The One [Closed]

[illirica]

TIME TO USE A LIFELINE

Diva moved through the surrounding area, checking on people that were close enough to the area to be aware of what was going on. Most of them were... well, no worse off than they had been before the heroes arrived. For some of them, there was not really anything that anyone could do. Total Experience used his power to phone a friend, while the kickboxing champ went ham on the remains of the monster.

After signing a couple quick autographs here and there, Diva sat with a little boy for a few minutes, who was mourning the death of his pet rat, using a scrap of ribbon from his parents to make an intricate bow for the shoebox coffin. She might not have liked rats much, but she was at least decently good with fabrics. She was just finishing up when her sense of the dramatic told her it was time to arrive back on scene, so she went out the back door to their balcony, jumping off and executing a perfect (naturally) landing next to Total Experience as the portal wobbled into existence.

Some guy in armor. How disappointing. Probably Terminus, she realized after a moment - Diva at least knew the big names, even if she didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about anyone besides herself. THat was even more disappointing. With a name like his, he could have done so much more with his look.

Of course, he was getting kind of up there, wasn’t he? Even Total Experience was in his thirties, Terminus had to be pushing forty, if not there already. Absolutely decrepit, in the world of superheroes. Maybe it was best that he kept the armor on, after all.

And at least the plan sounded exciting. ”Well, he does keep asking for it,” she pointed out. Given that Total Experience had pointed out that the guy was undead rather than alive, she felt no moral compunctions about putting him out of his obvious misery. ”Let me push the button - I hardly ever get to blow things up on purpose. Plus it would be spectacular, just like everything else I do. Have you ever thought about a more stylized armor? You know, like the greco-roman thing, with the abs and pecs chiseled in? Hmm... maybe not. You should get a different color scheme, though. I don’t think anyone major is using orange right now...”

[Azra]

藕

With no real rebuttal being given to trying to grant the undead' swish the Lotus launched into a flurry of attacks as a call was made. Leaping into a kick that saught to connect with well whatever stump of a neck was left a spin to the motion that spoke of years of practice. Fire trailed the move and the kick that would follow, a flame that was being taken into hand as the second kick came. A vicious spiral leading to a motion to try and connect with the ribs, her kicks still hitting more like vehicles being thrown then simple shoes impacting skin. These two strikes looking to obliterate the upper and lower body with horrific force and an inferno in tow would be followed by one more motion.

The fames taken in hand would look to be transferred to the center of the chest. Dual palm strikes looking to try and make sure the ribcage was shattered, to try and reduce sternum to fragments to perforate the heart. Each move accompanied to flames that looked to engulf the remains of the undead and leave little left standing. Flames that burned hot enough they should have harmed the Lotus and likely would have if not for her strange abilities ever in use.

With that she would step away as the back up was being called in. Terminus, it made sense if anyone knew of a prison for a meta it was likely him. If anyone could craft a device to box whatever remained it was probably him. She made no signs of it but the Lotus also just hated his presence. She was the flower gifting powers to people, but who's idea of combat was founded on self. While being in front of someone who was all weapons and technology. There wasn't a need to know how to throw a punch when one could have a rocket launcher strapped to their wrist instead. Grievances aside though the martial artist simply would take five steps back. "I say box it and bomb it."

Feed the old thing and maybe they could get answers or have a powerful asset. That required some blood sacrifices though which she doubted was heroic. And like the blonde starlet showing off legs said, "he'd asked for it". Though maybe the vampire would get lucky and some remnant sliver of a skull might be stuck in her shoe.

However discussing the fate of the old vampire was now not the only thing transpiring. Terminus had looked to try and find out all he could on the martial artist. More important though was that of all the people it could be it was someone like Terminus, who had the resources to do the job better then any cop or government official likely could. The kind of person who's reach went beyond what any badge might be able to do. She would initially come up as Asuka Aubrey, of a Japanese mother and an American father who had just grown up in NYC. She had recently turned 20 and worked at Vocal Sounds, she had no real criminal record outside of a few cases of assault charges waved off as self defense. That's what most would have found exclusively. He could go deeper though and could find an Asuka identity in most nations, someone who would read as a citizen almost anywhere if the Lotus wanted. Encrypted to a point it was hard for anyone to likely know more then what the Lotus wanted.

But of course once identity wasn't the only info that existed of a person. It required digging but much of the story being told didn't match with actual facts such as school year books and the like. Outside of in Japan, Asuka had grown up there. With enough scowering one would find data of things like the Yakuza and find her name occassionally mentioned as well as Lotus. Asuka largely worked behind the scenes but she was of course a bit more tied to the Yakuza and Japan and Terminus had the resources to uncover such deeply burried facts.

Asuka on paper was just some bartender at Vocal Sounds, known for helping the stores or club floors. In truth though she would be uncovered as seeming to almost have no last name simply existing as someone higher up of the Lotus. Which was known through the criminal world predominantly as just assassins or body guards, but clearly was expanding.

[Total Experience]

Space pinched into a point. A noise that was inaudible to most, but not to T.E., signaled Terminus' arrival - that of air being subtly displaced by the circular portal.

Total gave the inventor a small two-finger salute as he stepped through. The armored man thanked him for calling him; "Thanks for coming," he replied, surveying the rest of the area.

Diva joined them as the ninja eradicated the rest of the corpse. Terminus listed their options.

"Have you ever seen John Carpenter's The Thing? We're dealing with something a little like that. My Total Vision tells me that every somatic element of this creature possesses regenerative properties sufficient to restore each other part. The mind is gone, but the body persists. This was a very strong vampire. Even the Sun can't cook him."

In preparation for becoming a superhero, Total Experience had studied up on all manner of potential threats. He'd memorized everything from the sounds that bombs made when they ticked to the reloading intervals of common handguns to the various supernatural threats which faced metahumans today. That included the vampire plague that had infected Duskburg. Science didn't have a lot to say about these creatures yet, but he'd gleaned what he could from every source available in anticipation of the day that he might fight a creature of the night such as this.

And now that the day had come, it'd ended very quickly.

He tapped his chin.

"Plan A sounds good to me."

In truth, he felt sorry for the wretched thing before them that was once a man. But there was little undoing that. The best they could do was lay his twisted spirit to rest.

[Terminus]

TerminOS v3.3.5

Now Playing: Sabaton- The Red Baron.

Armor Model: Ajax.

Active Module: None.

Pilot: Pendragon, Nicolas.

System Status: Online.

“Not really a ‘big red button’ sort of situation,” Terminus said, avoiding the fact that he wouldn’t have let Diva push said button even if there had been one. There were stages of trust that needed to be established before things got to that level. He approached the former villainess and extended an armored hand to shake.

“We haven’t been formally introduced, though I suppose you know who I am already. Pleasure to meet you.”

Naturally, Pendragon was also using the opportunity to scrape a DNA sample via contact, and get more precise readings on Diva by proximity, but the sentiment was genuine. Just because she was a potential threat didn’t mean they couldn’t also be friends.

“My first suit was actually red and yellow. I prefer the more understated colors, though- function over form.”

While Nicolas was speaking, the ninja was taking the opportunity to hit the vampire-thing while it was down. He couldn’t fault her for it either- if he really could regenerate as Experience was saying, it was a good idea to keep hitting him, and prevent that from happening. He compiled all the data on her that he’d been able to assemble, but didn’t send it yet. Experience didn’t have a communicator or any way of handling that much information- certainly not on his smartphone. If he’d taken Pendragon’s offer, they would have been able to communicate much more smoothly, but there was little point in dwelling on that.

Nobody spoke up against the plan Terminus had put forward. He gave Experience a nod.

“Everybody hold still for a moment. I’m going to scan you for any bits of him that are on you, and burn them off. It’ll be totally painless, don’t worry.”

Regenerator were tricky to deal with. Fortunately, Pendragon had prepared to fight just about every kind of metahuman in existence. They couldn’t afford to leave a single cell of the vampire on Earth, meaning he had to make sure that none of him would linger on the clothes or costumes of the people who’d fought him.

As promised, the process was totally painless. A small layer cannon on the shoulder of the Ajax took precise aim at every splatter of blood on the three combatants, and vaporized it harmlessly. Blood was one thing, but as far as Nicolas knew, there were no regenerator on record who could heal from gas.

Once he was confident that none of the trio had any vampire left on them, Terminus spoke up again.

“Okay, now stand well back. I’m going to need to scrape every bit of him out of this place.”

Presuming everyone did as requested, Terminus would begin burning away every bit of Vlad’s blood on the walls and ground in the area. Thanks to the precision and power of his instruments, it wouldn’t take particularly long. Once that was done, he began collecting the flesh that remained, ensuring that he cleaned off his gauntlets once he was done doing so.

Finally, Nicolas opened a portal underneath the vampire’s remains, and dropped it through. Since it was a portal into hard vacuum, he only kept it open for a few seconds. Then, he translocated to the same coordinates- only quite a bit higher off the ground. He’d deposited Vlad on an uninhabited moon, halfway across the galaxy. It was unclaimed and barren, without even any natural resources worth mining.

Taking aim, Terminus targeted the vampire, and primed the Ajax to fire. He wasn’t just using any munitions either- these were Diminutive Ordinance. An ordinary cruise missile could level a small city by itself. When shrunken down to a tenth of its original size using the Atlas Particle, its destructive power would be multiplied tenfold. And Pendragon was about to fire ten of them.

As he gave the silent command to fire, Terminus couldn’t help but smile. He so rarely got to cut loose like this. He certainly couldn’t have deployed this much Diminutive Ordinance on Earth, not without risking a detonation so powerful it could have crashed a continent. The ten miniaturized missiles soared through the vacuum in silence for a moment, before the struck their target.

When the detonation came, it too was in total silence, for there was no atmosphere to carry the sound. But in its own way, it was a symphony. The explosion was so powerful it would atomize every atom of the vampire- along with almost everything around it. When the dust settled, a third of the moon had been utterly annihilated, leaving its interior exposed. Debris scattered in every direction, propelled into infinity by the titanic force of the blast.

The Blacksmith did a final scan of the area from afar, to ensure that the vampire hadn’t somehow survived. His sensors detected nothing- but even if Vlad had lived through that blast, he was so far from Earth that he’d have no hope of return. His job done, Nicolas translocated directly back to where he’d been.

“Done. What’s next?”

[The Original]

Snapped neck, broken and ruptured ribs were left in the wake of continued onslaught by Asuka. His body caught on fire and burned unceasingly. Healing worked against the ancient vampire, because healing brought vitality and fuel through blood and regenerating fat. The efforts of Terminus had wiped out even the tiniest traces of Vlad from the ground, the crevices beneath them and from the clothes and costumes of everyone gathered. Amid it all, Vlad finally regained consciousness but kept on moaning and wailing like a zombie rather than putting up any effort to resist. He couldn't resist. His mind was already too far gone.

A portal opened beneath him and Vlad fell. The sensation was akin to being caught in a strong underwater current. It sucked Vlad's helpless being down into the cold vacuum of space more than 30 light years from Earth. And for just an instant, it was as though he was floating. Floating before the moon's gravity got a hold of him and pulled him down onto its surface. The one good was that Asuka's fire had been snuffed out prior to impact. Not that that mattered much in the face of what came next. DImunitive Ordinance. Firepower that shouldn't exist on Earth, and yet it did, in the possession of perhaps one of the most brilliant minds.

The miniaturized missiles struck him and the area around him. There was no sound, only a brilliant display as the whole world was consumed by quick dying fire and a debris field that came as a result. Inside of the blast, Vlad's body had been assaulted continuously, not once, not twice but more than a million times. His cells, his atoms tried to come back but in the face of such a deadly assault, even they soon gave up fight against the inevitable, quietly becoming snuffed out in entirety.

Emptied completely, the blood dimension crumbled as the last of Vlad Dracula ceased to exist. Nothing remained for him to come back from. This was the complete death of the Voivode of Wallachia, Dracula, the Son of Dracul. His grave became the ravaged face of a celestial moon light years from home.

[illirica]

FIREWORK FINISHER

"It's always a pleasure to meet me," Diva stated with a wink, accepting the handshake as her due and gracefully not making a fuss over not getting to push the nonexistent button. While some heroes might have been cautious about shaking hands with Terminus - especially suited up - Diva was not the sort to be that concerned, or that paranoid. The idea that a handshake was anything other than a PR opportunity never occurred to her.

From Terminus' perspective, of course, he'd have the opportunity to analyze the sample later. The fact that Diva's DNA was odd would come as no surprise. Parts of it seemed strangely elastic, as if they weren't confined to one specific thing. None of it made any realistic sense at all, and he'd almost get the sense that he was seeing what he expected to see rather than what should have been there. Stranger still, he'd only have a very brief time to analyze it at all, before it shifted entirely - not quite denaturing, but rather becoming something different - the DNA of a perfectly normal human female, probably in her early twenties.

In the interrim, though, there were much more exciting things going on than boring exposition about science and analysis. The bits of the undying dead man had gotten scraped up and dropped off somewhere far away, and Terminus raised an arm and fired his weapons into the horizon, each one of the ordinances leaving behind a trail of colorful smoke. In all likelihood, they didn't do that when Diva wasn't around, but it looked a lot more interesting this way - much better for the media.

She watched them streak off into the sky, accompanied by fireworks as they crossed through the atmosphere. What Terminus made of that was anyone's guess, but it was probably a good bet that Total Experience, at least, was starting to get the hang of what to expect. Diva folded her hands behind her, entertained.

"Well, that was fun." Terminus' next question pre-empted her own, which had been much the same: what next? "Coffee?"

[Azra]

藕

The flurry of strikes came to an end and she moved to the side to let the man in armor get to work. She wondered if it would be enough at first given how much of the vampire was scattered around. Sounded like the armored knight was prepared for that though. It was kind of concerning to the Lotus. Asuka knew in all likelihood the nature of what the Lotus were and what it was growing into they'd be encountering heroes again, likely some of those here. And while she wasn't going to say anyone was going to be the defining figure the mix of versatility on a already likely brick matching suit of armor was a concern.

The modern knight looked to use lasers to get rid of any remains, removing any crimson stains. Small segment of bone wedged in gloves or shoes was incinerated. Asuka fought up close she felt rather warm afterwards given how much had to be purged. As Terminus went to remove the remains on the ground dropping them into space the Lotus watched. Briefly seeing the entity reforming ever so slowly still trying to return to form. Still looking to form lungs or a mouth to scream. Any sickly sounds seeming almost an effort to still call out for "sweet death".

Then it was gone and rockets went into the opening with trails of color behind them. Some added flare thanks to one of the heroes. Which lead the cult leader to figure it was time to remove her own special effects "That's enough." She wispered and with that the glow stopped, her boots returned to a normal weight and with that she was back to looking normal. A civilian in civilian clothes amongst the costumes and metal. Much of the possible media would hardly care about the meta martial artist just chipping in when the headline could speak of two heroes of renown and a reformed villain working together.

"I've a job to get to and the gym to hit after that so I'll let you three go." Which was true, was still some time before her shift at Vocal Sounds but she did have one. Of course there was other reasons for an assassin not wanting to stay in current company. She wouldn't make a scene though simply opting to go back to walking towards the business of the music industry. Ninjas and assassins weren't all black suits many times it was about opperating within plain sight.