By All His Engines [IC]

[trollthumper]

Across the complex, the demons danced and struck, trying to give as good as they were getting from the heroes. In this one office, however, the demon stood stock still, its eyes locked onto the head of Pitch's cane as if its infernal existence depended on it. Which, as far as Nick could tell, it did.

"Okay, so..." He racked through his brain - the sudden shift from the adrenaline-soaked nature of combat to a field interrogation caught him off his guard. But this wasn't the first time a bound entity had switched gears. He was able to recover swiftly. "What are you doing here? And what's with the hardware?"

[Supercape]

Thats a good question...thought Pitch to herself, her anger subsiding a bit. Demons made her angry, sure enough, but she had been around them long enough to know they could use that anger. Tricksy unknown things. 

 

"Speak up, speak up! I command you!" she said as clearly and precisely as possible. No point giving the demon a loop hole due to some slip of the tongue. 

 

She held the Cantos Cane firmly in front of the demon. 

 

"You cannot resist! Answer the question! No lies, no deceit! Answer plainly, answer true!" she said, giving a fierce look. All the while, her skin and ears prickled, alert for a blast of hellfire or thrust of pitchfork. 

[trollthumper]

The demon twitched and danced where it stood, as if fighting against the compulsion with all its will. But, like many demons bound to service, it found itself quickly yielding secrets to save its infernal hide. "We were sent to find, pilfer, and retrieve," it said. "This was done as payment. This metal, likewise, is payment, offered to us by our employer, a wonder of Hell and Earth alike."

Nick shook his head. Even when told to be truthful and clear, demons could still find a way to get the bare minimum of truth and clarity out there. "Yes, but what about --"

The demon interrupted him with a snarl, and a bolt of phantasmal flame. Nick tried to raise his defenses, but the bolt struck him right in the crown, sending waves of burning agony through his body. The demon had managed to break its binding, and was now back in its relatively nonverbal, quite combative default state. "All right. Time for Bad Cop, Bad Cop."

[Fox]

Dragonfly had been wondering what, exactly, those flames were supposed to do - and she found out the hard way when one finally managed to eat through her shield and claw at her mind. Said mind was no stranger to assault, though: those metaphorical claws found purchase mostly on metaphorical scar tissue, the attack leaving her just off-kilter enough to throw her response off-target but not nearly enough to take her out of the fight.

"Alright," she noted aloud, backing off a couple of feet and reevaluating. "Psychic demon cyborgs. New. Novel, even. Change of tactics, maybe...."

[trollthumper]

Nick danced around the demon's strikes, managing to keep a fair bit of distance from the infernal cyborg - which, he realized, was not a description he got to use often. "So," he said, "you don't like to be bound, huh?" The room grew colder, as if the light had decided to run away. "Then you're going to hate this." A thick carpet of spectral mist rose out of the floor - while this building didn't quite have a history of death, Nick had gotten better about drawing the stray power of death into a tangible force. That force lashed out, as a dozen ectoplasmic arms surged out of the floor - and missed the demon entirely, who danced between the grasping hands.

Maybe next time, I'll focus more on the conjuring rather than the witty line.

[Supercape]

We were sent to find, pilfer, and retrieve," it said. "This was done as payment. This metal, likewise, is payment, offered to us by our employer, a wonder of Hell and Earth alike." 

 

"Yeah, well, you don't belong here, buster. I'm kick your ass out the saloon..."

 

She spat it out in a furious blurt, without thinking clearly. As her words trailed off, she saw Nick wrestling to no avail with the uncaged beast, and doubt crept into her mind. If the worlds mightiest necromancer couldn't down a simple demon, then simple it was not. And how had it broken free from the Cantos Cane?

 

And what were those ill parted words? what did they mean? a contract? easy enough to make a contract with a demon, but hard as hell to win from it. Her father had been one of the best, but still, it was not good enough. 

 

Distraction swept over her, as she rained down tumbling shards of smoking metal on the beast, drawn from the never ending fire, smoke, and steel of the infernal forge, a dimension beyond this world. The metal tumbled true enough, but without her mind full of fury, but lost in thought, it was a feeble steel. 

[Fox]

One minute Dragonfly was there, and the other she was gone - the very air wrapping in around her as she vanished. Her location didn't remain a mystery for long, though: the world spat her back out just behind the demon, one armored hand reaching out to grasp...well, the nearest hand-sized surface that didn't look like it'd leave something behind on her palm, really.

Lines like creases in paper shot out across the thing's body, and this time it was the one to pull a vanishing act. Reality folded inside-out in ways even demons weren't supposed to see, and when everything was right-side-around again it was left, alone, in the blank void of her own little pocket of space.

Not that she expected it to last forever. Dragonfly's armored visor turned back toward the windows, mind quickly estimating mass, height, and acceleration as compared to how well it had weathered her earlier assault.

[Thunder King]

With his target down, Graft decided to turn his attention to another demon. His enhanced sight picked up the heat signature of another one, this one on it's own. He dropped into a three point stance for a split second before bolting into a running start.  he leaped straight through the window, ignoring the shattered glass as he soared into the air. Anyone who would have been on the ground below would have seen a green figure leap from building to building.

 

He slammed through the window of the other building and spotted the demon.  Letting his forward momentum carry him, Graft dug his claw into the side of the demon. He could tell that he'd dealt a serious blow. He dug his claw into the floor and anchored himself, turning around to face his foe.

[Supercape]

It was all pretty crazy. But then that was life when demon crazy popped up. Nobody ever got used to it, she reckoned. But maybe a small part of her started to enjoy the wildness. And maybe that wasn't a bad thing, and antidote to resentment she used all her life. 

 

"Steel yourself, sucker!" she shouted at the last visible demon, and clenched her fist, allowing just enough rage to summon the infernal forge. 

 

"Heads up!"

 

A spinning tumbling shard of metal, razor sharp, black and smoking flew from her hand in a long arc, trailing a line of smoke behind it, almost gracefully. For all its grace, it was propelled like a shotgun, and twice as deadly...

[Fox]

Dragonfly almost made it to the window before the demon wormed its way back out of her dimensional pocket - a small, annoyed hissing sound could be heard under her helmet as she watched it fold back into normal reality. "Stubborn," she observed, sighing at the view out of the window. She'd really wanted to drop it; if nothing else, if it had managed to fly or land safely, she'd have learned something important about its abilities. Too much meat on the machine; she couldn't quite break down the design....

Still, she wasn't out of tricks. As it tried to hit her brain again she calmly wheeled to the side, a long, glowing blade of twisted space sprouting an inch off her knuckles and driving, bloodlessly, deep into the thing's side. "You are surprisingly resilient. Sometimes I miss thugs and arms dealers every day. Much simpler."

[Thunder King]

Despite managing to knock the beast for a loop, Graft failed to follow up with an attack. He lunged, but the demon managed to avoid his vicious claw attack. Graft considered how dangerous this thing might be, wondering what it's true capabilities were and hoping he wouldn't have to find out. He planned on making sure the thing did not have that opportunity.

Edited July 7, 2014 by Thunder King

[Supercape]

For a moment, Pitch wondered about the horror of Graft's limbs and writhing flesh. 

 

Sheesh...I wouldn't like to meet that on a dark night...and I have seen some blood-curdling things in my time...

 

Her fingers clenched around the Cantos Cane. A touch of paranoia always lingered with her. Something like Graft - was that a demon? they could look like anything. Often subtle...sometimes outlandish. The Cantos Cane had not let her down so far, that much was true. Could something hide its nature from her, from the cane?

 

No point worrying about everything. Even if everything is something to worry about...

 

She turned her attention to the last demon standing and again reached her hand into the infernal forge, the dimension of endless steel and fire. Again, she flung out a lance of twisted, smoking, and blackened metal, straight at the last demon standing. 

[trollthumper]

The lance caught the demon in the next building in its exposed flank, sending boiling ichor and something that smelled like engine oil across the floor of the otherwise pristine office. The creature staggered across the floor in a drunken dance, trying to keep from hitting the ground. Behind Pitch, Nick concentrated his effort into another bolt of witch's flame. He fed fear and dread into the spectral blaze, stoking it to full power. The missile soared true when it left his hands, striking the demon in their room right on the forehead. Spectral flame ringed its head like a crown; it didn't even have time to scream before it hit the ground.

"Gotta say," he said, "I love that these ones don't have infernal ripcords." He looked across the way, to where Dragonfly was dealing with her demon. "Just got the one left..."

[Fox]

The spear of metal certainly took Dragonfly by surprise; with her focus on the demon, she hadn't been expecting help or hindrance from outside parties. Still, this was decidedly 'help', and she hadn't survived this long as a heroine by letting such things get in the way of a fight. She cast her gaze sideways long enough to note who had thrown it, adding the attack to her mental list of Pitch's powers.

She also hadn't survived this long without learning to take advantage of a good distraction. She circled the demon to get between it and the door it had wanted, still-impaling blade spitting and flickering as it woundlessly rotated through the thing's body. "Not a good sign for your peers," she cautioned, cocking her head toward where the other fights had been taking place. "Suspect this is going to go a lot faster now. Last chance to talk."

[Thunder King]

Graft wheeled around and broke into a dead sprint, claws bared. he had no intention of allowing this demon to attack or hurt anyone. If it was as bad as it looked, and it looked very bad, it deserved what it was getting. His claw dug into the side of the monster and tore a chunk out of it, causing it to fall down.

 

"There." He said. "That should do it."

[trollthumper]

In time, Nick managed to get over to the building with the unconscious demon, if through the slow and practical route. This demon wasn't much different from its dismissed companions, though getting a look at it when it wasn't trying to kill him was certainly something. The brass limb that had been swinging at him like a sledgehammer before now looked almost graceful and lithe, like an incredible replica carved for some grand sculpture. The gems in its eyes were rubies the color of blood - he'd sworn they'd been brighter before, but then, they'd also be crackling with electricity.

"...yeah, I can definitely say this is unconventional," he said. "Hell will go for some outrageous things, but usually within certain limits. Then again, maybe the Pit's going in for body modification in a big way..."

[Fox]

"Unconventional, yes," Dragonfly agreed. She crouched next to a demon, one gauntlet's plates splitting apart to deploy a little manipulation arm that extended to tap at the exposed metal...bits. "Interesting metallurgy. Would take a sample if I knew it wasn't contaminated. 'Body modification', yes, Pit...maybe not? Assuming you mean some sort of classical hell," she qualified, glancing up at the others. "Little experience there. Not my field."

She shrugged, turning back to the creature - her tone wasn't dismissive, just a flat, unapologetic admission of ignorance. Mundane though she might be, the young engineer didn't hold much faith in those scientists who refused to believe magic actually existed despite ample evidence. "Still. Maybe four...five?...groups in Freedom City who could do this kind of work, if it's local or helped by local sources. ArcheTech...wouldn't. Miss Americana would destroy anyone she caught trying it. CoreTex, maybe, but they were trying to break into CoreTex; unlikely. Three left, then?"

[Supercape]

"I ain't seen this before, and I have seen plenty of madness like it", said Pitch, smoking and flaming quietly away. In a moment, the fire alarms and sprinkler systems would activate. 

 

It was an annoying part of Tazel firing up in buildings. Of course, she didn't mind the water herself. Fired up, it would just evaporate off her, it certainly wouldn't put out the hellfire. that burned within her. Maybe subdue it a bit, if anything. But it did tend to make a mess of the building. 

 

Probably wouldn't be long before some stiff tried to sue her ass. 

 

"I got something out of the other one" she said, tapping the cane that had briefly bound the demon. "I ain't sure they even know what they are, or why..."We were sent to find, pilfer, and retrieve" she recalled to the group. "So they are thieves, working for somebody else. 

 

"'This was done as payment. This metal, likewise, is payment, offered to us by our employer, a wonder of Hell and Earth alike' it said. Sounds like someone had done a deal with them. Likely to go south, like they all do. Steel them up, so to speak" she said tapping the metal with her cane. 

 

"Don't know anybody who could summon demons and be an expert in cybernetics" she said aloud. 

 

Although it did smack a little of the infernal forge, the endless plane of steel, smoke, and molten metal. Whether that plane was being used, or just somebody had got real good at cyber-demons, she couldn't tell. 

 

She looked up at Dragonfly. 

 

"You seem a sharp cookie, honey. You got three people who could do this? Whats ya best guess?"

[Fox]

"Do not call me 'honey'," Dragonfly countered, though her attention was largely devoted to the demon. "Don't like the idea of people calling demons up and improving on them. Mmh...'improving'. In quotes," she absently corrected. "Still. Seems like it should be possible. Unusual skillset combination; most people focus on magic or science, not and. Seems implausible that no one has, though. Plus, cooperation, knowledge pooling, temporary alliances...."

She blinked, glancing back up at Pitch. "....sorry. Attention wandered after 'honey'. Three likely options, not guaranteed exhaustive: SynThesis, new player, prosthetics and cybernetics. Harkende, new to Hanover - German, like to try new things, wouldn't put this mix past them with proper motivation. Devenex, too...maybe; hardware/software instead of cybernetics, but having financial problems. CEO hasn't stopped doing talks and shows, though - TED, etc."

Shrugging, the armored heroine stood back up and stretched. "So: knowledge, innovation, motive, but split across three companies. Shame we couldn't safely track one of these things back to its owner."

[trollthumper]

"Well, there might be a way," said Nick. "If we could disassemble some of this tech, we might be able to see if there are any 'trademarks' for the company. I mean, they've got to have some kinks in their design that work their way into..." He trailed off, realizing just how little he knew about the complex arts of cybernetics and technological corporate warfare. This is why I was an art student. He stroked his chin. "Or failing that, there's always this."

He puts his hands on the hellforged brass and meditated, trying to draw on the connection to the Fates that he had learned so long ago. Ladies, I know it's not your underworld, but... Soon, he felt something seize his vocal cords; the others say him go rigid, his head tilted back. "We call it 'propriety knowledge'... you know your trade, do you know mine?... Materials, power sources, contracts... I could use the resources, you could use the firepower... This where I sign?"

His head went slack, nodding down towards his chest. He stood back up, looking to the other. "You said this Devenex guy was having money troubles, right? Think we might want to start there. Where does he hang his hat?"