ArchivedLogs:Straylight Run

Straylight Run
Dramatis Personae Merit, Nox
In Absentia	2013-05-19 '
Location Thunderdome
It's a warehouse, or something like it; at least it's spacious, and was probably once industrial; at the moment it's largely just empty. There are tracks in the floor from long-since disused equipment and the construction of walls and high exposed-beam ceilings is sturdy. The center of the room has been excavated, since this place was in actual daily use. In the middle a pit has been gashed out of the concrete; it's not /deep/ and it serves more as a foundation than anything else; around its wide circular perimeter a cage has been erected. Nearly reaching up to ceiling-height, it is constructed of thick sturdy metal bars wrapped in a thinner wire mesh. Surrounding the cage there is a lot of empty space. Some nights, though, when fights are in session, the room is filled; with people, with cameras (though no outsiders' cameras are allowed in), with paper betting slips and folding chairs. The spotlights in the ceiling are bright-bright-bright, the better to illuminate the fighters within the centerpiece cage. It's loud in here, but it's always loud in here -- at least, it's always loud in here when it's time for the fighters to be brought up from the kennels below. The backdrop of betting and selling refreshments provides an oddly /festive/ undercurrent to the louder cheers. Jeers. Whoops that grow louder with the apparently /exciting/ annoucement that the SHADOW MISTRESS is making her return to the cage, this time to face off with ELECTRO. They really need to work on their names. The lights are bright around the cage, bright still as Nox is led (prodded, dragged) in, as her collar and cuffs are removed. Still bright when her opponent is pushed in, too -- they have been far more /careful/ about removing Merit's collar; this requires a few steps of deactivation before it is carefully taken off. Outside the cage, a small generator is rumbling. A few wires have been extended from it to lie just -- kind of innocuously on the floor. Chillin'. It's only once the guards are gone and the cage door securely closed again that the lights shift. A bright-bright ring of them that surrounds the cage, spotlights turned outwards; the cage itself is bathed in sudden darkness. The clamour from the crowd intensifies. Nox needs only the minimum of prodding--the pokes and smacks that they all receive so their guards feel security in their authority are received without protest. Not trusting the "kindness" of those same guards, she has opted to leave Masque's coat behind and approaches the cage in only a pair of dingy sweatpants, her torso left bare. The sight of a topless woman would no doubt ordinarily draw /more/ cheering but this one is showing the wear and tear of captivity--her skin a dull grey, her head completely bald, and her body criss-crossed with streaks of white remaining from her last fight. She looks small, and she looks vulnerable. But some of that vulnerability goes when her collar and bracelets are removed. Something more like focus returns to her eyes, she stands with shoulders squared and looks through the wire mesh circling the bars with heightened attention. Where she can, she meets eyes in the audience with a steady, melancholy gaze. If they choose to reflect on the exact expression she wears, they will discover a gentle recrimination there. Fortunately--for them, for her--the lights go down. She has yet to study her opponent. When darkness rolls in, Nox vanishes. The ring fills with an almost inaudible hum. Merit is a study in languid impassivity. He has kept remarkably clean, given the circumstances, but even so, the white button-up shirt and black jeans clinging to his slender form have seen better days. The young Asian man looks asleep on his feet, head drooping and eyes half-lidded, neither assisting nor hindering the guards who deliver him to the cage. Only when the bulky control collar leaves his neck and the door shuts out his handlers does he show signs of cognizance. Steel gray eyes roam across the interior of the cage. Merit flexes his shoulders back, inhaling deeply. As the lighting shifts, he stretches out lanky arms, fingers fluttering like a harpist's over silent and invisible strings. Then he clenches his fists, and jerky blue-white lines of plasma arc between him and the wires on the floor. His head rolls back and a soft moan escapes slightly parted lips only to be swallowed by the chorus of sinister crackling and snapping. The sharp tang of ozone fills the air, and mobile reception drops. When the sparks die down a few seconds later, he returns a different creature entirely: one with wild, gleaming eyes and a crazed grin on his face. "Now, then, Mistress," he addresses the shifting shadows all around, "shall we dance?" Without waiting for a reply, he flicks both wrists as if shaking off water, and sends electrical arcs leaping between the cage bars. Merit knows how to put on a show, but the discharge is a remarkably weak current, all flash and no bite. At least not to the average human... FLASHES OF LIGHTNING! Crazy wild-eyed men wielding flashes of lightning like freaking JEDI this is totally what the crowd is here for. There is so much shouting. "Yeah!" "Fry her!" "Torch the bitch!" although conversely also, "/Smother/ that freaking pansy!" "Put his LIGHTS out!" Har, har, someone is probably laughing at that one. They are equally bloodthirsty in both directions. Mostly just /excited/. All the fights should come with special effects like this. In the bare seconds between Merit stroking his fingers through the shadows and the creation of agonizing light, Nox whispers to him. Her voice, soft, sweet and gentle, hums beside his ear. "I am so very sorry for what they make us do." These apologies have become rote, or would if she were placed in the ring often enough. On this occasion of her second fight, she is somewhat emboldened by both having survived the last one. It means that she's able to consider the merits of showmanship over stark survival. As the cage becomes a web of electricity, the light makes the shadows appear to writhe--and Nox, spread through those shadows, follows suit. She thrashes and buzzes--though not all of her discomfort is feigned--before gathering herself into a dark mass in the center of the area. Still laced with the white webbing of previous burns, that mass heaves and flexes before resolving into a less disgusting shape. Tendrils of shadow whisk away from the center, curling into recognizable wings, a trailing fan of feathers to make a tail, an arching neck. The bird that uncoils before him is twice the height of an average man, black as pitch, offspring of swan and peacock with plumage that appears to hold an edge. Its wings spread as wide as both metal and electricity allow, buffeting the air to send the perfume of ozone back at its creator. Then she launches herself forward, talon-tipped feet slashing high at his face. "Yes," Merit hisses between clenched teeth. "Leave the apologies. We do not belong to them." He hurls himself at the floor to duck beneath the thrashing talons and, tucking in his right shoulder, rolls to the other side of the cage. Arcs of electricity snap and flicker when he passes one of the live wires on the floor. Close to the edge of the enclosure now, he reaches out to touch the bars with one hand and sweeps the other hand down sharply. A jagged discharge bridges the center of the cage from floor to ceiling with a loud bullwhip crack. It is hard to say whether he actually intends it to be easy to avoid. Lightning does not look like a weapon of finesse. When fighting shadows, it need not be. The arc of electricity is a spear tossed into the gloom and where it crackles, casting it's eerie blue-white light, the darkness writhes. Nox twists to the side, great wings lashing at the air and neck arched. Her beak is opened in a silent hiss as the whip cuts through the end of her tail, shearing the tips of her plumage. They dissolve into nothing. But her reach goes further than just her own shape. The haze of grey around the man coalesces, threads of it creeping forward to weave around him in the gentlest of embraces--unless he should try to move again. Then he would find himself stuck fast--everywhere but along his arms, decorated as his hands are with light, while Nox slinks her head low and circles around, eyeing him. Merit freezes, but only momentarily. He lowers his head as if in fierce concentration, and sparks fly between his fingers, bent into claws. Face shielded from the audience's eyes by carefully feathered hair, he whispers, "We have to make this look good...and then you must hurt me badly enough to put me in the infirmary." A faint halo blue develops around him, just bright enough for even lightning-dazzled eyes to see. Suddenly he is moving again, doing his level best to twist out of the shadows' tightening threads. He pulls his hands in close to his body and makes ready to burn his way through his opponent's grasp if she does not cooperate. "But..." There is no chance to whisper more than that. But she must have taken his instructions to heart--or at least determined that he is right, about putting on a show for their seething audience. When Merit bolts from the web she has built for him, there is a brief moment of resistance--and then the threads break, joining with greater darkness to lash around in highly visible and frustrated tentacles. This time it is she who withdraws. The man is glowing, and faintly or no, Nox reacts as if he were the burning bush and she some superstitious pagan. Where he moves, she floats backwards. Those wings flash to help buoy her away, that tail lashes--and then separates into individual snakes, each tipped with a wickedly barbed hook. Merit advances, herding his opponent to the other side of the cage. The glow around him intensifies and levitates his hair up in classical Van der Graaf demonstration fashion. When he raises his voice, it is edged with sadistic glee. "Nowhere to run, Mistress!" He punctuates the sentiment by throwing both hands out in front of him. White arcs dance between his outstretched fingers and shoot across the cage wildly, grounding against the floor and the bars, licking the writhing segments of the shadow-bird's tail. The blue light surrounding his body fades, but he more than compensates for it by cackling with ecstatic joy that does not sound at all affected. "S'fucking crazy," is one man's holler from the audience, though he sounds more /delighted/ by this fact than put off by it. The audience as a whole seems -- well. /Electrified/ by this performance; there's a constant sort of /thrum/ of energy. Talking. Cheering. Though they're staying a bit farther /back/ from the cage than their usual pressing. One impulsive man does dart forward. Perhaps on a /dare/. To touch the mesh, eyes huge-wide-focused on the spectacle inside. A ginger little staccato /tap/! like testing its heat. Then a bolder press of his palm. Possibly one of his companions is taking a /picture/ of this. For posterity. At least attempted posterity; the guards will /proooobably/ confiscate his phone for this transgression. But. The foolishly brave soul escapes electrocution on the first tap, little knowing the current was simply too weak to harm him. When he lays his palm flat against the steel mesh, however, one of Merit's bolts dances over to him as if magnetically drawn. A blue-white flash illuminates the twisted mask of his face, and his cry of agony is less scream and more gurgling whimper. The smell of burning hair and scorched flesh mingles with sweat and ozone as the man slumps to the ground. Merit, still laughing maniacally, never once turns to look. Nox has no witty battle cries--and if she had them, the nature of her mutation makes them impossible to lob at her opponent. She settles instead for miming a hiss at the man stalking her around the ring. But perhaps it is not simply an act. The web of crackling light he throws so carelessly around leave her flailing. Wherever they catch her, there is an immense, sizzling pain--a discomfort that Merit would be able to follow, just by watching the veins of white travel through her dark flesh. She hurts. She slashes the air with her wings. And then she leaps high, trying to carry herself above it. But only for a moment--the cage isn't high enough for true flight. Her momentum is enough to carry her towards the ceiling before she arcs down again on a course directly for the man tormenting her. As she goes, the currents of electricity shuddering in the air carve large swaths of shadow from her body. In seconds, Nox has lost her wings, has lost the fine, proud plumage of her tail and the graceful curving neck. The creature that extends teeth and talons towards Merit looks more like a black tiger criss-crossed with white, its body as lean and soft as any house cat's--if house cats came man-sized. Arcs of lightning chase the morphing shadow down from the apex of the cage, herding her to what looks like certain doom at the crackling hands of her opponent. As the feline shape emerges from the ashes of the phoenix, however, the tangle of twisting plasma sprouting from Merit's hands falters. Perhaps, in the throes of his mania, he has forgotten to conserve his charge. His laughter dies in his throat. It is much too late for him to tap the wires now. The crowd thought him crazy before; they have not seen crazy yet. Roaring, undaunted, Merit drops into a low crouch and charges the cat. There are screams, in the crowd. It takes a moment for the farthest reaches of people to even understand what happened but the /closer/ ones have backed away in a hurry, deserting the slumped young man who stood by the cage. The buzz to the crowd has an edge to it, now. Less excited, more wary-nervous. It takes a while for the young man's friends to even approach him, even pull him back a little farther from the cage. And then -- what. Who are they going to call, here? Definitely not 911. They approach a guard frantically for medical attention. The young man is hauled off. Out of the warehouse, where someone actually /can/ call an ambulance. The atmosphere around has gotten more charged. People are watching the cage /apprehensively/. But it isn't long before the clamour starts back up. Tentatively, at first. "Slash him," "Take him /out/!" But less tentatively, after the first few calls. Killing each other in the ring is one thing but attacking one of /them/? "/Kill him/." This is the call that starts, first from one or two people but then a swell to chorus around the crowd: "/Kill. him/." At first Nox is oblivious to the crowd's fickle moodswing. There is a curious sort of concentration that goes into putting on a good show, to overlooking discomfort and thinking of how things must--will--look to the outside observer. When Merit charges, she meets that gladly. Grappling is something she knows, something she can do. They slam together and she twists to tumble them to the concrete. But Merit is protected from the worst of it by the film of shadow that gathers beneath, by the tendrils of shadow that curl around him as the cat almost delicately lowers her head to touch her teeth to his shoulder. Seized, without piercing, he is held while she whispers, "...are you ready? The infirmary. No more." Merit's hand reaches up to grasp a handful of the cat's scruff, as if he could wrench shadow-creature's maw away from him by main force. But then, perhaps he holds onto the nearest certain thing for the same reason children do when terrified. His other hand stretches out toward the nearest source of electricity. Threads of light leap to his fingertips. His pupils dilate, and a faint tremor runs through his body. "Do it," he whispers. He does not sound as certain as he did before, but his free hand is balling into a fist around dancing curls of plasma, and small arcs bridge the fingers digging into the black fur--or whatever passes for a shadow cat's pelt. He looks as if he would very much like to flinch or turn away or close his eyes. Instead, he just stares up at his opponent as though he could see through her. If he looks carefully, he might realize he /can/ see through her. His light has taken its toll, carving substance from her edges. Every snap and hiss of electricity sends more away and leaves her featherlight atop him, only technically opaque--looking through her is like looking through a heavy veil of mourning. Even with whispered encouragement, Nox hesitates. But the pain of his hand collecting darkness into a bright palm forces her into action. She cannot hiss or bellow. Instead she /hums/. Against him, around him, as Merit is collected to her, Nox hums and lowers her head to sink her fangs into his shoulder. There's little pain at first, the same pinch that comes of needles--but these are many needles and though they don't sink deep, they sink firmly into flesh and hold him as she seeks to roll. Once on her back, gloomy paws still holding him fast against her body, her rear paws curl up to rake his hip, his belly. Shallow, stinging cuts, these are meant to give the audience the blood it so craves. Merit struggles--not very fiercely, though the capricious dance of plasma around him lend an illusion of desperate thrashing. He sucks in a deep breath, holds it for a few beats, and forces it back out in a bone-chilling shriek. Here is agony; or, at least, someone intimately familiar with pain. It is apparent at least to Nox, however, that he still exercises some control over himself, for the sparks in his hand have died out even while the light show intensifies around them. White-hot arcs of electricity leap between the bars above, abating as Merit's cries fade and his struggling weakens. At last, the hand gripping ineffectually at the cat's neck unclenches and falls limp. Blood soaks through the sleeve of Merit's white shirt and runs down to drip from his fingertips. He twitches once, then goes still. Shielded from view by the jaws clamped on his shoulder, he breathes a soft "Well done" to the shadow. Then, "/Straylight/, not Electro. I mean to get us out. One way or another." The audience's chanting is continuing. Their refrain of "kill him!" is oddly getting stronger with the distance from the zapped-fried spectator, bolstered perhaps by -- none of /them/ getting zapped, too. For a moment there's a flash -- a sharp bright beam of light flashing into the cage, trained on Nox. It is out again almost as soon as it came. And then again, and then out. Just quick-short, bright and then vanished. The doors to the cage are not opening. "Nox," the shadow breathes, a petty defiance of this spectacle to exchange names under the screams of the crowd. She has tuned them out, ignored their repetitive cries, choosing instead to brush a cheek that feels like cold velvet against his. "Rest, Straylight. Rest. Soon." That promise made, the cat she has become slinks off of his body, leaving warmer air to roll in over the scrapes and shallow cuts made to bloody him up. She is in the process of prowling towards the cage's exit doors when that light slashes across her muzzle. The effect is immediate. Nox recoils and shrinks, a fresh streak of white cutting across the face of the smaller feline that she's forced to become. She crouches low, shuddering and scrubbing at the sizzling pain--and then baring black teeth at the faces beyond the mesh when she realizes just what that means. Retreating step by step until she's standing /over/ the bleeding man, tail lashing and "fur" a-bristle, she hums her distress. "...no..oh no..." Merit stirs now, rolling onto his side. "I see," he whispers. That crazed, vicious smile returns to his face, and looks all the more fearsome for the bloody smears that have crept up from his many superficial wounds. He pushes himself off the ground and staggers a step back from Nox. Twists of light gather to his fingertips from a nearby wire. "We always have a choice," he says plainly, though it seems doubtful that too many people outside the cage would be able to understand him over the cacophony. Merit tilts his head back until he is staring straight up. He lifts his arms--one of them coated with blood and the other surprisingly clean--like an orchestral conductor or a priest at the altar. Electricity arcs between the bars high above them and slither over the mesh surrounding the cage, then leap from the apex outward, striking at the spotlights beyond. The generator stops its humming, all at once. Beyond the spotlights, every light in the warehouse suddenly turns on full. There is a cracklefizzlepop as, one by one, the spotlights burn out into darkness around the already-darkened ring. This comes almost simultaneously with the loud report -- and then another, and then another -- of gunshots fired from outside the cage at Merit. Beneath them, it's harder to hear the audience screaming. There are guards -- some ready, some fumbling with more panic -- desperately clicking on and shining bright LED flashlights into the cage, shortly after the lights go out around it. There is quite a /lot/ of swearing. When the balance tips in the favor of darkness, the air around the conductor of this event writhes while shadows take a new form. The show demanded dangerous but recognizable shapes. With the hope of escape--or even disruption--comes a horror incomprehensible to the human eye. Nox is no longer the cat, but a collection of sleek tentacles, too many to count, all clustered around Merit as if he were their controller. They shoot outwards, they wind through and hook over the uppermost bars supporting the mesh cage and provoke a most disturbing sound--the whine and shudder of metal threatening to collapse. It happens in seconds; that's all the woman needs to begin trying to tear the cage down--seconds granted to her by panicked guards, by their attention and aggression towards Merit. Nox /pulls/. And then she is lashed by multiple beams of light. She cannot scream but the flailing tentacles perform the same service, visually. She tears at open air, she twists, she writhes and then she seems to collapse in on herself, shrinking. Shrinking. Curling in around Merit not with a growl but with a whimper. A pool of blood starts spreading beneath Merit the moment he thudded to the ground. It pours out of his body not in rivulets now but pulsing torrents. His breath comes in short, wet gasps. With what looks like a monumental effort, he pulls himself into a fetal position and shields what remains of Nox from the jerky beams of light that stabs at them from all around. "For once in my life..." Merit's words find their way out between labored breaths, and the rest of whatever he had meant to say gets lost along the way when he coughs up a mouthful of blood. It takes him a few seconds to compose himself, all while the bleeding wanes to a spirited trickle. "They do not own us." He presses his forehead to the amorphous shadow curled against him. The moment his breathing stops, a strange, palpable clarity descends over Merit. The air near the two mutants tastes like an oncoming storm. "I don't need this body anymore," he says, eyes unblinking and a soft, sardonic smile on bloody lips. "If you want to make use of it, I can provide a distraction. Survive, Nox. Please." Now the flat, cold light leaves his eyes for good. A sphere of faint blue-violet light forms around them; precarious patterns of bright discharge dance across its surface. Abruptly, it expands like a false-color explosion at half-speed. The sphere distorts and dissipates as it passes through the cage, the guards,and the panicking crowd. Finally, its patterns lose all coherence, leaving only confused mobile phones and ozone in its wake. The clamour of the crowd has not died, but its caliber has changed. Not so much excitement as a tense wary energy. There are some definite screams when Nox goes Lovecraft; some people even /flee/, although not many before she is contained back down into the cage. A few people hoot, when Merit goes down; most of this is quieted with the swell of light. It turns to shrieks when the light spreads out into the audience. And then the light dies, and there is an uneasy quiet that ripples through the crowd like a shudder. The lights stay trained on Nox as the door opens. Guards, armed with flashlights and Nox's lighted collar and bracelets, edging towards her kind of uncertainly. Bright beams of light train on her, at least insofar as they can manage under Merit's body. He's tugged away unceremoniously, a thick streak of blood left beneath the body being dragged off. "No. Oh no. No, no..." Made small by the flashlights, Nox curls easily in the lee of Merit's body. Human again, or as near to it as she can manage, her hands cup his face, her eyes try to hold a gaze already fading. Merit's leaving is a beautiful thing, an aurora of the soul, but she has no chance to dwell or enjoy. They're coming. And he is dead. With what shadow remains to her before they seize the man's body to drag it away, Nox collects herself. What little strength remains to her is gathered so that she can leap at the guards, flickering briefly into a more deadly and sinuous shape. Her screams are silent, felt like the humming of a distant hive rather than truly heard. But she's easily caught. Too easily caught. The flashlights carve away the snake's coils, leave the woman criss-crossed with white lashes, collapsing to her side where bracelets and collar can be easily attached. As she is dragged, unresisting to the blows that rain down on her body, her eyes follow Merit until he--and the last of his light--is gone.