shoulder-height. Slowly, he bent at the knees and lowered himself toward the ground, as if about to surrender his weapon. And then, with a surge of strength, he threw himself sideways and cartwheeled behind the building, cutting off her line of fire. The air where he’d been standing a half-second ago rippled with a blue wave of energy, with a low, building rumble like a plane preparing for takeoff. Leaping over the maid’s body, Cyrus ran hard, formulating a crude plan that started and ended with finding a mirror as soon as possible as he zigzagged between buildings and vaulted over debris, using obstacles to take away a shooting angle. Moving like a surgeon’s stitching needle, he darted in and out, in and out, knowing that his life depended on it.

Timetogotimetogotimetofuckinggo, he thought in a mad whirl of panic, as if his mind were in a blender. In the four months of his employment at Belle Reve, he’d seen some bizarre things, and he’d had a few run-ins with particularly dangerous inmates that had put him in the infirmary because he hadn’t comprehended the full scope of their powers until confronted with them personally. But the prison was designed with workplace safety in mind, as a lawsuit on a top-secret black-ops site just wouldn’t do. More often than not, the inmates were collared with inhibitors, cutting them off from their supernatural supply lines. Despite his monthly brush with death in the line of duty, nothing in Belle Reve had made Cyrus feel as terrified for his own mortality as he did right now.

Having been alerted to the commotion outside, a pair of heads poked out of a nearby apartment complex, which had miraculously escaped the carnage unscathed. To Cyrus’s dismay, they were two clear-bubble heads. He realized he hadn’t encountered a single living human in Castillon; they’d either all been killed or rounded up by the time of his arrival. I’ll give the aliens one thing: They move with remarkable efficiency. That maid’s body probably wasn’t even cold, he thought appreciatively. Hoping that he would have a future to bestow more in-depth appreciation upon that observation.

A new bolt of fear shot through him as the pair of aliens swung themselves over the fire escape rifle-first, dropped to one knee, and took aim between the metal bars. The guns they held weren’t as ridiculously huge as the one the blond woman had wielded, and the fact that they were taking aim between slats encouraged Cyrus that these were regular bullet-firing guns. Not plasmic vortexes that would do God-knew-what to their targets. Pelting between overturned vehicles and toppled buildings and stinking piles of bodies, Cyrus crossed the Corso and made in the direction of a train station, wondering if he should risk breaking into one of the more intact structures to find a mirror to portal back to Earth 1966. His regular communications with the Castillons over the past few months had alluded to the fact that there were more precise and convenient ways of interdimensional travel and that the Americans were a primitive race for having not figured them out, but Emperor Maximilian had seen unfit to disclose them without a suitable reward, which Warden Hallows was still working on. Primitive, maybe, but not dead, Cyrus thought bitterly, resenting the Castillon emperor’s coyness for perhaps sentencing him to death. He would have given his other hand for that knowledge right now.

Finally, on the other side of the train station, Cyrus saw the closest thing to a solution that he’d encountered so far, and he hoped close was enough. Every shard of glass he’d passed was too small for him to fit his body through, and with the alien death squad after him, he didn’t have time to play hide-and-seek for the perfect mirror. So it was time to improvise. Visible behind the chain-link fence that bordered the station was the glittering Lake Josiah, formerly known as Lake Pontchartrain until it was inevitably named after one of the great Castillon emperors, as seemingly everything in this hemisphere of this world was. The expanse of water, large enough to warrant a small sea, lapped playfully at the shore and sparkled in the midday sunlight like a trillion stars, beckoning in what Cyrus hoped was salvation.

Only two problems stood in his way: the fence, and the regrettable lack of cover the farther he traversed from the Corso. The fence was only seven feet tall, but he’d be a sitting duck scaling it, and it’d be open season during the sprint to the lake, down a steep, featureless valley. Breathing so hard his lungs felt like they were on the verge of explosion, Cyrus poured on a burst of speed and raced for the fence. He caught his foot on a fallen brick, doubled over, and somehow lurched along even faster. So fast, in fact, that he almost went through the fence rather than over it when he reached it. Frantic as a cat in a downpour, Cyrus scrambled up, ripping his palms open on the metal and not feeling it. He threw himself over the top, twisting with the motion, when a splash of blood flew up and hit him in the face. Suddenly, a burst of momentum carried him forward, clumsily, and before he could process the fact that he was flying out from the fence rather than straight down, he’d landed face-first in an overlong patch of grass.

Pain forked through him as he pushed himself up. Another stream of blood spurted out, this time running down his arm and slickening the grass. Knowing that the bullet had hit somewhere in his left bicep but not wasting time to see if it was still buried, Cyrus pushed forward, ignoring the agony that coursed through his body when he pumped his arms. Half-blinded by the sun, he tripped down the steep valley slope, lowering his center of gravity to avoid another fall. Another bullet whizzed by him, emitting a high-pitched shriek heart-stoppingly close to his ear.

Dearly hoping that his plan to use the mirror as a waypoint would work instead of his blood attracting the numerous alligators that probably called Lake Josiah home, Cyrus plunged heedlessly into the water, gripping his Glock with intent. It, just like every article of clothing he was wearing minus the many-sided coat, had been made on Earth 1966, the world where he’d once been a slave and then a privateer and currently a prison guard, and just maybe, if he lived to see it, futurely a doctor. So long as he had one item from the world he wished to travel to, the mirror portal would work. It had to.

There was an overflow of sensation. It felt like running into a wall of knives. As if his body had been shredded to bits, and then put back together too quickly. Cyrus’s vision distorted, and he was dimly aware of a sinking feeling, his long dreads suspended around him. His boots felt impossibly heavy, anchoring him through the lake too fast. His consciousness was fading, but a decade of working on ships had ingrained in him an instinct not to inhale. His lungs clamored for air. He was going down, endlessly down…

The suddenness with which the stone floor manifested beneath him made his stomach feel like it’d been shoved up into his chest. The privateer who’d once been Janhari, the bane of thieves at sea, pushed himself to his knees and retched up a stream of water on the floor of the circular chamber known as the Vanishing Point. Drops of red plashed into it, dyeing the water a nauseating pink. He stayed like that for a minute, his muscles burning and shaking and clenching and unclenching as he tried to reconcile the fact that he was safe.

Because he was somewhat facing the tall, blue-framed mirror that he had used to portal to Castillon, he glimpsed a flicker of movement behind him. But the figure moved remarkably fast, and Cyrus was in the process of levering to his feet when it slammed into his side, knocking him back to the ground. There was a scuff of running feet and then the bite of steel against the side of his neck. And then a voice from behind him so that he could not see the speaker. “Be still. My hand’s a little shaky, and you’ll die if it slips.”

 

[PlusUltra]

Rachel continues her exercises in constant fluid motions within the confines of her cell, her face locked in a detached yet calm expression as her senses expand. Her brow, however, slowly begins to furrow ever so slightly as she processes the countless sounds, sights, scents and feelings of her swarm.

Her power, naturally drawn to conflict and its urge to be used subtly influences her thoughts towards its ever-ravenous hunger for more data. The fact she was made consciously aware of this caused no end of frustrations, the lifting of that veil that had been resulting in its manipulation of its host was an outcome it had done everything to avoid.

[DATA!]

Single words, but that condensed vast amounts of information, thoughts, desires and feelings in the most efficient manner. It couldn't be put into human words all the subtle intentions and inflexions that were contained and then compressed so precisely by her power, but it was something she had learned to decipher through great efforts and conversing.

'We are here for a reason, Cassandra said it would become clear and i am not about to throw her trust and jeopardise things for a bunch of criminals. Besides they....we deserve to be here.'

[SOPHISTRY]

Internally she sighed, part of sharing her mind with her power meant she shared everything. It knew how to get to her, yet knowing its manipulative nature also had her second-guessing herself while trying to filter between it being honest and it being deceptive. She wanted to help, she didn't think she was mentally capable not feeling that desire, but all it ever led to was unintended escalations. She needed to be better.

'Your lucky mom was an English professor. Regardless this is not our home, these people don't want a better place, we have no stake in fighting for them. She got herself into that situation she can get herself out'

[PREDATOR]

'Oh fuck you, I am here for them you don't just bring them into this. Its a prison brawl, they that bs like eight times a week. Besides making waves aside, playing our cards this soon....well isn't that detrimental to long-term data collection?'

[GUILE]

There was a growing migraine from the conversing, likely also the powers doing. Sure she could keep this going but if it could make it shut up and give her some peace

'Fine, this is a favour though, you're interested in them for some reason you're not telling me. I've known you long enough to get that much. You want to play you pay and my patience just needs to hold out for a few minutes so tick tok'

There was a pause for several seconds, the silence alone spoke volumes given just how many computations and scenarios that could be run. Anything other than a near-instant response meant she had it, and they both knew it. That was a tell it couldn't hide without either a distraction or tangent which again, with no more veil it knew wouldn't be redundant, and it hated redundancy when conversing.

[DEBT]

Letting out a sigh she relished in the small victory, she had to take them where she could get them, and then a moment later she got to work.

Outwardly she was still carrying on through the exercises, but across the prison where Sebastian and Liling were fighting she was focusing in. Her intervention was subtle, Demodex mites, undetectable to nearly everyone but they suited her purpose. As Petra lunged there was a stinging itch within her eye and the hairs to the back of their neck, a fraction of a second blink and feeling someone was behind them while at the same time, the areas Petra was aiming for would itch ever so slightly across Lilings body giving an opening to capitalize on. Like a butterfly flapping their wings, she continued countless series of ever-so-slight pushes that combined with the intent of having the little tornado of a brawl spinning in the direction that was favourable to Sebastian and Liling

youngiiie Aviator

 

[Mirai-chan]

Violettin Hojo​

"Do things that not even the Valkyries can stop" ​

Location: Belle Reves / Cafeteria

Another day, Another Dollar as one would say. The Cafeteria was bustling with the sounds and outcries of various notorious dangerous criminals within such a facility with guards lined up and above the cells each watching the prisoners, from the C Area. Rigorous sounds of footsteps echoed from the cellmates grabbing their lunch and standing in line together, all with indistinct murmurs from each one. There were more than a couple of eyes keeping out for a particular problematic prisoner, That was way more annoying and problematic than others. That was.... Violettin ever since well since three generations before even these guards were born, Funnily enough. Everyone had known and heard of one of the older ones like Violettin, who was a positivity bug all on her own. Sitting at a table were two women, one blonde and busty and the other short and muscular with chestnut hair. Both were sitting at the table as they were eating their lunch for the day, which was chicken pot pie served for today. Well, there was something fun gonna happen and today these two women was betting on it.

"I'm tellin' ya, Rex is gonna do it, She's gonna go and confront her." The first one replied with a notable Australian accent. Taking in a puff from her cigar the muscular woman sighed to herself as she eyed the other woman ahead.

"You know she isn't like that, Rex has already been bitchin' about confronting that shit for brains for revenge. I know Rex ain't gon' do if she knows better, All us do after what happens with Big Z, Jessica."

Both women shivered at that, Having known what happened to Big Z after he got his ass sent to the infirmary for a month due to just making her snap during the time he tried to assault her with his goons at her cell, It didn't end well and that thing had to be subdued due to that accident and sentences to some solitary confinement for some time for that accident. Big Z was formerly one of the most feared prisoners within Belle Reeves and how he acted against all Cellmates, as he was the one to start some shit up within the prison or just inadvertently bullying the hell out of the other members, So that accident was best deserved for him in a way. Rex was Big Z's sister or somethin' Mostly everyone knew to steer clear of her assshe was the worst women to be around and one hell of a bitch too. Everyone heard it and everyone knew that Rex was trying to confront one of the oldest prisoners within Belle Reeves and that was some red flags within itself, Including bets going on on who was the one going down first.

"Well... You know Rex, when someone messed with someone she knows, Rex mess with you."

All footsteps headed towards the table of where sat all alone Violettin all alone eating, Violettin's hair was down as she was focused on her food. The cuffs on her arms for safety reasons, and she minded her own business while eating her lunch. There hasn't been a day that ever disappoints Vivy much as for this undead gal. She was usually the main cause of an issue or whatever that had happened with her upbeat nature, But she was unusually reserved for today and mostly calm as she just wanted to get back to her cell and grab another who-knows-what-good-book-type-thing because yes! Books were what she wanted and that was the thing she was gonna get!

Thump!

Her head snapped up at the sound of someone placing a tray onto the table really hard, catching the woman's attention with her quickly assessing the perpetrator: A tall robust blonde, possibly American, I Guess this was Rex as this woman sat down onto the seat of the table. She didn't really know and might as well cared. Flanking by her side were two other sidechicks as well. The two women across from the table look over.

"Never a dull day." The woman with the cigar said gruffly while watching. The cafeteria grew silent as it was all tension in the air of the feared woman vs one of the supposed older woman.

The woman looks at her as she smiles, an all too strained and all too knowing smile that even Violettin knew was fake as she eyes the woman with a curious look. "Hojo right?" Rex asked leaning in at her. "Gotta say, big fan of what you did back there in the early 1900s for an old hag." Rex sarcastically praised. Violettin only smiled back a little interested. " Big fan hmm~? I recall no big fans~" The older one recalled in a somewhat playful tone. This was as if to speak a warning in her hinted amused tone no less, but she enjoyed the company. "Listen, Heard from a coupla' peeps back there you sent Big Z's ass to the infirmary, and if you mess with a friend of mines I mess with you. " Rex answered leaning in with her auburn hair with a cold expression that said she will beat you. "But Look, We're all friends here so I'll cut you some slack." Violettin only stares at Rex only smiling as she listens in as carefully as she can. Well, she always did think that she was friends or could be friends with everyone as friends was good! Right? She didn't know which was good and which was bad since she had her brain fried a bit from her repeated electrocutions that killed her only to bring her back afterward.. Ah, but she didn't want to delve into her thoughts any further.


"What's the catch?"

Rex was "surprised" as she gasped. "A catch? When did I say there's a catch. " She asked, looking at her Sidechicks with an astonished look as well. She leans over as her eyes meet Violettin's all serious as she leans to whisper in her ears. "There's no catch only a warning." And Rex then spat into the older woman's food followed by one of her Sidechickes who got behind her and slammed her head straight into the food painfully enough smothering her face in it with the women laughing at it. The then yanked her hair up lifting her up and bringing her face to face. "My warning is Hojo, is if you mess with someone, I will personally mak the rest of your sentence a fuckin' hell." She then punches Violettin in the head effectively breaking her nose and knocking her out of Rex's grip and straight into the ground. "No so top dawg now? Huh?" She said standing over her.

"Prisoner C-11F09! Stand down! You are under violation of no combat within the premises." One of the Security Guards barked. Rex looks up seeing that their tranqulizers was all aimed at her and her goons. "Alright, Alright, I was only warning the little bit-" She stops after hearing someone singing, only to look down as it was her.

Listen to my song...

Boku no koe wa kikoeteimasu ka? please tell me… (Translation: Are you hearing this voice of mine? Please tell me…)

Kotae no nai kyokō no sora mezashi fly far away (Without answers, I aim for a fictional sky and fly far away)
Song in General:

Spoiler: Song

"Blake? Should we leave?" Rachel asked having a bad feeling after hearing her starting to sing as the sounds of music started to play. Blake nods getting up along with her ally, followed by two others at her table getting up to leave... Knowing on how this would end.

Meanwhile, Violettin gets up and quickly before anyone can even see it she punches Rex dead in the face knocking her down she was startled but she didn't let up with one and another aimed at her. "H-hey the hell!" She exclaimed as she retaliated in her own punches. Violettin as was pissed she wasn't originally in the mood to fight but right now she didn't care... all she wanted was blood. Blood on her hands and blood splattered on the ground with the sounds of music just playing in the background. Everyone surrounded the quadtrio cheering them on in the fight as this battle was finally started.

The sound of her singing as she fights And both fighters was on the floor trading punches with her soon getting ganged up by the side chicks and her parried out of the way of Luna's kick and caught Sol's punch only to get hit in the gut, She couldn't feel the hit but she didn't care. Violettin only grinned maliciously as she pulls Sol forward and used her as a human shield from Rex's pulling out a knife and charging at her only to try and fail to stab her and only her ally who cries out in pain before kicking her, as she quickly grabs a tray and slams it in Luna's face followed with a kick to the stomach and her grabbing her shirt slamming her into the ground followed by her twisting her arm breaking it as she cried out. Oh on how did Violettin relished that as she then goes in to snap her neck only to be grabbed and pulled away by Rex who bodyslammed her into the ground and started punching her repeatedly, The undead's face bleeding as she then catches supposed last punch and throat chops her.


"Oh how am I gonna enjoy your screams." Violettin answered disturbingly as she grabs her by her hair and with her natural strength and Drags her towards the table repeatedly slamming her head against the table, not as hard to cush her skull but enough to give her brain damage and a headache for a year.

 

[deadly king]

Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary; Lousiana
Prisoner #10792
[ redacted ]
JUPITER
​

---

The clanging of metal doors echoed through the corridors of Belle Reve as another day began. While navigating the familiar yet oppressive environment, Jupiter grabbed a tray of the usual unidentifiable slop in the cafeteria. Any hunger they once had quickly diminished, giving up their spot in line to linger around the recreation room instead. Their presence was hardly noticed by anyone else, less the guard standing out front, proudly showing off his baton in hand.

The room was cluttered with worn-out furniture, old gym equipment, and few tables for games. Their eyes fell on the other side of the room -- a game of cards turned into an argument, voices escalated, and it wasn't long before words turned into flying fists and scattered cards.

'Wonder what they got . . .'

This was Belle Reve, where every fight could be an opportunity.

The room erupted into chaos. Inmates backed away, forming a rough circle around the brawlers, the sound of flesh hitting flesh, grunts of pain, and shouted insults filled the air, creating a cacophony of violence and excitement. Without a second thought, Jupiter snuck through the wall of inmates, making a stride to the table as they pondered the items being gambled.

'I can sell cigarettes for some quick cash. Maybe they have extra food rations? Bandages would be killer right now, or some--'

Their thoughts paused spotting the actual items. Nothing more than colored pencils and dust laid on the beat and graffitied table.

'This is what they're fighting for?' Haphazardly, the inmate picked up one of the coloring pencils. All the punches raining down, and the ferocious attacks were for some cheap art supplies? Grey-green eyes darted towards the wrestling bunch, watching the fight continue before the doorknob swiveled.

The only exit door swung open, and they reached over grabbing the pathetic wagered items, picking the colored pencils and discarded lighter. As the guards finally waded into the fray, batons raised, Jupiter got to their feet, moving just enough to avoid any unnecessary trouble.

"What did we say about fighting in here!" Shouted the uniformed man, charging the fight. Following suit came another guard with no hesitation, attempting to remove the prisoners from one another.

 

[BuggaBoo]

---

Shi - The Rainbow UNICORN!!

​

Somehow, someway right smack dab in the middle of the Cafeteria Brawl...

Tightly pursed together were her lips. One side was still decidedly more red and swollen than the other. Blue eyes were cast downward, gaze aimed at the tattoo on the back of her hand. It warped, shifted and contorted as she wrung her hands together, failing to untwist the knots in her stomach. Perspiration glistened offa her brow but she dared not wipe at it. Hell, she barely even breathed now. It was safer to just try to be still and act like another piece of furniture, innocuous and insignificant, rather than draw any form of attention to herself.

Shi sat in a row with her captors upon the bench lining the outskirts of the cafeteria. The short rainbowy female was like a valley sitting in the middle of a sleeveless, orange mountain range of humongous males surrounding her.

The young lady had barely even made it outta the infirmary when she had been accosted. Once the door with the crack in the translucent window closed, Shi was surrounded and subjugated to yet another outnumbered hallway beatdown. But at least this time, she was like a mouse in the midst of bored cats. Yes, the mouse got bodied but at least the cats weren't hungry enough to eat her up completely. One might even say they were playing with their food since they pulled their punches (Shi swore they were not holding back. It huuuuurt. Badly ffs!!). And lucky her; they did not make good on their reputation. They had a proven track record that earned the crew their namesake; 'The NeckBreakers.'

Blue eyes dared glance at 2 out of the 6 grizzled faces of the immense inmates. As they playfully fought over her food tray, she suddenly recognized the pair; Riptide and Silverblade. A soured look barely held back, a rough swallow barely stemmed the tears. In another life, another body, outside these walls, they knew her. They were her allies and contacts. She'd even venture to call them friends. Wait. No, not Shi's friends, but 'Hers;' these 2 were the vigilante Unicorn's friends. They were still vigilantes the last time the Unicorn had conversed with them. And now here they were; criminals, hardened nearly beyond recognition in the confines of Belle Reve. What the hell happened to them? How did they become such depraved assholes? Were they always predatory towards vulnerable women in secret? Really?! Highly doubt it. Highly.

Prison had changed them. Prison broke down their carnal restraints. And now here they were, surrounding her against her will, leaving enough of a gap for others to see their little rainbow-headed trophy. Hell, Silverblade even stole some of her hair as a souvenir. A simple yank ripped out a very, very painful handful of her hair. He was laughing when he did it. Silverblade, the crimefighter known as; 'The People's Rebel Knight' was actually laughing while victimizing of another...

This place sucked.

Someway somehow, she needed to get away from these degenerate dudes and their future intentions for her. There were 6 in total, each of whom was at least twice her size. And they strategically all arranged their seating with capture in mind; they sat within easy grabbing distance should she ever decide to run. Dark lashes slowly descended, allowing temporary respite from her surroundings. Despite the roiling cacaphony in the cafeteria, the darkness gave at least some semblance of calm. But within several heartbeats, Shi's lower lip began to tremble. Oh how she desperately missed shifting into the Unicorn as of right now. Goddammit!! I HATE this bloody collar!!

There was no way outta this. She was The NeckBreaker's newly appointed bitch now. For the entire crew. It would take a miracle for her to get out of here.

And then came the miracle. 2 of them in fact.

Tensions boiled over into aggressive language. The language escalated into inmates sizing each other up. And like a cigarette butt carelessly tossed into the woods, the chaos spread like wildfire.

A pair of separate brawls miraculously broke out and in true spectacle fashion, crowds of combatants undoubtedly attracted crowds of spectators. And undoubtedly, wherever there was an orange jump-suited crowd indulging in violence directly or not, the NeckBreakers were sure to do their Belle Reve-ian duties and piss gasoline into the wildfire. Riptide and 2 others rushed to mess with the card game and probably score some freebies, Mirai-chan whilst Silverblade and 2 others rushed to mess up the other fight with the tranq-wielding guards. Too bad they didn't forget to leave their newly appointed bitch out of it.

Shi yelped as Riptide's vicegrip nearly yanked her arm outta the socket and ragdolled her with him into the fray. The asshole actually decided to use her as an opening gambit into the melee; Shi now a multi-coloured projectile, flew above Petra, narrowly missing their head. But the pipsqueak projectile was not yet in the clear. youngiiie The little thing flew past a lithe, dark-haired asian male. Once more she yelped as she smacked dead ass bullseye into Q's face. Promptly thereafter, she found her body victim to gravity as she bounced off the lupine male's snout.

"This... place... sucks..." despite her ungainly impression of a flacid human arrow, suprisingly, Shi actually managed to flail her way into a half-decent landing upon her hands and knees.

One hand reached up and rubbed gingerly upon the bald patch where that asshole Silverblade had ripped out a patch of her hair. Blue eyes slowly opened. A lone dark eyebrow raised once she realized that she was on the table with the remains of a card game circled by food trays strewn here and there. A grumble in her little belly sounded out as she spied the half-eaten and squished meals... correction; the very alone and very unguarded half-eaten and squished meals-- Without a second thought, Shi snatched up a spoon and opened her maw wider than a canyon, shovelling a grandiose amount of gravy-topped mashed potatoes into her mouth. To no one in particular, she just had to vocalize her justification for eating someone else's smushed food.

"Eyo! They took my food, ya feel me?! I ain't eaten since dinner! They took my food!" she yelled out in mild defiance whilst simultaneously trying in desperation to swallow down the tepid grub.

As should have been expected, no one bothered to listen. And even if they did hear, absolutely zero effs would be given for her outburst. In fact, many even shoved and grabbed her, not to get at her booty, but to get at the booty upon which she was sprawled. Little tan hands systematically grabbed at morsels of meat as other greedy hands finally lifted her up only for other even greedier hands to grab at multiple rectangular things. Are those... are those books...? One dude was even grabbing... Pencil crayons?! deadly king Riptide and his pair of Neckbreaker goons were hot on the trail of the pencil crayon stealer as they fled. Like wtf be sooooo for real right now! Fighting over 'pencil crayons'?!

Shi's incredulity was shortlived as a low, gutteral growl loomed dangerously overhead. Q's eyes promised bad things to come, frothing lips parted, flashing a dangerous toothy sneer. Yeah, his face definitely harboured an angry red mark across it. If Shi was a betting woman she would wager that his new facial handprint would match that of a inked-up, tan-skinned, rainbowy-headed, newly appointed Neckbreaker bitch. An apologetic giggle was all she could offer. " Ummmmm... Heads up...?"

Pure reflex allowed her to reach out and grab on for dear life an errant arm pulling away from the now vacated pile of inmate-valued booty. Shi yanked the anonymous arm with all her might and slingshot'd away, once more soaring above inmate's heads. Had Shi been a mere heartbeat later in her action, she would have definitely eaten a full serving of a spine-busting, double-fisted pounding from the enraged Q. His blow should have shattered the tabletop, but he hit the pile of food dead centre, softening the blow. And for his troubles, a blowback of tepid, gravy-topped mashed potatoes splattered across his snarling face.

This time whilst airborn, Shi concentrated on contorting her body just right so as to stick a proper landing. A grunt of triumph she let out as the soles of her feet hit the ground. Like a little ball, she rolled with the momentum in full rotation and flowing like water, she rose to a standing position. A self-satisfied smile could not help but breach her red, puffy lips.

Blue eyes scanned up and down, appraising the figure in front of her. The other orange-clad woman was basically as tall as Shi herself, but even though she was staring at her from behind, there was no doubt that this lady with a black mop of a head was none other than the 'RoboBitch' herself. Despite similarity in stature, Shi was told that the RoboBitch weighed at least 50lbs more than she looked. That and she was called RoboBitch for a reason. A sigh the rainbowy-headed woman conceded; she had to play her only hand now and hope it worked.

Just try to not piss her off. Shi cleared her throat and just like she had done for Edna in the infirmaey waiting room, the diminutive skater chick spoke in a harsh, lowered, gravelly whispering voice.

Aviator "Eyo... 'Dollie'," that was the only non-derogatory name that Shi knew others could call her without reprisal, "'Q-Bow-Wow' wants to turn me into kibble. You and your boyfriend help me get away, and these are yours. No cap..."

2 bent cigarettes. It was the only currency Shi was willing to give up to save her ass. Hopefully it was enough.

---

 

[Aviator]

Liling // “Verdigris” // Age 9 // Inmate // Artificial Intelligence // Cat Burglar and Pianist
​

Lowering herself into a fighting stance, Liling backed up slowly, endeavoring to keep both Petra and Q in sight. It seemed they’d caught onto her plan, however, keeping pace with each other as they moved in from her flanks in a pincer formation, until she couldn’t back up anymore without bumping into a wall. A quick scuff of feet from her left drew her attention to Petra. Almost simultaneously, Q threw back his head and emitted a piercing howl that sounded disturbingly canine. The burst of sound made Liling’s head automatically whip toward him. She watched Sebastian bury a toothpick in his neck just as Petra’s foot connected with her right hip in a low roundhouse kick. Liling got off a surprising number of swear words before pain spasmed down her leg, making her clamp her teeth and obliterating her thoughts except for one: murder.

She’d managed to keep her balance and stay on her feet, which seemed more than her opponent had been expecting. Petra had been about to go in for more, when an elbow swung at eye-level discouraged her, and she beat a hasty retreat. Liling was no martial artist, lacking any formal education on how or where to strike for optimal damage, but three years spent swinging from trapezes and balancing on tightropes had shorn up her defenses, allowing her to keep her footing from almost anything short of a crippling blow.

“You will pay,” she seethed at Petra, vowing to quite literally smack the smirk off her opponent’s tanned, leathery face. The two women circled each other like alpha wolves in the space between cafeteria tables, hackles raised and nearly snarling. Petra was half a head taller, meaning that her striking range was longer and Liling would have to do some fast footwork to get in and out unscathed. A cheer went up from somewhere on her right, and when Liling circled halfway around, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Q and Sebastian were locked in a deadly embrace, rolling around on the floor as someone tried to get a pin. Liling grimaced. She felt oddly touched that her spades partner would jump to her defense in a fight that she’d clearly brought on herself, yet guilty in the event that he got hurt. Which he likely would. Sebastian was lithe and quick as a panther, yet Q must have had close to a hundred pounds on him. In a wrestling match, it wasn’t a profitable tradeoff.

But Sebastian’s situation was out of her control, and nothing good would come of worrying about him until she’d dealt with her own opponent. Liling took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, as if she were about to leap the gap between a tree and the upper-story window of a house she was trying to break into. A cluster of spectators was forming around her and Petra, penning them in and baying for blood around the remnants of lunch.

“One week of dish duty on the Russian bitch! Going once, going twice…” hawked a bald-headed man who was eating popcorn from a red-and-white-striped bag.

“Devochka,” Petra taunted, “you cry, I go easy on you. You get to keep pretty face, da? All I take is limb for trophy. Maybe I melt it down and make toy soldiers from the metal.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Liling snorted in reply. To her surprise, she found that she was kind of enjoying herself. “Now get your candy arse over here so I can pulp it, suka.”

Along the fringes of the room, several guards were nudging each other and pointing at the pair of fights—no, trio; a scuffle had broken out on the other side of the cafeteria. They drew batons and advanced slowly, apparently with the mindset that the more damage the inmates did to one another, the less they’d have to do. Wanting to get their licks in before they were broken apart, Liling and Petra sprang at each other like sparks of lightning.

Liling bent backward, her hair parting from the force of the fist that went sailing over her face. She grabbed Petra’s wrist and elbow and jerked it down and to the side, going for a joint lock. There was a dangerous tremble of bones as Petra attempted to pull free. Instead, she stamped on Liling’s instep. The state-issued orange low-tops offered little protection, and a firework of pain ripped through her foot. In her shock, she released Petra. The taller woman wheeled away, but not before Liling swung her arm out in a horizontal arc, catching Petra across the face with a backhand. The blond woman’s head snapped to the side amid a loud Ooh! from the crowd. When she turned back to Liling, sneering, blood was dribbling out of her nose and onto her upper lip.

A bolt of pure satisfaction went through Liling, and she was hungry for more. She closed in on Petra, twisting her torso and absorbing a pair of jabs in her upper arm. Conditioned to expect another blow to the head, Petra fell for Liling’s up-high feint and left her legs and midriff open to attack. Liling went for the back of the knee, aiming to hook her ankle around it and crumple Petra. She succeeded, and either by awesome skill or lucky clumsiness, on the way down Petra’s forehead clipped Liling in the chin. The world rippled and quaked around her, the colors running down like paint on a canvas. She staggered back blindly, cupping her chin. “Ow! God dabbit!” she slurred into her palm.

Enough of this horse shite, Liling thought, rage pumping through her. Petra was slow getting back to her feet, still on one knee when Liling rushed her again. She tried to shove Liling away, but Liling sidestepped her reaching arms, entangling one hand in the top of Petra’s loose, greasy hair. Petra turned her head and sank her teeth into Liling’s forearm, but she hung on as she bashed her opponent’s head onto the edge of a picnic-style table. One. “That’s for cheating at cards!” Two. “That’s for making my friend bleed!” Three. “And that’s for me.” Her voice ripped on the last note like torn paper.

Petra crumpled limply, blood oozing out from under her hairline. It wasn’t until she hit the floor, issuing a low moan, that Liling realized she was breathing hard even though there were no lungs for the air to funnel into. There was a persistent throbbing in her fingertips, too, which she attributed to the lingering impact of slamming another woman’s skull against a table, because she had no such thing as a circulatory system. The assembled inmates were going nuts, but not all of them with cheers. In fact, the larger half of the crowd was glowering and yelling obscenities at her, as if they’d lost money or privileges or snacks in a bet against her.

A brown-skinned man with hair elegantly plaited down his back shuffled out of the crowd. “In all fairness, the bet was that she’d get pummeled. Nothing we can’t take care of ourselves, eh, Alex?” He was quickly joined by a middle-aged white man with a walrus mustache.

A voice like the crunch of a boot in snow sounded just over her shoulder. Liling whirled, and nearly chopped the speaker, a petite rainbow-haired girl, in the side of the neck. She squeezed her eyes shut and flinched away from the oncoming blow, and it was a good thing she did, because Liling doubted she would have stopped her momentum in time. Liling’s mouth slanted to one side as she sized the girl up, trying to deduce her intent, weigh whether this was just another threat that should be nipped in the bud. She estimated the newcomer to be in her early twenties, and they were within an inch of each other’s heights. However, the rainbow girl was slender, almost skinny, lacking Liling’s hard-earned panels of muscle. She had a conspicuous bald spot where a chunk of hair had been presumably torn out of her head, and Liling felt almost sorry for her. Almost. Her sympathy turned to mild disgust when she saw the pale, starchy residue wedged in the corner of her mouth, a remnant from lunchtime.

She eyed Rainbow suspiciously as she talked in that gravelly old-timey detective movie voice, extending two bent cigarettes as a peace offering. “That depends, Dirty Harry,” Liling said, mimicking the other girl’s shredded vocals. “Did you save me any mashed potatoes?” Before Rainbow could retract her offer, Liling swiped the cigarettes out of her palm and tucked them away into a pocket. “You’re lucky that I have a kind heart,” she grunted in a normal voice. And a convenient nicotine addiction. She wasn’t quite sure what no cap meant—of course the cigarettes had no cap; North Americans really couldn’t go five minutes without inventing some edgy new slang, could they?—and she thought that her combative prowess was being massively overestimated, but she didn’t say as much. She’d taken down an anorexic-looking thirty-something-year-old woman who looked like she’d spent too much time on a tanning bed. But if Rainbow expected her to go head-to-head with the Wolf Man himself and come out on top, she was sorely mistaken. Maybe if it was a two-on-one with Sebastian. Maybe.

The two beefy guys who’d found a loophole in their bet were advancing. The guards were still leisurely making their way through the throng of inmates, and it’d be at least another two minutes until they made it to the front. A lot of damage could be done in two minutes. And not fighting wasn’t an option. If she stayed here, it’d be a two-on-one not in her favor. Maybe a two-on-two if Rainbow decided to pitch in, but if she was groveling to Liling for protection, she couldn’t be much help. Liling’s eyes drifted over to Sebastian, who was still entangled with Q. They both looked decently mussed and roughed, and Liling felt a surge of pride for Sebby. She didn’t think he’d have lasted this long, let alone stood an actual chance of beating Q. Not intending to leave her spades partner to his fate, she made a snap decision. “All right, girlie,” she said, closing her hand around Rainbow’s wrist. She burst into motion, beelining for Sebastian and Q, tugging the smaller girl behind her. “You’re my shadow, ‘kay? ‘Kay. That means if someone comes up on my back you knock some sense into ‘em, while I blow the Big Bad Wolf’s house down.”

 

[youngiiie]

Sebastian Park

"Flux"

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Inmate #10406

Belle Reve

[/tab]

Their worst nightmare, they still dreamin'

Sebastian adhered the saying “i don’t chance, i attract” but in this case the only thing he had attracted was the rage of the burly man he had stabbed with a toothpick. Sebastian wasn’t stupid, he knew that his odds of facing off against Q by himself was likely suicidal but there was something about the other man’s arrogance that made Seb want to punch him repeatedly in the face. What the black haired male has going for him was his agility. He weighed probably around one hundred pounds less than Q but because of that, he could move at a much faster pace. He was able to dodge and weave past the punches the older black man threw in his direction. He could get in a few jabs to Q’s ribs or the occasional kick to his shin but he had to give Q credit. The man was tough. It took more than Sebastian’s occasional punches to take him down and out. The true problem came when they began to wrestle on the ground. That is where Q’s weight became a huge advantage. Once he was pinned, there was little the black haired male could do.

He found himself rolling around on the ground, doing anything and everything in his power not to get trapped under the much larger male. He knew that he was likely in over his head but Sebastian was never one to back down from a fight. Especially when he had voluntarily joined this one. He wasn't going to let his partner go down alone, especially not against horrible people like Q and Petra. That was not a way he wanted to go out. If he were to die, he wanted his last moments to be epic. He always had wanted to go out with a bang, not pinned down in the soil of Bell Reve. Sebastian clenched his jaw as he used all of his strength to shove the much heavier male off of him. Despite not having the muscle mass or natural bulk that his opponent did, Sebastian was no slouch. He worked out every day in the prison yard and had never been in better shape. After all, what else was there to do in prison? The male quickly stood up and raised his arms and fists into a fighting stance.

Sebastian wished that he had access to his abilities for this fight. He had a roster of physiques that he had memorized and regularly transformed into. A pro-wrestler, a 7 foot basketball player, an award winning tennis player, and many others. Because Sebastian had to memorize the specific physique of those that he transformed into, he had spent weeks studying specific individuals he believed would be useful to him so that he could transform into them on a whim. While he could technically transform into anyone, it would take a while for him to study a new person. It was easier to have a roster of people ingrained into his brain that could help him in any given situation. Unfortunately, that would not be useful here. For once, the inmate would have to rely completely on his own physical capabilities if he wanted to survive.

Suddenly, a rainbow projectile flew past his face and slammed directly into Q's. It was an inmate that had been thrown across the room which confused the black haired male. Where had she come from? Either way, he was grateful that she had done some damage to the burly man in front of him. He gave her a small nod of acknowledgement and gratitude before he steeled himself yet again for the unshakable force that was Q.

Despite the cusses and insults that seemed to be endlessly flowing from his opponent's mouth, Sebastian remained silent. He wasn't a big talker and didn't feel the need to puff his chest out like Q did. He'd rather let his actions do all of the speaking for him. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see that many inmates had gathered to spectate the fight. A lot were handing items back and forth, likely betting on the winner and loser. He suspected not many would bet on him given the apparent difference in physiques but that didn't rattle him. If nothing else, he was determined to prove he was not someone to trifle with in Belle Reve. Despite his slimmer frame and silent nature, he was dangerous. He knew it, now it was Q's turn to learn.

There was a fire and intensity in Sebastian's eyes that had not been present during the card game. While playing cards with Liling, his eyes seemed empty except for the occasional flash of disappointment or surprise. While attentive and engaged, his demeanor would not have conveyed that. He kept a neutral and emotionless expression on his face and only talked when he needed to. Now, he looked alive. His eyes were burning with passion and he seemed a lot more like a real person. He was an adrenaline junkie and there wasn't much to do in prison. That's one reason why he had decided to join the fight. While of course, he didn't want Liling to die, he ultimately joined in because he was bored.

Sebastian cocked his eyebrow as his lips rose into a smirk as if taunting Q. The larger man charged at Sebastian, extending his arm into a punch. Seb moved his weight to his left foot and pushed off. He just barely managed to dodge the punch before pulling on Q's arm. He used the momentum the other male had accumulated to pull him closer as Sebastian kneed him in the stomach. Q hunched over and let out a bloody cough. Sebastian used this opportunity to slam his elbow down onto Q's spine. The larger man collapsed onto the ground. What Sebastian was not expecting was for Q to pull his legs out from under him. The black haired male collapsed on the ground beside Q and the two engaged in yet another ground skirmish. Despite his speed and knowledge of combat, there was only so much he could do against a man that could absorb hits and dish them out ten times harder. He needed back-up.

/* ------ credit -- do not remove ------ */

© weldherwings.

youngiiie

 

[Jigajig]

Levina
Location: Belle Reve​

As Levina glossed over the files something caught her attention to her left. Turning her gaze away from the file she was holding, her eyes scanned the screens infront of her. Being the Captain of the guard at Belle Reve meant Levina had to more or less have her eyes peeled at all times for anything that was untoward... and what was happening on two of the screen she was staring at was definitely not good. A small fight had broken out it seemed between some of the inmates that was turning into a full on brawl. Slamming the file down on her desk she stood up and strode from behind her desk to the screens, her dark eyes flitting between the two of them as the chaos unfolded before her. "Seriously.. I just got back.." Sighing she made her way to the office door, her attention now upon a large red button next to it. There was no time to don her armour, she would just have to go into the fray in her suit. As soon as her hand slammed down upon that button numerous things happend.

A number of alarms began to blare around Belle Reve to signal to the guards that a fight had broken out. Red lights began to flash every so often, much like an fire alarm. The lighting around the buiding took on a red huey tint as they dimmed slightly. Levina glanced at something resting upon a rack by her side. Grabbing it she exited her office and marched down the hallway to the location of the brawling. A handful of guards rushed past her from the hallway to her left, obviously enroute to the scence of the fighting. She quickend her pace and after a few more mintues of brisk walking she arrived. She could hear people yelling from here and when she entered the Cafeteria her expression changed from one of slightly annoyance to what could only be described as befudlement. Numerous inmates were brawling with once another, a few bodies laying upon the ground out cold. Her eyes flitted left to right taking in the chaotic scence before her, spotting numerous inmates engaged in violent battles. She saw one in particular, a large beast of a man named Q, who seemed to wresting with another inmate Sebastian. Slowly her right hand reached down to her hip's left side and gripped the handle of the Katana she was wearing. Unsheathing it she rose it above her head, sparks of lightning cracking and dancing along the majestic blade, before she bellowed out in a voice that rumbled around the Cafeteria, booming like thunder.

"ALL INMATES ARE TO LAY UPON THE GROUND WITH THEIR HANDS BEHIND THEIR HEADS NOW!" As she did this a resounding boom erupted outside as thunder and lighting crashed across the sky. "THOSE THAT RESIST WILL SHALL BE SENT TO ISOLATION!"

 

[Aviator]

Azrael Emery // “the Conjurer” // Age 28 // Sixth Prince of Castillon // Illusionist
​

Azrael crouched in an outcropping of tall fronds bordering Lake Josiah, named for his great-great-grandfather, feeling sweaty and stiff and frustrated. His phone had died two, maybe three hours ago, and having forgone a watch with his evening attire, he had no way of telling the time. All he knew was that it was bright and hot and miserable in the muggy July air around the massive lake. Not to mention the horrible creepy-crawly things that lurked in the tall grass, some seen and some unseen. So many tiny legs had drummed over his skin in the past hours that he’d found himself swatting at imaginary sensations, and then panic would set in. Weren’t hallucinations a sign of heat stroke? It must have been eighty-five degrees, but with the humidity index, it felt closer to ninety-eight, which was typical of a New Reynes summer day. Was he hallucinating because some kind of foul creature had feasted on his blood and left traces of evil behind? Was he sitting amid poisonous plants? He knew the children’s rhyme about leaves of three, let it be, but to someone unacquainted with different types of plants, they all looked shiny and grouped in threes. He hated nature, he decided as he wondered whether he should risk wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

Please be here soon, he prayed to the universe. The multiverse, technically, since the person he was waiting for was purportedly not from this world. And, since this person would be one of the last living souls in all of Castillon, it’d be hard to miss his arrival. If Azrael didn’t pass out from the insane heat by then. Or if the tiny, malicious life forms with whom he shared the grass fronds didn’t leech the blood from him. A wave of nausea went through him, and Azrael tried to redirect his thoughts to anything else so that he didn’t throw up. Not only would he have to sit among it until his unwitting savior arrived, but vomiting would dehydrate him, which was dangerous when he’d already polished off his last water bottle several hours ago.

The last sixteen—seventeen? Eighteen? Whatever it actually was, it felt like more—hours had been some of the most eventful hours of Azrael’s life. And the bloodiest. And possibly the scariest and most infuriating. Anyway, his night had started with the mindless chatter and over-the-top outfits that his family wore to cocktail hour, and had ended with a ballet of blood as the dance floor had turned to a platform on which spontaneous executions were staged. Four tall, heavily armored assassins had stormed the reception hall, toting guns that each looked like they weighed as much as a kindergartener. When Prince Ezekias had beaten his bodyguards to the punch and fired a revolver at the newcomers, the bullets had ricocheted off a chitinous black plate without so much as denting it, and one of them had pierced their sister Vienna through the throat. Azrael, having been in possession of a charged phone then, was aware of the time and had been lurking on the fringes of the room expectantly, ready to slip away from the carnage that he had helped plan.

And carnage was what he’d gotten. The alien assassins he’d hired—they’d introduced themselves as Kryptonians—and for whom he’d disabled the atmospheric security barrier over New Reynes proved to be damn efficient killers. They mowed down rows of fancily-clad, martini-holding courtiers, each death wail paving Azrael’s way to the throne. He’d been seventeenth in line. Then fourteenth. Then eighth, and still it continued. Yes, all had been according to plan until he heard the creak of armor from the corridor behind him, and an ice-cold voice had commanded, “Halt, Prince. The general wishes to relay a message.”

Assuming this message had to do with the deal he’d struck with the Kryptonians, Azrael had stopped, unafraid despite the oversized rifle in the messenger’s grasp. And then, in a trick of the light, the Kryptonian messenger had shot forward and crossed the long hall in two bounds. Before Azrael could so much as draw breath, a black-gloved hand was wrapped around his throat and he was suspended painfully into the air.

“The general wishes to inform you that this land is not yours to rule, boy,” the Kryptonian said listlessly, not unlike the voice of an unenthusiastic waiter informing his tenth table that they were out of the crab that evening. “When we are done, this city will be nothing but blood and ashes. It will be a lifeless husk.”

Azrael’s only reply was small strangled noises and frantic clawing at the viselike hand that, unless loosened, would soon render him a lifeless husk. Black spots danced on the edges of his vision. He tried to reach out with his powers, but his illusions were only as vivid as his imagination made them, and right now his imagination was having trouble extending beyond the simple fact that he could not breathe.

The assassin continued, unperturbed, “As a reward for your helpfulness, the general will allow you to keep your life. You have one full rotation to vacate the city, at which point the general’s offer shall expire if we find you here. The unique geography of the nearby swamp makes New Reynes a wealth of natural resources. As such, it is an ideal location for our base of operations.”

A warm, tingly feeling spread through Azrael’s face, blotting out the world. His kicking legs stilled, stirring the air only faintly. There was a sound like ocean waves lapping at the base of his skull, and fiery sunlight glinted off his mother’s hair as she planted her feet in the sand and wound up to throw a frisbee.

Distantly, there was the sound of a muted thud, like a student carelessly dropping a backpack onto the floor. Dull pain in his shins and forehead told him that his own falling body had been the source of the noise, and he’d face-planted onto the stone floor. Gasping and feeling a giddy lightness in his head, Azrael pushed himself to his knees. His attacker was stalking back down the hallway, straight-backed and unconcerned.

Oh hell no, I don’t care if you outer space fucks eat human brains for breakfast. You do not lay hands on me and walk away, he thought, discarding the general’s warning for the moment. Just as the Kryptonian was about to round the corner, he passed a doorway flanked by two white marble lion statues. Rage flared up in Azrael’s chest, and one of the lions pounced at the assassin, claws extended, maw open to reveal a mouth full of daggers.

The shot that the Kryptonian fired off passed straight through the lion like it was made of smoke and pinged madly between the walls and the alien’s armor. Still, the lion kept coming, and, with a triumphant roar, buried its teeth into alien flesh, impossibly managing to penetrate the armor that bullets could not. The Kryptonian screeched in pain, and a thrill of dark satisfaction went through Azrael. The lion reared back its head, blood flashing on its teeth, and went in for another bite. When suddenly the Kryptonian’s transparent visor flipped up, and twin beams of red-hot light jetted from its eyes, boring a hole into the opposite wall. The lion dissipated into the air.

Fear prickled through Azrael. The alien whirled toward him, and fortunately, its eyes were no longer burning with infernal light. “You do not play games with me, child of man!” it shrieked. Azrael jolted into motion, flattening himself against one wall as he sent an illusion of himself scurrying down the corridor. The subsequent gust of air as the alien launched itself after the fake Azrael felt like it was going to tear the real Azrael’s face off. “Fuck with me and you will leave this city on broken legs!”

His heart beating with the urgent frenzy of a trapped fox, Azrael darted halfway down the hall until he came to a painting of a stern-looking man in a white-powdered wig. Josiah, Twenty-Fourth Emperor of Castillon, for whom the New Reynes lake had been named. Azrael pushed it aside, revealing the hidden passage drilled into the wall, and vanished behind it, straightening the portrait back into place. Formally, he’d had the hidden passages installed in the event that a quick getaway from an assassin was needed, but this was the first time that he’d actually used them for that purpose. They were also discreet tools for smuggling young ladies and men into and out of the castle without it becoming a hot topic of gossip among the maids. But most often, Azrael simply used them as shortcuts to his office from various points throughout the castle. He practically lived in his office, and cutting down on steps saved precious time.

During the flight to his office, he considered the meaning of the Kryptonian’s words for the first time. They contradicted the nature of the deal he’d made with General Zod, in which the Kryptonians would be granted one-hundred kilos of viridium per head of Azrael’s predecessors for the Castillon throne they killed; seventeen if the operation went seamlessly. Tonight Azrael was hosting a celebration to honor the capture of the notorious Von Ernst family, a criminal syndicate who had allegedly been stealing from the emperor’s tax collections and evading detection for six months. Of course, the Von Ernsts were innocent (at least of these crimes, which had been committed by Azrael himself), but they were the only ones who knew the truth. He’d played on Emperor Maximilian’s hubris, knowing that his father would be unable to resist a celebration of his own greatness and Castillon justice prevailing once again, and accordingly, all of Azrael’s fifteen living older siblings and four younger ones had been strongly encouraged to attend. Thus, they’d been easy pickings for the Kryptonians when Azrael disabled the satellites and atmospheric security system at the start of the party, allowing them entry to the planet without being blown sky-high upon detection.

And now, running amok with no one to stop them, the Kryptonians had apparently decided that Azrael had outlived his purpose. With him either dead or run out of his city, they could take as much of the precious stone as they wanted. Well, shit. Rage trembled through Azrael’s body, split evenly between the Kryptonians’ duplicity and his own foolishness for not having seen it coming. He’d never believed in karma—just a way for weak-willed oafs to take comfort in the illusion of a just universe without actually doing anything to solve their problems—but it seemed as though the consequences of his own murder spree were already coming full circle.

After pausing to listen and deciding that the room on the other side of the portrait was empty, Azrael cautiously emerged from the tunnel in the wall and into his office. If it was true that he was being ousted from the Castillon throne at large, tearing pell-mell down the highway to the other side of the country would only buy him time. How long until the alien invasion made its way to the Spine, the mountain range in the west? How long until it reached the coast? He needed a better plan than that. Perhaps he could call in some favors with his contacts in Genoa and arrange for discreet transportation by air out of the country. Assuming that the Kryptonians didn’t immediately shoot down the unidentified craft.

Scrambling for ideas, Azrael checked his schedule of appointments for the following day, the first day that he was supposed to have been emperor, had his plan gone accordingly. The head of the Citadel's security was supposed to see him at eleven, and one of his sisters, Maya, was visiting at 11:30 to coordinate cleanup efforts along the shores of New Reynes and the major coastal city to the east she governed, Arden. And then his eyes seized on the one o’clock appointment, with one Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri. Like most other foreign ambassadors, Njeri was ostensibly interested in Castillon’s viridium, a precious stone with unique chemical properties. But unlike other foreign visitors, he was supposedly an interdimensional traveler from Earth in a parallel universe, where viridium did not even rank on their periodic table. Or on the periodic tables of any of the other worlds Njeri had visited.

From their handful of previous meetings, Azrael did not like the lieutenant. He was uncouthly lacking in court decorum to the point that Azrael wondered if the messenger had ever been in the presence of royalty, if royalty was even a thing where he was from. During their first encounter, Njeri had been unpleasantly surprised to find himself negotiating with a prince rather than Emperor Maximilian himself, and had asked why this was.

“Actually, the emperor’s presence in New Reynes is a rare occasion.” And typically only when he thinks I need correction, he added silently. “As the leader of the world's largest country, his attentions are frequently occupied elsewhere. So I'll be acting on behalf of Castillon's interests today,” Azrael bit off, chafing at being cast aside like a cheap whore. He smiled, and forced as much cold condescension into it as he could muster.

A pause, and then Lieutenant Njeri belatedly returned the smile. “Of course, my lord. It is an honor to be in your presence.”

“‘Your Highness,’” Azrael corrected swiftly, sitting as regally in his swivel office chair as he could manage. Across from him, Njeri fidgeted awkwardly in one of the pair of deliberately uncomfortable chairs on the other side of the desk.

Little was accomplished at their meetings except for establishing hypothetical price points and equally hypothetical goods that could be exchanged as part of a deal. Azrael was interested in the inner workings of interdimensional travel, since as far as he knew Castillon technology hadn’t evolved to that point yet. But Cyrus Njeri was coy regarding the details, inevitably redirecting the conversation elsewhere whenever Azrael tried to pick his brain. So little was accomplished, in fact, that Azrael saw their meetings as a tedious waste of time, and would have refused future meetings with the lieutenant from another world who negotiated like negotiating wasn’t a thing in this other world. Fortunately for the lieutenant though, apparently he and Emperor Maximilian had really hit it off during their first and only meeting, and the emperor had thrown an apoplectic fit when his son had told him he’d canceled an appointment with Njeri in favor of a lunch date with an ambassador from the Chinese Federation.

If you’re such a fan of him, Dad, why don’t you shoot pheasants with him over cigars and congratulate yourselves on being masters of the multiverse? he seethed internally. Why do I have to entertain Mr. Nobody from Nowhere We’ve Ever Heard Of?

Moreover, Azrael did not fully believe that viridium was what Lieutenant Njeri was after. And the more they met, the less he came to believe it at all. Unlike other foreign diplomats, who racked up lodging expenses while they were abroad and were still responsible for filing typical office paperwork during their stay, Njeri was in no hurry to reach a conclusive deal. Every time Azrael gave him an offer, he would equivocate, wondering absently about the prevalence of powered Castillon citizens, and whether they could perhaps reach an agreement for the employment of interdimensional mercenaries? It was during one such ramble that Njeri had caught him with a question like a knife between the ribs. I can’t help but marvel at the sophisticated technology that Castillon equips to disable foreign missiles and discourage extraterrestrial threats, the lieutenant had remarked during their last meeting, sipping from the hot chocolate that Azrael’s secretary had brought him despite the sultry summer weather. Your father the emperor says that it’s thwarted every attempt at a bombing in the last nineteen years.

Which was true, and nineteen years ago was the bombing in which Azrael’s mother had perished. But that wasn’t what had startled him so. Between the strange conversational shift, and Njeri’s careful pronunciation of extraterrestrial threats, Azrael was filled with a sudden paranoia. Does he know? he thought, staring at the interdimensional messenger blankly. At this point, he’d already been communicating with the Kryptonians for five months. The plan had been created, and all that remained was to invent an occasion that justified the appearance of the whole royal court in New Reynes. Had those communications somehow been intercepted? Was Njeri on such good terms with his father because he’d been sent here to spy on Azrael? Would the emperor have him hanged for treason if he gave the Kryptonians the viridium he’d promised them?

It wasn’t unlikely for members of the Castillon royal family to murder or execute one another. The last documented instance had occurred when Azrael’s grandmother, the then-Princess Heir Janelle, had sentenced her younger sister Daisy to death by stoning when Janelle’s lady-in-waiting died after sampling the insulin the princess took daily. Coincidentally, their father, the reigning monarch for only a brief while longer, lay dying of a sudden and unexplained illness at the same time. Azrael’s family was not known for their longevity. They typically died in violent, tragic accidents before reaching an age of seniority, and if the means of those violent, tragic accidents were uncovered, in bloody and oftentimes morbidly creative executions. Daisy’s demise had been rather tame, likely due to the sisterly love Janelle had once held for her. All the same, in the 205 years since the first Castillon emperor, they’d run through thirty-two emperors. Soon to be thirty-three if Azrael’s gambit paid off.

Whether or not Njeri was a spy for Emperor Maximilian, Azrael had come too far in his machinations with the Kryptonians to abandon them now. And besides, if they already knew what he was up to, he would be found guilty of conspiracy anyway. The only viable solution was to strike first and not miss.

But as Azrael stood in his office, his planned coup blown to smithereens, rifling through drawers and manila folders for the dossiers on the interdimensional messenger that he had typed himself, he realized that Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri might just be the key to turning a bad situation into a good one. If it was true that Njeri could travel between worlds, why then, Azrael wouldn’t have to worry about driving cross-country or flying across the ocean to shake the Kryptonians. He shouldn’t have trusted General Zod the first time, and he sure as hell wouldn’t trust the man not to change his mind and have Azrael hunted down. Especially when he could just leave the world behind. In an ironic twist of fate, Njeri, once suspected to be the bane of his existence, might just be his saving grace.

Azrael twisted the dials on his safe and emptied several million kruge worth of viridium heirlooms into a briefcase. It would have been more if the governmental secrets in classified files he had squirreled away were still worth something, but Azrael had a feeling that the alien who’d strangled him had been true to his word when he’d said there wouldn’t be a Castillon whose secrets to sell in a few days. He managed to cram two water bottles, a full-size Black Magic chocolate bar, and an emergency cigar into the case before leaving his office for the last time. A standard-issue pistol and two stiletto daggers were hidden in discreet locations on his person.

And now, roughly sixteen hours later, he squatted in the fronds by Lake Josiah, fearing for his life, groggy and dehydrated from heat, and awaiting his interdimensional rescuer's arrival for their one o’clock appointment, because Njeri would have no idea of the invasion until he saw it with his own eyes. Azrael’s city was in shambles. The remnants of skyscrapers reminded him of decades-old dominos, their once glossy surfaces now cracked and stained with ruin, leaning on each other as though one tip was all it would take for them to fall. After the bloodbath at the Citadel, the alien assassins had taken to the streets, systematically rounding up or killing those who resisted, and herding live captives into a foreboding black ship that defied the eye, as if it were composed of a writhing mass of shadows. If not for General Zod’s so-called mercy, Azrael likely would have been among them. A bitter taste filled his mouth. As he considered the unlikelihood of Njeri’s tales of parallel worlds, he toyed with the idea of marching toward the now-dormant ship and driving its staff literally insane with the living nightmares he conjured. Acknowledging that he would likely be shot before he got within range of the ship, he quickly discarded the idea.

Azrael’s chin was beginning to dip toward his chest. He was used to sleep deprivation as part of his job, but he hadn’t slept since before the invasion, and going from fine-tuning his first speech as emperor to getting strangled to hiding from alien assassins in an ungodly hot pocket of vegetation was taking an exhaustive toll. And this wasn’t to mention the creepy crawlers with whom he shared the undergrowth, who might be sucking his blood and addling his brain with toxins and preparing to swarm him and strip the flesh from his bones. Deciding that there was nothing he could do about mutinous insects or the likely dangerous level of sunburn he’d incurred since this morning, he drifted off into a restless doze. For a few minutes, it was almost pleasant, just to stop worrying about everything trying to kill him and say, Que sera, sera to the universe. Or multiverse, if that existed.

The sound of gunfire jerked him awake with a start. Ready to jackknife to his feet and fight his way out, Azrael’s head whipped toward the city, the direction the noise was coming from. There, some hundred yards away, he saw a figure in a long black coat weaving between buildings for cover. A careful scan of the scene revealed no obvious shooter.

Let’s fix that, then, Azrael thought. Hope soared in him. Squinting against the sun and blinking sweat out of his eyes, he reached out with his powers. Remembering the shiny black plates of the assassins’ armor in as vivid detail as he could, he created an illusion of two of them advancing slowly toward Njeri. Herding him toward the lake where Azrael hid. Not only did it provide good cover, but the only time that he might have glimpsed Njeri using his world-traveling powers was when Azrael had been standing in the Conservatory, a place where plants of viridium grew and flourished in a greenhouse. Large mirrors caught the sunrays, reflecting and refracting them toward the synthetic plants for nourishment. When suddenly the lieutenant had just appeared in a reflection behind him, as instantly as the breath between words, nearly giving Azrael a heart attack. But the kicker was that the only entrance to the Conservatory had been on Azrael’s other side. Either Njeri was a legendary assassin who could circle around a room full of mirrors and somehow avoid detection, or he’d emerged from one. Both, maybe, Azrael relented.

If his hunch was right, mirrors were the medium through which Njeri traveled between worlds. And he dearly hoped that a lake sufficed as a reflective surface, because Azrael didn’t dare step foot into the city on a wild goose chase for full-size mirrors while the alien invaders were on the prowl.

Believing that two assassins were closing in on him from the south, the lieutenant sped north, toward the lake. He moved fast, as if he were no stranger to running for his life, which had been saved by his fleetness of foot several times. His long coat flapped behind him and his dreadlocks lifted in the air. Too tired to accurately simulate the illusory alien assassins matching his speed, Azrael simply increased the volume and frequency of gunshots ever so slightly, as if they were hot on Njeri’s trail. And then, just for his personal amusement, Azrael let a sliver of icy-hot pain lance through Njeri’s upper arm, as if he’d been hit with a glancing bullet. Njeri’s face tightened in pain, but he didn’t slow down as he gunned for the lake, continuing to pump both arms. One hundred feet. Fifty. Twenty. He showed no signs of stopping. Maybe Azrael’s asinine Hail Mary of a plan would work after all.

Just as Cyrus Njeri crashed into the lake, Azrael lunged out of his hiding place, to his side and slightly behind him. He doubted that Njeri even saw him snag the collar of his coat. Maybe he didn’t even feel it either, because suddenly there was a feeling of weightlessness, as if they’d just performed a synchronized dive into the deep end of a pool and were plunging down. Which was impossible when Azrael knew himself to be standing knee-deep in shallows. The strangest of sensations cut through him, as if the bottom of his stomach were falling out and he was being turned inside-out all at once. Blinding light turned into darkest night. And then suddenly Azrael’s knees hit stone, and he doubled over, almost cracking his head against the floor.

Several feet away from him, Cyrus Njeri lay in a tangle of long limbs. To Azrael’s surprise, a hole had been punched into his coat, and he was bleeding from his flank. So he really had been shot before Azrael pretended to hit him. But his sympathy only went so far. Njeri was still an unknown, still a potential enemy who might try to toss Azrael back into the wasteland he’d come from when he discovered that he’d been followed across worlds. Wasting no time, Azrael drew a dagger cleverly concealed up his left sleeve and pounced on the lieutenant. He almost regretted that he needed the man alive for informational purposes.

Njeri recoiled reflexively from the blade pressed against his throat. Azrael dug it in just a little bit harder. “Be still,” he said in a parched whisper. It got the point across all the same. Njeri went limp for half a second. Until the light of recognition flared in his eyes and he tensed in shock. “My hand’s a little shaky, and you’ll die if it slips.”

 

[PlusUltra]

Carrying on with her minor nudges and manipulations of the ensuing brawl, Rachel would feel a drastic shift in the air at the guard captain's arrival. She didn't need her expanding senses to immediately identify the new presence as Levina, the ozone and pressure difference alone made identifying her unmistakable. Releasing her control completely, she finally ended her exercises and drew up to her feet, moving to the door to get a clear view of the area below her from the walkway outside her cell.

Anyone with common sense would see the new arrival as a clear sign to stop their conflicts. The mass of metal within the prison alone and the large inhibitor collars essentially made the cafeteria a field of prospective lightning rods. She never was a fan of electrokinetics, her hair was bad enough with the wild curls without the energy in the air frizzing it up, and the fact getting any actual product to take care of it was not a luxury afforded her did not make it any better.

Scanning each present, she remains silent while observing.

'Come on, take the hint, drop to the ground with your ego's and don't do anything stupid'

Sure isolation of the more problematic individuals would potentially give a period of relative peace, maybe even be educational, but that was likely wishful thinking as one thing she had learned over her career was that some people were slow to learn. Doubling down just led to further escalations and in a powderkeg of so many prisoners, escalation was the last thing that was needed here.

[Hypocrisy] 'Shut it'

 

[Mirai-chan]

Violettin Hojo​

"Perfection isn't caused are without Humanity's Faults."​

*Thud! Thud! Thud!*

The head was slammed against the table til the woman was unconscious as she just drops her. The Unconscious body plopped lifelessly (Don't worry she's still alive!) Violettin with her cheeky grin had subsided and she took a deep breath as the two combatants as she heard the sounds of cheers and whatever from the other inmates until. She heard the sound of someone yelled as she glanced at her and grumbled she realized that Levina was there as she cursed. That was something she didn't expect, except for the guards that was there awaiting orders to subdue the shit out of the main culprits anyway.

She literally cursed under her breath and sighed, She knew what's better for her besides isolation was a bit of a true pain for a.... special case like her. She kneels on the ground with her hands on the back of her head. She had to oblige by their rules aside from the psycho breakdowns since those was slightly out of her case but eh. She grumbled as it wasn't her fault of her joining in. Some of the Inmmates she noticed had knelt down or somethin' as she grumbles to herself. Violettin just wanted to eat in peace if it wasn't for a shitty bastard to interrupt and let her literally beat the bejeezus out of.

 

[BuggaBoo]

---

Shi - The Rainbow UNICORN!!

​

Making friends in the cafeteria. But kinda' not really...

The mashed potatoes comment had her taken aback but still she wiped at the sides of her mouth, pink burning up high upon her cheeks. The Dirty Harry comment did her dirty and so she spoke in her normal voice, "Yo. They took my food, sis. They took my-- oumph!!"

Yeah, she flinched. Badly.

But could anyone really blame her? The diminutive rainbowy-headed thing spent the last 58 fun-tastic days ending up in usually 1 of 3 situations: getting inappropriately harrassed, running away or getting beat up. Most of the time it was some uncreative mix of the three that unfortunately ended up with her getting beat up. Not right away and not always as bad as the last beating, mind you, but still beat up none the less.

For such a waif of a lady, vertically challenged and all, she was rather sturdy and always bounced back. It all came down to her life as all skater chicks lived; proving themselves at the skate park to more than just the fellas. If you know, you know. So yes, she took it on the chin like a champ and always got up offa the mat before the 10 count. But that didn't mean she was always content to be a punching bag. She was still slick and could finesse most dudes with her agility and wit. Yeah, she was lickety-split quick.

But not as quick as the dark haired bot impersonating a woman. Shi's brain only had time to register that RoboBitch was going to pull something and the moment her brain sent the bio-message to her reflexive motion, the Robo Bee lady had already snatched away the pair of limp cancer sticks. It was mindbending. Shi's eyes widened, nearly popping outta her head as she stared at her empty hand. Once her brain registered that Robo Bee had taken them-- and not snapped both cigarettes in half-- Shi all at once felt both awe and dread and the rising epiphany forming.

Bruh. I'mma end up with an unwanted pregnancy, broken body permitting. That or beaten to death...

Self-pity she had to swallow down lest she vomit up the truth; Shi Calvillo-Holmes was nothing without the ability to shift into Moon Prism. The Unicorn was a beloved legend. The woman was just shit on the bottom of someone's boot. And the Robo Dollie knew this. The other diminutive inmate was going to steal the last of her valuables and abandon Shi fend for herself. For unlike Shi, despite the small stature, Robo Dollie could hold her own against grown ass'd men.

“You’re lucky that I have a kind heart. All right, girlie... ”

The relief washing over her was the force of a tsunami. Shi's lower lip trembled, big blues teared up. Upon shaky knee, she baby-stepped on over to her saviour. A lone tan hand pressed at the side of her head, not to cover the bald patch, but to shove back in the proverbial mind-blowing thought that an inmate actually-- for real, for really real...! --was going to cover her sorry ass.
A small smile breached the trembling lips, a heartfelt and ever grateful string of words shyly escaped her lips, "Thank yooo--ooooowww!!"

Her arm was nearly yanked out from its socket; it was the same one Riptide had used to fling Shi into the fray in what felt like a lifetime ago already. As she was dragged behind Robo Bee, the pain would not let her forget that, yes, it all happened but a mere minute ago.

“You’re my shadow, ‘kay? ‘Kay. That means if someone comes up on my back you knock some sense into ‘em, while I blow the Big Bad Wolf’s house down.”

"I'm little. The hell you want me to use against those dudes? Yo momma jokes?" the quip was supposed to be sarcastic and sallowed but she couldn't help but giggle at the end; random funny thoughts be random funny afterall. The Robo Dollie and Rag Dollie comedy on the run show...! Featuring: Yo' Momma...! Hahhahahah-- Blue eyes crossed and she secured the bubbly laugh. No. The hell was she doing? Maybe she was suffering a mood swing from the juxtaposing emotions; absolutely get wrecked danger one second, to absolute orgasmic relief the next? Maybe. But most likely not.

This place sucked, she just had to keep reminding herself.

One of the 2 beefhead dudes was closing in, hot on the tracks of the height-restricted duo. And fast. Shi glanced over at their destination. youngiiie Q was about ready to pulverized the face of the Asian dude she flew by earlier. Man, those fists were huge like the heaviest of kettle bell weights. Great; like literally back into the jaws of the beast... A sigh, a shrug, a smirk. Shi wiped her mouth and spat, glinting eyes signalling that chica was ready to toss some shade. Shi whistled loudly in Q's direction.

"Eyo, Q! 'Mohawk' here said; 'yo momma so dumb she chases her own tail cuz she think tryna sniff another dog's booty hole!'"

Still scowling 'Mohawk' and friend pursued the pair, but a quizzical look he gave and directed a head shake of denial at the monstrous lupine inmate. Who would have thought in a million years that 'yo momma' jokes could get anyone outta an almost certain and very painful beatdown? An internal re-affirming nod Shi gave herself, Get that omlette! Girl, crack em up...

"Eyo, Q! 'Moustache' there said he love to suck offa yo momma's titties-- all 8 of them!"

Q released his quarry and directed a death glare at Shi. All colour drained from her face; her ploy had backfired. But just then:

It was low and difficult to make out but both loverly beefheaded dudes chuckled neath their breaths. Low and difficult to hear but they were chuckles nonetheless. And the derisive sound was picked up by the sensitive ears of a momma's boy. A massive, musclebound, mound of a monster kinda' momma's boy.

2 strides and a leap later, Q landed with a thunderous thump in front of the Beefheads; 'Mohawk' and 'Moustache'. Both Q and Shi glanced over their shoulders in direct eye contact, feral ambers meeting big, baby blues. "Eyo, watch in fear and loathing. Cuz you next, 'Lepprechaun!'"

A nervous giggle, a cleared throat, "Ummmm... get in line...?"

Q snarled viciously, dialed the rage to 11 and took it out on the beefheads.

"ALL INMATES ARE TO LAY UPON THE GROUND WITH THEIR HANDS BEHIND THEIR HEADS NOW!"

Shi shrugged into herself, experiencing a full bodied cringe. That voice was like a harpy screeching as it clawed its nails on a chalkboard.

Rainbow locks chased her motions as she swivelled to look over her shoulder. Well, well, if it wasn't the lightning-sabre wielding, squall jedi, Captain Maelstrom. How could Moon Prism ever adore this wretched wenchly witch?! Ewwww!

A noisy sigh raggedly escaped from Shi's puffy lips. She sounded exactly like how she felt; deflated. Okay so 'Princess Shocker' had the whole giantess kink vibe down pat, which would have been hot to some, even Shi who preferred women around her height, but it was hard to find the sexiness in a woman who's persona amounted to basically menstration incarnate.

That may or may not be truly accurate characterization, but one thing was for certain; Maelstrom had a rep as a powerhouse storm goddess alien. Yeah, so Shi did NOT want to get electrocuted. And it seemed as if her dark-haired Robo saviour had the same sentiments. That and it seemed as if Robo Bee here rushed over not only take on big, bad, stank wolf but also to ensure the safety of the fella lain out on the floor in front of them. And since he was already lying down...

"Yo. You gotta be either really tough or really lucky to survive that encounter with Q-bow-wow there", yes, the lowered, smokey, whispery voice had returned. Despite what she thought was such a cool voice, it did scant amounts of coolness for her actions. The little thing snuggled in beside the young man, positioning herself safe and shielded. He was the human barrier between her body and Q, the beefheads, and Captain Lightning Rod beyond.

An upward chin nod she tossed him as she laced her fingers on top of her head. A low grumble to accentuate her coolness before that gravelly-sounding voice rumbled out her mouth, "Yeah so like me n' my new partner came over here to save you. What's good?"

It was a valiant attempt to sound as cool as humanly possible, yet she was still lisping a decent amount through swollen lips, "I'm Shi. And eyo, shove a butt now, eh? Gotsta give Dollie some space beside me."

---

 

[Aviator]

Liling // “Verdigris” // Age 9 // Inmate // Artificial Intelligence // Cat Burglar and Pianist
​

As she dragged the rainbow-haired girl along, this latest quip caused Liling to swing around and regard her with a hard stare. There was a certain tolerance for bullshit that inmates of the world’s only supernatural prison quickly developed; between administrative bungles and superpowered freaks that could shoot moths out of their mouths, one’s boundaries of the absurd were redefined within days of arrival. But for an inmate who couldn’t have been in the prison for more than two months—this girl couldn’t go an hour without landing herself in a steaming pile of trouble; Liling would have noticed if she’d been here longer—she fit in like one of the Original Five, the five current inmates who’d been locked up at Belle Reve since its establishment. Unsure whether Rainbow’s remark about yo momma jokes was meant to be taken seriously, Liling saltily replied, “Well, I was hoping for, I dunno, maybe a quick chop to the side of the neck or a nice hard stamp on the toes, but middle school humor is a good and dangerous substitute. I expect our opponents will quiver in fear. Now go get ‘em, you mean lunch money bully, you.” Liling gave Rainbow a slap on the shoulder that was meant to be equal parts encouraging and obnoxious and jetted off for Sebastian and Q, who were struggling on the floor.

There was a sharp two-note whistle in the air, the sort that a master uses to get a dog’s attention. Against all odds, it succeeded to make Q, who was sitting on Sebastian’s chest, pause in his efforts to feed Liling’s spades partner a knuckle sandwich. And then Rainbow’s voice filled the air, girlish and loud and inescapable, a veritable assault on the ears. Oh for fuck’s sake, shut up before you get yourself killed, Liling thought, though half her reason for wanting respite was for selfish purposes. Yet trailing on the heels of this thought was an incredulous observation: Rainbow’s schoolyard taunts had done their job. One of Q’s eyes twitched as they trained on this new target, and he seemed to forget about the slight man pinned beneath him. Q emitted a low, canine growl. Liling expected to see him foam at the mouth any minute. Not wanting to stand in the way of Q and the object of his bestial wrath, Liling abandoned her plans to swoop in on him from the side and bowl him over. Instead, she stayed to his periphery and carefully circled around him, until she was standing over Sebastian. Ooh girlie, you got the mouth of a sailor and the might of a mouse, she thought a tad sympathetically. Rainbow was too brave for her own good.

Drowning out the sounds of the new brawl behind her, Liling was assessing the damage to her spades partner when a scrawny guy with carrot-orange hair and taped-up glasses butted in front of her. “Still conscious. Not missing any teeth either, from the looks of it,” he reported dutifully to a cluster of betters hanging on the fringes of the activity. “Ned, that’ll be a week’s worth of kitchen detail for you, and Heather, you have a hot date with a mop and bucket after dinner tonight. How does that—?”

Liling drove her shoulder into him, making him stagger back a step and almost crush Sebastian’s hand beneath his shoe. “Shove off, nerd, okay?” she yelled, a bolt of anger catching her off guard with its intensity. The nearsighted redhead glared at her, but when she swung a fist at him, he cringed backward, apparently remembering the apathy with which Liling had smashed Petra’s head into a picnic table. “Hmph. That’s what I thought,” she muttered as he scampered away to rejoin his friends.

Finally, free of interruptions, she got her first good look at Sebastian. He looked ragged around the edges, like a coin that had been bounced around in a pocket for too long. One of his lips was split, and an egg-shaped lump was rising on his head. “You look so dashing, getting your ass thumped defending me,” Liling remarked dryly. She sighed melodramatically. “What’s a dame to do without her knight in shining armor?” She extended a hand to him, but just as she was levering him to his feet, an angry chime rained down from the loudspeakers on the ceiling. It sounded like the breath of a giant dragon, pulsing in time with the flickering of the lights. A red glow suffused the cafeteria, making the spacious room resemble the inside of a drop of blood.

“Oh boy, alarm time. Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any more exciting,” Liling said with false cheer moments before a predatory figure descended on the room. Dressed in full armor that looked as though it must have weighed as much as a medium-sized child, six-and-a-half feet of androgynous muscle marched into the room with militant poise. From her belt she withdrew a long, curved sword, and as she raised it above her head, it glowed purple with the hum of electricity. A crack of thunder shook the cafeteria and sent Liling’s hypothetical heart rocketing into her throat. And then, in a booming voice that was almost indistinguishable from the natural phenomena, Levina, captain of the guards and one of a handful to report directly to the warden, commanded all inmates to get on the floor or suffer the consequences of insubordination. As her voice reverberated endlessly off the bulletproof glass, a hiss of electricity along her sword emphasized her words.

Knowing that there was nothing to gain from resisting besides possible electrocution, Liling watched passively when Ned and Heather and the scrawny redhead all lowered themselves to their knees. Then she followed suit, keeping a wary eye out for any flying fists or feet hoping to catch her by surprise. Since she wasn’t human in the purest sense of the word, she was the target of a lot of unprovoked antagonism, typically instigated by religious zealots who thought her creation unnatural and in defiance of God’s will. Or conspiracy theorists who thought the guards had planted her here with a detonation sequence to be deployed in the event of a mass, uncontrollable riot.

A warning prickle on the back of Liling’s neck was her only indication that she and Sebastian weren’t alone anymore. An overly raspy voice at her elbow chirruped, sounding rather like a songbird that had made a habit of smoking, and once it started it didn’t stop. Liling’s eyes rolled so far back that they were in danger of disappearing into her skull. Dirty Harry was back in full force. Liling vaguely recalled instructing the rainbow-haired girl to be her shadow, but from her damnable recurrence at the least-expected moment, she reminded her more of an STD. One that you could never fully get rid of. “What are you, our new mascot?” she moaned as she complied with the guard captain’s orders, Sebastian sandwiched by the bickering girls. “His luck’s clearly run out if you’re here.” They were the last words she bit out before she lowered her cheek to the cool tile of the cafeteria floor, trying not to think about all of the residual lunch and shoe particles she was cozying up against. She was frustrated that the guards had ruined her moment of triumph at saving Sebastian to come round up the inmates like dogs, and taking it out on Rainbow felt a better alternative to letting it fester inside her.

 

[deadly king]

Belle Reve Federal Penitentiary; Lousiana
Prisoner #10792
[ redacted ]
JUPITER

​

---

But as chaos unfolded, a familiar tension settled in their chest. The alarms blared, red lights casting a dim hue over the room, and Jupiter's relaxed facade wavered. Captain Levina stormed in, katana raised and crackling with electricity. The sight sent a shiver down Jupiter's spine. The last time they’d been thrown into solitary confinement, it had been a nightmare, and the thought of being electrocuted was even worse.

Captain Levina stormed in, katana raised and crackling with electricity. The sight sent a shiver down Jupiter's spine. The last time they’d been thrown into solitary confinement, it had been a nightmare, and the thought of being electrocuted was even worse. Her powerful voice boomed through the air, and the prisoners all around them slowly caved to the guard's commanding presence. Jupiter's smirk vanished. They quickly slid off their seat, hands moving behind their head as they lay down, heart pounding.

"Looks like the fun's over," they muttered under their breath, trying to mask their fear. Eyes darting around, Jupiter stayed alert, dreading the possibility of solitary confinement or the sting of Levina's electrified blade. Knees carefully meet the cold floor. Although they hadn't intervened in the fight, opting to merely spectate the brutal encounter, they couldn't take any chances. Even if Jupiter didn't consider themselves a threat, there was no way Captain Levina didn't register them that way. The two options were to flee or surrender and one led to guaranteed punishment.

 

[Aviator]

Azrael Emery // “the Conjurer” // Age 28 // Sixth Prince of Castillon // Illusionist
​

“Your weapons,” Azrael commanded. Remembering that Njeri worked for a time-and-space-warped version of Castillon’s most sordid prison times fifty, he added, “And your keys. Put them on the floor, slowly, then put your hands behind your head.” He was panting disproportionately after jumping out of his lakeside hiding place and grabbing onto Njeri’s coat as he crossed between universes, and the hand that held the knife to the lieutenant’s throat trembled. Azrael could feel his pulse in his fingertips, and the strain of keeping his arm elevated caused him to accidentally nick Njeri, denoted by a small wince.

Cyrus Njeri started to comply. Ignoring the drops of blood bubbling at his throat, he silently removed a Glock from the inside of his fancy black coat, which Azrael noted had a striking cherry-red interior. A nine-millimeter joined it. Then a dagger. Three throwing knives. What looked like it might have been a boot knife. And two other unorthodox bladed weapons with numerous surfaces that Azrael, a mere administrator who sat in his office reviewing figures while he paid others to kill on his behalf, was unsure how to categorize. Holy shit, he thought to himself in increasing morbid amazement as the weapons kept coming. This guy is like Santa Claus for serial killers and hitmen. He just needs an Uzi, a flamethrower, and some hand grenades, and he’s good to go.

Realizing with dismay that he likely would be unable to detect whether Njeri was cleverly concealing additional little gems on his person, Azrael decided that the best strategy was to knock him out so that he wouldn’t have to worry about being stabbed or shot by them. He hastily kicked away the weapons, scattering them in a variety of directions since they would likely be more dangerous in Njeri’s hands than his. “Okay, now hands behind your head.” Trying to sound as menacing as possible, as if holding knives to people’s throats while issuing commands was a regular hobby of his, he added, “Make one wrong move and you’re dead… motherfucker.” Gangsters were always cursing in those poorly-lit, bloodbath dramas. His arm shook again, causing the blade to dance along Njeri’s neck. Still, as much as he wished this would all be over as soon as possible so that he could blessedly roll his shoulder, Azrael jumped every time his captive shifted, expecting Njeri to try to pull a fast one. “Slower, dammit!” he cried. “Or else I’m gonna open you up like a fucking sacrifice on a ritual al—”

And then, so fast that you’d miss it if you blinked, simultaneous hands appeared on his elbow and wrist. Together, they gave a powerful wrench, sending a blast of agony radiating up Azrael’s arm all the way to his shoulder. His fingers opened of their own accord, and to his horror, the knife slipped from between them. Not relenting now that the weapon was gone, the hand on his wrist tightened to the point that Azrael heard a creak of bones. Before he could even yelp, Njeri drew his other arm back, and his fist hit Azrael like a brick, hard enough to crack his head sideways and make the world go momentarily white.

Fortunately, Njeri hadn’t maintained his death hold, so winding up and letting Azrael have it again wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, this meant that Azrael went tumbling across the hard stone floor from the momentum of the blow, his narrow shoulders corkscrewing as he flipped again and again. Finally, he rolled to a stop curled on his side, pain assaulting him from all angles, the world spinning like a carousel. Azrael groaned and tried to lift his head. And then Njeri did the most terrifying thing possible. He scooped up the knife that Azrael had dropped and started toward him. This jolted him back to his senses. Azrael flipped onto his back and began to scuttle away on hands and feet like a frantic insect, hoping to buy some time while he tapped into his powers.

He looked around the circular, barren room. It looked like the inside of a well-manicured cave, cavernous and stony and arching high, with a series of tunnels that branched off in the cardinal directions. White fluorescent bars lit it in an unflattering glow. Other than the mirror and the scattered weapons, the room was empty of objects, and Azrael couldn’t detect any cameras from a cursory glance. Which made sense, if the clandestine goings-on in this room like jumping between universes were supposed to be kept under the radar, and would be a punishable offense if they came to light. For that same reason, there were some deliberately unrecorded rooms in the Citadel, too. Or well, there had been, before the Kryptonians had blasted it to ruins.

The lack of contents in the room was unfortunate. It gave Azrael less material to work with, less inspiration for a convincing illusion, and time to conjure one up in vivid detail was not on his side. Meanwhile, Cyrus Njeri was approaching faster than Azrael was crawling backward. Now he was only a few steps away. Light winked maliciously off of the stiletto he wielded, and he loomed over Azrael like the devil eager to snatch up a soul.

“Your Highness, stop this madness. I do not want to hurt you, and you do not want to fight me,” the lieutenant said matter-of-factly, speaking with a liquid accent that made his words sift together like creamer into coffee. There was a hole torn into the side of his jacket where he’d been shot with a Kryptonian bullet, but if it caused him pain, it did not hinder his movement. “One of two things is going to happen next. You are going to hop back through that mirror, click your heels three times and think, There’s no place like home, and be on your merry way back to the shithole kingdom where you belong, and I will forget this ever happened. But judging by its recent appearance, I think you’re going to opt for option two, which is you allow me to disarm you and peaceably escort you to the warden, who will listen to your tales of woe and figure out what to do with—”

But Azrael had no intention of leaving his fate to the mercy of either the Kryptonians who’d overtaken his kingdom, or the warden who appeared to be Njeri’s commanding officer. He was the new emperor of Castillon, or what remained of it. He was not a prisoner of war, and he was no one’s tale of woe. Before Njeri finished his proposal, his shadow leapt up from the floor, swinging a blade that looked less like a knife and more like the curved fang of some massive primordial beast. Njeri broke off and whirled on instinct, raising his empty arm to block the blow.

The shadow wasn’t real, and it wasn’t autonomous, meaning that it wouldn’t respond of its own accord. Just to the direct commands that Azrael gave it, and he was no expert combatant. He probably would be unable to puppeteer the shadow to fight Njeri in a convincing matter for very long, so its main function was to serve as a distraction. His skull throbbing and his mouth tasting of blood, Azrael picked himself up off the floor. His hand went to the inside pocket of his suit jacket, where there was a carefully capped syringe. Since the Kryptonian invasion last night during the reception, he’d had eighteen hours to prepare for Njeri’s arrival. Azrael had carefully thought every step through, stopping by the Citadel infirmary where he could take anything he wanted because its overseer had already fled from the carnage. “I would rather not kill you if I can avoid it,” he hissed, warily approaching Njeri from the side so that he was pincered between Azrael and the lifelike shadow, “but you are not making it easy.” After all, Njeri was a wealth of information on the unfamiliar environment that Azrael had been thrown into. If for some reason he couldn’t escape immediately and was stuck here until then, killing his captive would be a waste of resources.

In the same motion, the lieutenant slashed the stiletto through the shadow, dissolving it into puffs of inky smoke, and turned full circle. Azrael gasped as the blade skimmed across his right bicep. He transferred the syringe to his left hand as his dominant one seemingly lost the ability to close itself. The dark fabric of his suit jacket was instantly saturated. Gritting his teeth, Azrael continued his advance, raising the syringe like a knife and looking for somewhere to plunge it. Of course, Njeri’s long coat and tall boots meant that he was covered from the neck down, minimizing Azrael’s target. Even his hands were gloved in black leather, meaning that Azrael would have to stab him in either the face or throat.

While these thoughts were going through his head, Njeri shot forward like a bullet from a gun. He plowed into Azrael, his shoulder leading the charge and connecting with the somewhat smaller man’s chest. For the second time in twenty-four hours, the breath was driven from Azrael’s body, leaving him gasping even before he smashed into the floor with a two-hundred-pound-plus-equipment weight atop him. Stars rocketed through his vision, burning afterimages of light into his retinas. Before he even registered what was happening, a vast hand had captured both of his wrists, pinning them above his head. Haloed in light, Njeri was a dark outline with a shitload of strength. Tears from the blinding fluorescence rolled down the sides of Azrael’s face as he burned with humiliation and outrage. In New Reynes he would have had someone executed for poking him let alone for sitting on his chest.

There was a soft staccato of sound as Njeri laughed. His long dreadlocks framed his face, hanging down like stalactites as he regarded the struggling prince beneath him. “I have had a lot of men thrust against me, Your Highness. A lot of men. It’s one of the few perks of being a sailor. And I must say, most of them do it with more vigor than you are now, even when they’re not trying to push me away.” A haughty smirk split his face. Unable to resist, he added, “I recommend you use your hips more.”

Azrael felt the blood drain from his face. In his embarrassment, he stilled, abandoning his attempts to break free. “You are disgusting to think of me in such a—”

“Actually, I’m astonished,” Njeri interrupted, his smile widening. “To think that Maximilian’s boy would harbor these kinds of feelings for me. Tell me, do you think your father the emperor will bless our marriage? Among foreign ambassadors, I am a favorite of his, after all.”

My father the emperor is dead, and I helped end him, Azrael longed to retort, but he knew it unwise to put all his cards on the table. Especially in the event that Njeri took him into custody and he was turned over to the warden, which, horrifically, was looking more and more likely by the second.

When Njeri’s teasing received no response, his attention shifted to the syringe still clutched in Azrael’s fist. “What’s this?” the lieutenant asked, plucking it easily from Azrael’s grasp. He turned it over in one gloved hand and then started to laugh again. “Were you planning to use this on me? Just how long were you sitting in those cattails, waiting to get the jump on me? From your smell, I’m guessing it was several hours. It never would have worked, you know.” He eyed Azrael with consternation and then went back to examining the contents of the syringe, tilting it this way and that so the transparent liquid sloshed around. “Is this poison? Or just something you entitled white boys use to get pretty girls on their backs?” A terrible light crept into Njeri’s eyes. “How about I use it on you and find out?”

Panic beat inside Azrael like a second heart as Njeri moved the syringe toward the side of his neck. Somehow managing to regain his wits, he drove his knee up with as much force as he could generate. Njeri expelled his breath quickly and made a soft choking sound when he tried to draw another. Dark satisfaction cut through Azrael as the lieutenant’s face contorted into a rictus of pain. Inches from Azrael’s face, the syringe fell from a slack hand onto the floor. The point of the needle came alarmingly close to his eye, and he shivered away from it even after the danger had passed.

Working quickly before Njeri’s pain faded, Azrael focused on it. It grew. Expanded. Consumed the lieutenant until it became his identity and all other thoughts were obliterated from his mind. As if he were pregnant with a demon child and the little bastard was trying to cut its way out with a battle ax. The next time Azrael tried to shrug out of Cyrus Njeri’s grip, the self-proclaimed former sailor blew aside with a short howl. “Do your hordes of slavering men like to kick you in the balls too?” Azrael casually asked as he stood. “You arrogant asshole.”

To his credit, Njeri, despite being blind with pain and feeling like his body was literally splitting open, did not go down without a fight. Having learned his lesson from last time, Azrael conjured the illusion of the animate shadow again, advancing with quick steps from the side that Azrael had not rolled toward. Njeri swung an elbow out at just the right height to crack a substantial opponent’s kneecap. But it passed harmlessly through the shadow, and the real Azrael seized the opportunity to move in from the other side. He yanked the high collar of the lieutenant’s coat down and jabbed the syringe into a vein. Njeri stiffened, and then went limp as a tranquilizer strong enough to knock out an elephant hit him. His eyes rolled back, and he fell facedown against the floor. Thirty seconds later, he was snoring gently, his dreadlocks coiling around his head like a nest of serpents.

“Did you really expect to win?” Azrael scoffed dismissively, slightly breathless. “I’m fucking magic.” He began to divest Njeri of his long black coat. Not only was he sure that Njeri kept his keyring in there, but it was optimal for concealing weapons. And most importantly, wearing the true coat would enhance the illusion. From the luxurious feel of it, it was pure melton wool, with double-breasted rows of gleaming silver buttons. It caught the eye and held it, and should Azrael’s illusion contain any mistakes from the real Cyrus Njeri, the real-deal coat might just be the tipping point that erased an onlooker’s doubt. Azrael already knew that mimicking the accent would be the hardest part, and for that reason he wished he could have prolonged his dialogue with the lieutenant a little.

When he looked into the tall blue-framed mirror that had acted as a portal between worlds, it was not the Sixth Prince of Castillon staring back at him. There was no pale young man with a slender build as if he didn’t spend enough time in the sun. No dubious haircut as his sister Maya had once described it, long on top and shorn on the sides. No delicate upward-curving nose, and no eyes with myriad flecks of green and brown and gold that shifted like a cobra’s skin with the seasons. Gazing back at him with eyes as black as a crow’s wing was all six hulking feet of Cyrus Njeri, the lower half of his face shadowed by a goatee and his ears pierced with two simple gold hoops. Azrael turned the real Njeri over with his boot so that he was faceup, and with the help of the mirror, tailored small adjustments to his appearance until they could have been identical twins. “All right, Lieutenant,” Azrael said in a discordant clash of syllables as he attempted to get the accent right. He winced. Yeah, he would need to work on that. “Now, where to put you until I break out of this hellhole?”

 

[TobiornotTobi]

1 Year Ago...​

The Outback is home to a myriad of predators. Organisms that rely on the consumption of other organisms to survive. Stalking, flying or swimming, they roam the vast lands in pursuit of their next meal. But none were as deadly or destructive as the apex predator; man. Nighttime had descended over the outback, where two apex predators were locked in combat. The ground was littered with patches of fire, adding amber lights to the darkened scene. Rodrick Unger darted through the night, running in a zig-zag pattern as he searched for cover. A bright orange ball of energy narrowly zoomed past his arm. Even as it rocketed past him, the intense heat against his skin lingered, as if he had hovered the limb over a stove. To his right was a boulder buried halfway in the ground. As if it was labelled home base, Rodrick dropped down and slid behind the cover. Another close fireball struck where he just was, causing a small explosion behind the hunter.

"You made a terrible mistake tailing me," His quarry announced. Over the crackling of the fireball's final destination, Rodrick could hear footsteps crunching.. "You have no idea what you're dealing with."

Adrenaline pumped through Rodrick's veins as he took stock of his situation. He was in a fight against a pyrokinetic metahuman, who had turned the tables on him. What had started as him pursuing a fleeing convict through the scorching hot outback had become a deadly shell game. But instead of shells, Rodrick's quarry was methodically throwing fireballs as the hunter ran from cover to cover. And as Rodrick looked ahead, he saw that there was no longer any viable cover he could reach. Remaining behind this rock made him a sitting duck, and continuing to run would make him a roasted one. So in a way, the man was correct in saying that Rodrick was in over his head.

And he was loving every bloody minute of it.

The 33 year old hunter hadn't felt this excited in a long, long while. It had been some time since he had been on a hunt that offered a challenge. Ever since he was knocked off the Australian Federal Police, he would only strike out to bring back food for his next meal. But after a special request from a pair of Interpol agents, here he was, back on the prowl. But this wasn't an unaware deer, and it wasn't a drug runner hopped up on his own supply. This was an enemy to the Australian government, a foreign agent who had attacked a top secret facility, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. More importantly, the Interpol agents continued, he had run off with vital data that could compromise the nation's security if it got in the wrong hands. What that data was? It was on a need to know basis. But Rodrick could care less about the data. His quarry's unique powers were what convinced him to work on Interpol's behalf. And by the looks of it, Rodrick's lust for a challenge would be his downfall. Or at least, that's the impression he wanted to relay to his opponent. In his ever-ticking noggin, Rodrick was sorting through his options. He had long since run out of arrows, blowing through his supply while he was on the offense. The slow footsteps implied that the agent was aware of this and confident that the fight was over. He must already have a finishing move in mind. A quick peek behind the boulder and an even quicker fireball to blow a hole through his torso.

"You have nowhere to go now. Come out, and I'll make this quick."

His poor, unaware adversary was oh so wrong. Rodrick got into a crouch and rubbed his hands together, a devilish smile appearing on his face.

"Come an' get me, ya drongo," Rodrick growled in his best tough voice as he jumped. "Gettin' tired of your piss-poor aim, anyway!"

Rodrick's taunt received its intended reply, the footsteps picking up their pace. The sound of a gas stove turning on, along with an amber glow visible on the ground indicated that it was now or never. Rodrick put the next part of his gambit into play. As the footsteps got louder and louder, the man reached the boulder and immediately turned the corner, launching a fireball at the ground behind it. To his surprise, his attack hit nothing but thin air. Instinctively, he created another fireball and turned around, expecting an ill-fated flank. But once again, there was no hunter to be found. Where the hell did he go? A two note whistle gave the target his answer. Looking up, the convict could hardly react as Rodrick dropped from atop the boulder and landed on top of him. Straddling his dazed target, Rodrick released his pent-up energy on his prey. A right hook struck his head like a meteor, followed by an equally as strong left hook. Down, but not quite out yet, the pyrokinetic metahuman's right hand glowed orange and he weakly forced it up as Rodrick cocked back another right hook. A smaller fireball shot out of his hand and grazed the side of his right arm. It wasn't strong or aimed well enough to vaporize his limb, but it hurt like nothing else and caused the sleeve of his sand camouflage patterned jacket to catch fire. But most importantly, it knocked Rodrick off balance, the hunter falling onto his side and writhing in pain. Fighting through the pain, it was all he could muster to take his coat off and wildly fling it away. leaving him with a white tank top. A quick inspection of his arm gave him a good view of the second degree burns setting in. He didn't have much time, however, as his opponent took his turn on top. With a hand surrounded by fire, he reached down, intending to melt Rodrick's face. The arm was intercepted by Rodrick left hand, holding it at bay for the moment. The man gritted his teeth as he fought to end Rodrick. Using his free arm, he pummeled Rodrick's side with his fist. Rodrick had to dig deep into himself for the strength to hold the arm at bay. It was only a matter of time until the man gave up on a painful kill and opted to simply blow his head off. Using his injured right arm, Rodrick gasped and grunted as he bent his left leg and brought it as close as he could to his right hand. Pulling up his pant leg, the hunter grabbed a thin object from his boot and jammed it into his assailant's side. His eyes widened in shock as he looked down, a knife jutting out of his lower torso. Rodrick pressed it deeper, the pain making the target roll off and lay on the ground. Rodrick fumbled around his belt and unsheathed his other knife, pointing it at his downed prey. A dead serious glare was on his face, but it slowly melted into his usual grin.

"Now, mate, I suggest you hold still 'til my people arrive. That knife there is the only thing keepin' you from bleedin' like a stuck pig."

...

Present Day​

The memory washed over Rodrick's body, filling him with warmth. Everything that transpired afterwards was a disaster on par with the Emu War, but the hunt was something to take pride in. A clearly stronger opponent, outsmarted and outmaneuvered, until he was defeated and at Rodrick's mercy. Suddenly, as if a strong gust of wind had put the fire inside him out, the warmth faded away. That way of thinking was the reason why he was here in this limbo in the first place. His thrill-seeking nature played him right into their hands and made him the perfect fall guy. And what was the name of this limbo? Belle Reve.

The yanks sure knew how to name their maximum security prisons. At the moment, Rodrick was in the cafeteria, staring down a tray of what could barely be considered food. These days, the only thing Rodrick was hunting for was a decent meal. Pushing his tray away from him, the hunter glanced around the mess hall. How long had he been here? Rodrick hadn't a clue, he stopped keeping count a while ago. Everything had happened in a flash, moving from one dark hole in the ground to another. At the very least, this one was better than the last. He didn't have to worry about getting beaten or electrocuted for answers to questions he knew nothing about. The torture methods used here were psychological in nature. He had a 6x6 room to sleep in and tightly knit halls to be escorted through by the various guards who kept order. Which was hell for a man whose primary hobby was roaming outside in nature. Rodrick felt like a caged lion at the zoo. And with his ever growing mane of blond, unkempt hair and beard, the comparison was reaching new levels by the day. More importantly though, life in Belle Reve was such a drag. It was the same routine every day, over and over. Where the hell was the spice of life?

As if his question was placed in an envelope and sent to the North Pole for Santa to answer, Rodrick heard a cry of pain. Whipping his head in the direction of the source, he watched as a conflict unfolded at one of the numerous tables. A man had just stabbed his hulking adversary in the neck with a toothpick, while the female he was sitting next to was struck with a low aiming kick. As the battle continued to unfold, more and more inmates were drawn in. A crowd of spectators was forming and Rodrick pushed through the sea of people so he could have a good look. The two Asians inmates were holding their own against their opponents, who were clearly punching below their weight class.

"Holy crap, it's another race war!" Rodrick heard a particularly hyped up inmate yell.

Suddenly, as if it was straight out of a cartoon, Rodrick saw a small woman with rainbow-colored hair sail through the air and land on the cards table. And as she scarfed down mashed potatoes like they were her last meal on Earth, Rodrick wondered if this was a hunger-induced hallucination. In any case, he was loving it. But what really caught his attention was yet another interloper creeping on the scene. The kid zeroed in on the betting table and foraged for loot, settling for colored pencils and a lighter. But what really sparked Rodrick's interest was a pack of three other inmates who followed them as they retreated. At that point, Rodrick's smile evolved into his signature grin. With reinvigorated purpose, Rodrick jostled through the crowd once more. He didn't care about who was in the right or wrong here, just as long as he could stave away the hurt that had been tormenting him for so long. Even if it was for just a moment. The hunter picked up his pace, back on the prowl after so long. Just as he was about to reach the four of them, an ensemble of alarms began to blare. Intense lights blinked in his eyes as the guard Levina burst in, commanding everyone on the ground. Rodrick cursed furiously in his head as he complied and got on the ground. Way to give a lad blue balls, lady, he thought to himself. At the very least, he was close enough to his future fighting partner.

"Mate, I think you picked the wrong day to pull a five-finger discount!" Rodrick yelled over the alarm. He pointed with his head behind himself, referring to Riptide and the Neckbreakers.

 

[Jigajig]

Levina
Location: Belle Reve

​

Much to their credit the majority of the inmates complied with Levina's order. She sweapt her gaze across the room, scanning for any potential threats before she sheathed her blade. Sighing she rose her arm and with a flick of her wrist she motioned for the guards who had finally arrived behind her. "Tend to the wounded.. those that need it are to be taken to the infirmary." She strode through the cafeteria checking on a few of the inmates that had been knocked out. Standing back up she glanced around, puttin gher hands behind her back clasping them.

"It would seem that people have forgotten that this is a prision.." She shook her head before turning her attention to the inmates before her. Looking at the group of ragtag misfits Levina pondered on what to do. She was due to meet with Cyrus soon and so would not be able to take things into her own hands as it were. "Right, it's decided.. Those involved will are attend a group therapy session right now. That way perhaps you can see that your problems are not exclusive to yourselves, and others may very well be sharing similar feelings.. and who knows maybe you'll discover something new about yourself." She motioned to numerous guards. "Secure them and take them to the therapy room."

She looked at the group and motioned for everyone to stand back up. "Oh and before anyone gets any funny ideas to mess about. Do know that if you do.. isolation will seem like a picnic compared to what I will have in store for you. OK? OK.." With that she spun on her heel and waved her hand to let the guards know they had control of the situation now. Each inmate was was secured and then was lead to the therapy room through the halls.

As Levina left, she turned to one of the guards. "Send for Cyrus. Have him meet me in my office if you would please."

 

[PlusUltra]

As Rachel continued to watch before a look of realisation crossed her face, seeing something familiar that both annoyed and grew her curiosity. Something about Shi was giving a sense of familiarity that she couldn't quite place, and that natural curiosity made her want to figure out more. It was then that she realized an opportunity and on impulse decided to do something she knew was stupid but it was going to be a calculated risk.

Exhaling slowly, she pushed herself off the railing to land softly on the floor below and walked calmly along the ground to the middle of those being gathered up and spoke up in a soft neutral tone. "I suppose if it's a prison then anyone not following an order gets the same treatment, right?". She stops, remaining standing and raises both her hands horizontally in front of her with a tilt of her head with a soft clanking of the bulky inhibitor collar. "That punishment has my interest, so I think it's finally time I involve myself a little. Unless further actions are needed?"