Kaiser6012

Vita's mouth dropped open as the room came into view. The classical architecture, the air of peace and tranquility and the feeling of entering into the pleasant warmth of a shining sun took him almost completely by surprise. As he looked and heard Hermes come forward, though, a part of his mind started to stir. Wonder gave way to confusion, then to consternation as Spitfire spoke. Vita closed his eyes and focused on his Adficio's hunger, feeling the webs of energy around him and his unexpected companions. He felt the light, the energy of his surroundings, he felt the feelings of elation and belonging from Scion... but he also felt the emptiness in Hermes. His words spoke of familiarity, of belonging and familiarity, but beneath it all was no connection with his supposed kin. "Spitfire speaks the truth, Scion. These are not those you think of as kin - something is most wrong here. Whoever these people are, you must believe us - they do not have your interests at heart." Vita spoke quietly, but his voice held an edge of urgency. He hoped he could express the full weight of his misgivings - to feel such an emptiness of connection between people claiming to know each other was extremely concerning. Either someone is pulling figures from her heart, or someone has suppressed their bond. Neither is an option that bodes well.

"...Sippy cup?" Vita almost stopped moving at that. His hands dropped slightly and Vita's head pulled back in sheer confusion. "Firstly, I must profess innocence and will not yield. I am no threat, and these people are not permanently harmed. Second, I hope to not pose a threat to you, but should you attack me I will defend myself. Thirdly... Sippy Cup? Truly?" Vita raised his hands in a gesture that seemed purposed to draw attention to his peculiar look. "Of all the things you could dub me, you choose that? It is new, I give you that, but..." Vita trailed off, running a hand through his hair in frustration before refocusing, the darkness wavering slightly around him as he got more distracted. "Either way, you are mistaken. I am no villain, and should you strike out I will defend myself. That choice, as always, is yours to make." Vita gestured to Jill with one hand as if to say "After you", the thought beginning to dawn on him that he might be in more trouble here than he could really handle...

"...Curses, when I'm getting so close..." Vita muttered to himself as the voice rang out across the street. His attention shifted to the young woman as she landed a short ways in front of him, frowning as she called out to him. "Most at least settle for "creepy" or "unnerving". To go so far as monstrosity..." Vita had unconsciously shifted to a defensive posture when he heard the cry from the dark and a shadow had formed around his body, making his exact form slightly indistinct in the gloom. He stood, ready for the first move from the new figure, eyes shifting from her mask to the glow around her hand, though it was difficult to track Vita's eye movements without pupils. "So to whom do I owe this pleasure, then? If I am to be accused, it's only fair I know the accuser, correct?" He inquired in a voice just over a whisper as he inched his way slowly out from the bodies that lay strewn around the street, each footfall landing much softer than one would suspect. He wanted to be clear of the bodies should things take a turn for the worse. Collateral damage is the last thing I need this night...

Vita looked from Frost, to Volcanic, to his father before speaking. "...If this is as serious as you infer, then my fate may be decided by this endeavor. I would have my fate be my charge, not that of others. You have my aid, inasmuch as I may assist." He bowed again. "The Vita Adficio, and he that bears it, is yours to count upon." He stopped to think for a second before speaking again, notebook and pen already jotting down what he had heard and felt. "Are there more we should wait upon before sallying forth? Or are we the champions of which you spoke? Should others be informed of this, or do we lack the time?"

VITA NEXUS They Live! Hell Isn't Good, It's Hell! Freedom's Finest 8: Vital Signs

Vita felt the cold emanating from Comrade Frost as a hole - a vacuum, threatening and maddening as a room purely without sound. The Adficio drew from within, certainly - Comrade Frost was a living being, after all, with friends and allies who respected him - but from his body there was nothing. Vita involuntarily shuddered before regaining his composure, turning back to face his father. "...There are still many inquiries left open, father, but if what you say is true, they must wait." As Vita felt his hand on his shoulder, full of the warmth and energy his father lacked through the last years of his life, he couldn't help but become slightly choked up. "I wish I could have seen you like this more." Was all he could muster as his eyes misted over. He reached up to touch the hand that left him, but stopped just before making contact. Would feeling the cold that surrounded him be the same as he had felt when the roles were reversed - would his father feel, in his heart of hearts, that all hope had been lost in the dark of the Adficio? He instead nodded to his father and stepped away, towards the two new figures. He bowed in respect to the two, bringing a notebook and pen out of his coat as he did so and looking to the two with eyes black and flat as the darkest night. "A pleasure to make your acquaintances. Had we time, I am sure this could be more entertaining, but if this is all true, time is something of a commodity. My name is Vita Nexus, and if you could, please... what is going on?"

"...And with that, we're at fifteen." Vita Nexus shivered slightly at the unnatural cold. The couple who were about to end up as easy pickings for this set of street toughs had long since vanished - Vita hoped the young woman would forgive her beau for breaking and running so quickly when the lights dimmed and things took a turn for the unusual. He was fairly sure he would have done the same, given the circumstances. Taking a brief moment to check each of the wannabe muggers' vital signs for pulse and wellbeing - two men and three women, all wiry and with the look of people who got food regularly, but not often enough - he stepped out of the street proper and into a shop alcove before returning the street ambiance to normal. The street lights penetrated the chilling gloom within seconds, the moon shining down on a lone figure standing amidst five unconscious forms, unusually cold in the deep of night. Vita reached into his pocket to pull out his cell phone to attract the police to handle the crooks, but something stopped him. During the fight, something had caught his attention. It was a minor thing, something almost everybody else might have missed - but Vita could feel it sitting on the one who hung back from the fight. An unusual attachment, a fondness for something. Something on their person. "...Perhaps there is more here than I first fathomed." Vita muttered to himself as he knelt to investigate the person of interest. He would call the police once he had sated his curiosity. Who knows if they'd be able to follow up this lead?

Vita tried to track Scion's movements across the staircases, but as soon as he took his eyes off her, she reappeared. Tracking her voice made his head hurt, and eventually he just gave up entirely. "So if I wish to try and gain something approaching a love life, you're the one I should sacrifice a goat to? Or are you more of a 'praise me through partaking' sort of divinity?" He chuckled for a moment, then when he heard no response looked around for Scion. He spotted the door she had gone through and, with a bit of effort, pulled himself up the twisting stairways and finally got a hand on the door frame. He heaved himself up, turning back to give a hand to Spitfire to get up to where he assumed Scion had disappeared. "Also, Spitfire, not that sort of bonding, no. Much more general. I would be glad to describe it to you in detail, but perhaps not here. The ambiance is somewhat lacking."

Vita blinked a few times and fell in behind Scion without objection. "Divine? But you... I mean, that means..." Vita stops speaking for a moment and appears to slip into thought. "I... suppose that makes sense... somehow. As for my traits, as you put it, it is a long and complicated story. Suffice to say, my power is hereditary and involves energy manipulation." Vita paused briefly, looking between Spitfire and Scion with a look as if he was picking his words very carefully. "I can also sense, to a small extent, the bonds betwixt people. I thought I felt the beast before we were hurled into this place, but... it was you I felt. How is this even possible? The sheer number of bonds you share with people... I have never fathomed the possibility of actually conversing with... well, with a deity."

Damn, heroic stuff all round. Mine feels rather mundane after all that. As Ruby Spalding came to the end of her surprisingly long life, Anthony Spalding began to fret. A part of him never really grasped the concept of the Adficio, since Ruby kept to herself most of the time and Anthony was well into his adult life when his time came. As such, most of his schooling in the Adficio Supprimere was long forgotten, and the curse took hold of him hard. In the weeks leading up to Ruby's death, Anthony grew distant with anxiety and worry. Most of his time was spent desperately trying to re-learn forgotten rites and rituals, and his family grew concerned. Robert and Anthony's last real time together was while Robert was still learning the Adficio Supprimere. Robert had been performing well in his training and he had already proven a capable student of mundane academia, while Anthony felt his control slipping away from him. Their last meeting prior to the curse taking hold occurred the day he had heard Ruby had started the downward spiral towards death. Ironically, both he and Robert don't remember what exactly was said, but it was the first time Robert remembered his father resigned to his fate. It was short, and Anthony left with a gamut of emotions roiling within - anger at the world for his fate, depressed resignation at his part in it and, perhaps worst of all the shame of knowing that, as he left, Robert could sense it all. Their relationship would never be the same, and Robert would eventually hold a small flicker of resentment towards his father, whom he believed gave up once the curse took hold and abandoned his family.

"A metal... Bull? Was that what I sensed?" Vita tapped a hand on his chin. "I suppose it would have had to have been something of great effort..." Vita shook his head, clearly annoyed with himself. "Now is not the time for academics. Where are we, and how do we find our escape?" Vita closed his eyes and started to gently move his hand as the room dimmed slightly. A chill came through the room as Vita appeared to concentrate, muttering in... Chinese? Latin? Old English? All three plus more? It was difficult to keep up, the language shifting fluidly from sentence to sentence...

It's at this point in proceedings Vita's actually turning to his senses - he's feeling out magic, life energy, electromagnetic and emotive force. Basically, if someone could refer to it in a pseudomystical sense as "energy", he'll pick it up. I'd assume he'll find at least the first room we'll discover with this, as well as feel out the current emotional states of probably everyone in the room. Also, for reference, Vita's fairly obviously marked as somewhat unnatural - pale skin, skinny to the point of being possibly malnourished and with eyes that're pitch black.

Vita brought a hand to his head and tried to shake the fogginess out of his brain. "Believe me, if I knew where we are, I would be making a hasty egress." He looked up at the two others in the hallway and blinked a couple of times, confusion fairly obvious on his face. "I go by Vita Nexus. How did the two of you come to be here? I recall starting an experiment on a peculiar object I found, and then there was some form of rift..." He looked between the two other heroes, obviously confused beyond belief. "Wait... To whom am I speaking? Are we all from Freedom City, or is this a much wider net we've found ourselves encased in?" He begins to reach out a hand, but stops himself and instead looks between the two.

"Let me see... Let me see... Ah! Perfect." Robert Spalding, known better on the street as Vita Nexus, pulled the grimoire down from his bookcase and carefully opened it. It was old - older than most of his collection - but within were the musings of Khalid Al Jwari, one of the few verifiably potent arcanists who had been willing to meet with the family of the Adficio, and thus contained secrets unrivalled in possibly the entire collection. Vita turned through the pages until he found what he was looking for - the arcane sigil tat described a particular rite Al Jwari used to siphon excess energy from unstable magical artefacts. His description was one of a safety measure - "A method not dissimilar to the starvation of a fire within an enclosed room", as Al Jwari described it - but if used slightly differently... "I have high hopes, effendi, but low expectations. Guide my hands." Vita muttered under his breath as he turned his attention from the book, now resting on a lectern beside his workspace, to a small stone cross laid within hours of scribbles, both on paper and on the wooden floor in chalk and a vaguely glittering dust. The cross was unremarkable on the outside, but Vita only noticed it by what lay hidden beneath - a veritable web of energy radiating out from it, criss-crossing at least fifty seperate sources. Some group cared greatly for this trinket - far too greatly to just leave it lying in a cul-de-sac out in Lantern Hill. Vita closed his eyes and began to chant, his hands moving in practiced arcs as he weaved his Adficio out. Everything seemed to be going well at first - the Adficio latched on to the cross' web of connections and started to slowly, slowly detach it from extraneous connections - but then Vita faltered. Something - something Vita had never encountered before - tore through his concentration, demanded the focus of both him and the Adficio. Something prodigious, in the wake of something that would normally cause Vita to perk up and take notice. Vita tried to hold his focus, but it was too late. The ritual had been disrupted, and things started to spiral. The cross lifted off the ground, radiating energy Vita had felt only at a distance. There was a great rending and Vita felt himself lifted from his study, tumbling headfirst into the space where his study once was...

...And bagged?