Beyond Evolution

Once the gods were done with the school, they could move onto other, easier targets. Gorge themselves on the souls of the millions of citizens of New York and further until Selene had finished her ascension and called them all back to where they’d been pulled from.

But.

Until then, the school proved to be a fertile hunting ground, most of the gods able to feed off the chaos and fear just as much as the souls being reaped.

Back at Selene’s island, things were going just as well. The teams seemed evenly matched, and she was confident that those fighting for her would prevail. They were, at the very least, very capable of keeping the teams from venturing further and finding her or the dagger. As long as that was accomplished, nothing else mattered.

(Continued fight threads for both the school and Utopia scenes -- please look to thread headers for which one your char belongs in!)

The crystals thrummed with energy as Selene placed the dagger against her palm and pulled hard, cutting her hand open and clenching a fist, drops of red landing against the stones. Her voice took on and otherwordly tenor as she recited words in a language that Earth was never meant to hear. The crystals glowed, bathing her in their light, and a chorus of screeches from the depths of what was known aired themselves in her chamber.

She was going to become a Goddess of Death.

It was only fitting that the other Gods would join her.

And she had the perfect slaughterhouse of offerings for them.

At the school it grew dark despite the hour, heavy clouds forming out of seemingly nowhere, blocking out the sun. Figures came into being on the lawn, each giant, roughly the height of the school. Hel with her daggers and Fenrir with his brute force. Hades with an army of Titans, and Cerberus with a bark that could instill mind-numbing fear. Anubis with his ghost-jackals, each intangible and impervious to injury, yet able to bite and rend and tear at flesh; with his power to pull the soul physically from the body, destroying it as it came. Shinigami, the duo Japanese Gods, with their ability to cast illusions. Ahriman with its cadre of demons. Al Puch with its disease and pestilence spread by touch.

They were here to reap the school, with next to no one left to stop them.

(School fight thread! Feel free to npc Titans and demons, or if you’d like to take on a god (silly, silly humans) just let us know and we’ll have them step on you! Kidding, but really feel free to ask us to npc against you or write it as you go! Also Titans, demons, and jackals will all be dragging victims out to the front to be reaped, enjoy!)

Sydney Houston was ruining his life.

Despite what Lucian had originally thought, the other woman wasn’t simply a shapeshifter. Something had happened between them there in heart of New York City. Houston hadn’t only taken his looks, she’d somehow set up a connection between them. It had taken a few days, but Lucian had learned exactly how that bitch had treated her wardrobe of faces. It had started slowly, of course, and Lucian knew that she was doing it to fuck with him. To test the limits and boundaries he’d put in place by bringing her here to avoid this kind of shit. Houston wanted to see how quickly he’d run and cry to someone else, but the joke was on her: he wasn’t going to do any of that shit.

Lucian could take care of himself. He’d survived in Albuquerque and then in Phoenix running with gangs, and he came out of a much worse situation in the Facility as a captive drug addict high on Kick and his own powers. There was nothing Sydney Houston could do that he couldn’t handle even if she was being a massive fuck right now.

( First there was the nail file. )[ NARRATIVE | CLOSED ]

WHO: Sydney Houston (COUNTERFEIT) and Lucian Gomez (COLLAR)
WHERE/WHEN: Downtown Manhattan, afternoon
WHAT: Sydney totally saves Lucian from getting run over by a taxi, and just wants compensation for her good deed!

( People died in New York City all the time. )

If he couldn’t have Kick, Lucian decided he at least wanted a fucking cigarette. He hadn’t been able to smoke for years at the facility, but at least his new addiction had made the nicotine withdrawal non-existent, or perhaps he was too drugged up to remember. It wasn’t hardly a fix for his issues, but it was something to focus on, and it’d been a calming thing from years gone by. When the feelings got overwhelming he searched for familiar answers, ones he could actually get his hands on, like wanting a smoke. He had to assume that the medlabs staff would give him hell for taking anything else that wasn’t expressly prescribed, and that was assuming he could even get his hands on it. He hadn’t networked well enough as of yet, despite his small times where he actually had energy to leave his room or really explore. Everything was touch and go, and bantering on the network was a hell of a lot easier than actually putting oneself out there. Lucian was nothing if not experienced with drugs, however, and maybe that was giving him a slight advantage here to draw from. Well, it wasn’t, because Kick was one hell of a drug to try and get over and the trick was to never let yourself go through withdrawal this bad, but it was something he was clinging to because it beat more time curled up in his room hating life.

The catch here was that he didn’t have any smokes, and the chances of any of the people he actually interacted with having any either were next to nothing, so Lucian had to venture out into the school. It was about mid-day, lunch time, but his appetite was virtually non-existent most of the time so that wasn’t something he was on the prowl for. That search had led him out the front doors were more people had congregated outside, even a couple of kids having a ‘romantic’ picnic or some shit.

Still, first things first. “Who has a smoke here?” No answer, and hell, basically no one even looked in his direction. That triggered the understated part of Lucian’s withdrawal. Kick made you feel power, it made you feel like a God, and for Collar that meant he’d spent over two years being in absolute control of his peers. People jumped when he said to jump, used their powers as directed under his control, over and over, without argument. It showcased itself in how he interacted with his fellow addicts, how his statements were more like commands that no one needed to follow anymore. Now he was a shadow of himself. Sure, he had control now in some ways, like the power to choose what to do for his life, when to sleep and when to eat, but that was soft power, understated and not at all like the absolute hard control he was used to. He whirled on his heel as he heard someone else approaching. “You got a cigarette? If not, who the hell here smokes?” It was only then that he truly took in the young woman’s appearance since before he hadn’t really cared, he just wanted someone to listen to him as the effects of withdrawal began to spike up more. Oh. Metallic skin? Or whatever, he wasn’t sure, but it likely meant that she didn’t, or couldn’t, or something. Whatever.

A different man in different circumstances might have felt sheepish, but not Lucian, and not right now. “Don’t suppose you smoke, hey?” Well, that was his attempt at lightening the mood.

[ CESSILY ]

The Blackbird was chosen in the end to take the X-Men, Harland, and Lorna, something which had caused more debate than one would have at first assumed. A teleporter, of course, saw no need to waste that kind of time, but there was always a chance that they would run into trouble with their powers at this facility in Montana. They were controlling powers somehow, after all, and while that most likely involved telepathy and mental programming, at least the start of it would have to include some way to stop mutants from using their powers to escape. With the Bird, that wasn't a worry. And, honestly, they didn't know if they might need the firepower it had on it, considering it was a military-guarded facility.

A warning was given to the security team and the medlabs that they would be coming back with injured mutants, and they left. The extra time in the air could be spent going over what intel they had.

The compound was large, and they needed to get to the heart of it to reach the mutants being used. Trained special ops were there, as well as the doctors and officials that were overseeing the various projects. Disabling instead of killing was their best bet, especially to get more information from them and not be pinned with their murders as though it was a random mutant attack.

It was well-guarded, and with the highest tech available -- but even that wasn't quite as high as what Xavier's had. The retroreflective panels rendered them invisible, and its systems read as offline even to cyberpaths. The trouble would be when the mutants left the jet; the facility would be able to pick them up and they wouldn't have long before they were in a firefight. That was when the teleportation was decided on, the Bird hovering above the compound without need for a pilot as Nolan and Cal ported them inside the prison. They would all have to use their various abilities to help locate where the trapped mutants were.

Sure enough, less than a minute had passed before the facility plunged into darkness and alarms the same as the ones that had come on not so long ago for Marcela's graduation sounded. But this wasn't a drill. Orders were being given over comm sets about an attack on the building, the mutant soldiers needing to get to their charges and keep them safe in the labs while the human soldiers locked the building down. Assuming that they could, of course, and that Chaos wouldn't have to make another call to get them moving and to a different location before their charges were killed.

(Open to Kickers, soldiers, X-Men, and Lorna! After a few lines are tagged a second mod post will go up in the comments set a little further ahead, with an attack on the Kickers for the others to try and defend them from! EDIT: To start, at least, the soldiers DO have on helmets, blackened goggles (with night vision!) and balacava over their mouths and noses that double as sleek gas masks~. So no, the X-Men won't recognize them!)