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Post by SceneMod on Jun 29, 2012 19:59:53 GMT -5
Since Carolyn is there, Arlen decides that now is not the time to be showing off any scars, and he tries to tug his hand away from Addison. He sighs and says to Addison, seemingly in good humour, "And to think. I'm on vacation. Ah, but you should see me at work. I'm a real scream!"
He holds out a business card and asks, "Trade business cards?"
'Miraj Citanes' apparently works in the mining of precious stones as a lower executive in the transport department.
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Post by Mirage on Jul 1, 2012 13:26:04 GMT -5
Addison looks from Carolyn to Rodney and back again. It seems Arlen was correct in that Rodney would be able to touch the cold redhead's heart. It does happen, though Addison has trouble fathoming how anyone could return from a dance with Rodney in such a mood, and so it does not worry the model over much. No, what does worry Addison is that sadness. What happened out there?
He lets Arlen slip away, and takes the offered business card. Addison quirks a smile and shrugs one shoulder. "My business cards direct you to my agent, and I prefer to avoid go-betweens where personal matters are concerned. I'll call you." The last is said deliberately for the cousin's benefit, as Addison imagines the girl will not be pleased his offer.
As soon as Rodney is close enough, Addison reaches for him, tries to pull him in close, and give him a chaste kiss on the cheek. "Welcome back, love."
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Post by Onslaught/Octavian Comstock on Jul 1, 2012 14:48:23 GMT -5
Not every guest arrives at the same moment. There are those who arrive spread throughout the evening, fashionably late. Some of them are men and women wearing blue, who decide to socialize near the walls, taking readings with devices disguised as mere high end watches. When all of them are present and have done their business, they send a signal for the last of them to arrive.
Carolyn's evening is about to get a whole lot worse, because the other man who touches her heart has just arrived.
Lord Octavian Comstock enters the party. He is dressed in a custom tailored suit, a diamond tipped cane in hand, with his eyes (or rather an eye and cybernetic replacement of the other one) hidden behind tinted glasses. He is walking calmly with a small, forced smile on his face, making his way towards the middle of the room. If he is aware of the presence of four particular guests, he is not showing it.
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Post by Carolyn Blake on Jul 1, 2012 17:31:48 GMT -5
Arlen is playing a roll, and normally Carolyn could care less how he plays it, but his behavior is decidedly odd at the moment. If she could snatch that business card away from Mr. Addison Payne without causing a scene, she would.
The arrival of the man of her dreams nightmares takes her attention away from her brother's behavior and away from the confusion Mr. Rodney Pryor is causing in her head. She does not turn to watch super villain as he moves through the crowd, but she follows him with her peripheral vision as long as she can. She does not look as he remembers and so should not immediately grab his attention but staring would invite scrutiny.
"As I said, we've things to do that don't include you two. Wrap it up, cousin," she says. She gives Arlen a very pointed look before fading into the crowd- and making her way near that imposing figure in blue.
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Post by Rodimus Prime on Jul 1, 2012 18:41:51 GMT -5
Okay, considering who Carolyn really is, this whole business just got incredibly awkward for Rodney (and it would be even more awkward if Rodney had realized that he was intentionally attempting to torque Carolyn off with his comment about calling the other). Still, he plays along smoothly and without dropping character as Addison pulls him close and kisses him on the cheek; he'll just have to hope Arcee understands when he explains later.
He's confident that he'll get a chance to do so, that she will at some point realize she's Arcee.
Rodney has no reason to recognize Comstock, but he's not so oblivious as to miss the people, all similarly dressed, all checking their watches near the walls (how many people even still wear watches anymore? Don't most people just use their phones for time these days?), and given the things Carolyn - well, Morrigan so far as Rodney knows (although he strongly suspects that isn't her real human name any more than that's her real, real name) - given the things she said, Rodney's bright enough to realize that Something is liable to happen rather soon. Before the other two get a chance to be off, he reach over, takes up Carolyn's hand, and bows down to bring it to his lips.
"It was a lovely dance. Best of luck with your evening's business," he says, giving her one of his most charming smiles. He's sincere, too, but that's because he assumes that 'best of luck' involves minimal casualties.
He releases her hand (hopefully before she decides to try and slap him) and smiles at Addison again before glancing around the room, as though checking out what new party-goers may have arrived. In truth, however, he's making mental note of the location of fire sensors, of the sort that might trigger alarms. It may be useful to... gently encourage... people to begin evacuating in the near future.
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Post by SceneMod on Jul 1, 2012 19:19:48 GMT -5
Arlen's heart skips a beat when Addison says he'll call, but he averts his eyes when Addison and Rodney kiss. He looks away and sees... "...oh bloody hell."
Arlen attempts to summon a small door-sized gate to the hotel's valet stand and attempt to shove Addison through the gate. Then he closes the gate, turns to Mr. Pryor, and says quietly, "You're registered as a cape in Michigan. Get everyone else out."
Neither of those two things are things that Arlen is supposed to do, but being around Addison has messed with Arlen's head just a wee bit. There's a crawling feeling in the back of Arlen's head that he has forgotten something that Addison remembers, that he is dreaming the wrong dreams.
Opening that gate has probably drawn attention to Arlen, which is good, because then Slaughter's attention will be on Arlen, the man who took his eye, not Carolyn, the woman who will take his life.
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Post by Mirage on Jul 1, 2012 20:04:16 GMT -5
Addison Payne finds himself shoved through a doorway that wasn't there. The model is now standing by the valet desk outside, disoriented and confused.
"What the hell just happened?" Addison asks no one in particular. The desk clerk- who is staring at the model in amazement- just shakes his head.
Turning back toward the entrance, Addison makes to head back into the casino. It will take him a bit of time to get back to where Rodney and the others are, and that's if nothing happens to slow him down.
Skippable for the next few rounds.
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Post by Onslaught/Octavian Comstock on Jul 1, 2012 21:03:17 GMT -5
Octavian isn't here for them. He did not even suspect that they were here, at first. Carolyn would have been able to approach him, undetected, if he hadn't been alerted by something very foolish. He catches the portal out of the corner of his best eye, the cybernetic replacement picking up on the unique energy signature. He turns to the direction of the event, and Arlen will find one of the deadliest people on the planet staring directly at him.
He smiles.
It is the cold, small smile of a psychopath who promises a slow, painful death. Retribution for his eye. That, however, is not the worrisome part. No, that would be that Slaughter turns away and keeps walking.
He approaches the center of the room. His cybernetic eye runs facial recognition software to identify Carolyn, knowing that the cripple won't go anywhere without her. But that is only a secondary concern. The lord Comstock enters the dance floor, the heart of both this re-purposed cavern and the very party itself. He twirls the cane around, lingering on the general direction of Arlen, his thumb briefly grazing over the shaft, pressing a button.
Then with a victorious cry, he slams it into the ground.
The ground trembles...and erupts.
Large Energon crystals burst up from the ground and shoot forward along a path he just determined, causing murder on the dance floor as it skewers through some unsuspecting socialites. The good news is, Rodney won't have to use his flames to evacuate people. There is already a panic, people screaming as they flee. The bad news is, that the path Slaughter just designated happens to correspond with the hero and the agent, and the growing crystals are racing towards them.
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Post by Carolyn Blake on Jul 2, 2012 21:30:30 GMT -5
Slaughter is looking at Arlen. What did her brother do to call attention to himself? Arlen is supposed to stay off the radar, always. Deep within, Carolyn feels a moment of panic. She can't lose another, and she damned sure can't lose him..
She pushes that thought away. Arlen can run better than anyone. In fact....
//Stay out of his way,// she radios, nor worried about being noticed now. She also initiates emergency calls to get medical services en route; they will be needed.
She's almost reached the edge of the crowd when Slaughter literally rocks the house. People drop to the ground around her, some of them dead or dying. Carolyn does some fancy tumbling to avoid the bodies and the crystals, ending in a crouch at the edge of the dance floor, one hand balanced on the floor, the burgundy silk of her dress pooled around her. The heels were lost in the tumble, which means she's barefoot now.
The sniper has a gun aimed at Slaughter's good (ie real) eye.
"Saved you a dance," she says, as she fires.
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Post by Rodimus Prime on Jul 3, 2012 20:24:08 GMT -5
"Hey!" Rodney exclaims as Addison is shoved through a gate, but before he can question events further, all hell breaks lose.
"No!!" Rodney gives a strangled cry as some of the party goers are killed. There's little time to angst, however; some are injured, not yet dead. He rips off his outer jacket and flings it behind him as he leaps towards the person who looks the most injured (without being dead), briefly taking flight to get himself there faster. He lands next to the party-goer and gently pulls them away off the crystals. This might be viewed as a bad idea, given that he's not a medical expert, but he immediately begins to heal the person before they can get any worse. He glows, his aura becoming visible, and the Matrix in his chest begins to shine brightly enough for the light to be seen through his shirt.
The party-goer, a dark skinned man in a snazzy, dark blue tux, looks around, vaguely bewildered after his experience. Rodney points to the door and hisses, "Go, get out of here." He looks up at Lord Slaughter as he darts to the next person, eyes narrowed.
"So what was the point of that, Decepticon?" he demands. "Sure, you murdered a few humans... and now you've started a firefight in the middle of a cave of energon, with you right in the middle with us. Good going!"
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Post by SceneMod on Jul 3, 2012 23:45:36 GMT -5
There are crystals breaking out from under the floor, and Arlen is not particularly fast or agile. In fact, all of his surgeries have left him rather stiff and slow. He moves, but he still ends up hamstrung by a crystal. Arlen stares at his own blood against the pink of the crystal, and there's that crawling sensation in the back of his head again.
Arlen has seen that pink flowing like blood before.
He bends down, breaks off a small crystal, and puts it in a pocket. 'Energon', the cape calls it.... Decepticon, the cape calls Slaughter. Those robots have been quiet the last few months.
Could they have assumed human form as disguises?
Arlen's blood does not go cold. No, it surges with the thrill of illicit knowledge.
He calculates when Carolyn's bullet will hit, providing that Slaughter does not dodge or block somehow. A quarter second after, he opens a gate above Slaughter's head. The other end goes to the bottom of the hotel swimming pool, which Arlen examined earlier. He can't gate into solids or living beings, but he can certainly rain on Slaughter's parade with a deluge of pool water.
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Post by Onslaught/Octavian Comstock on Jul 10, 2012 20:48:27 GMT -5
Fleeing civilians? Slaughter can't have that, now can he? His next order of business is to turn to the exit, and with another swipe of his cane, he summons a crystal barrier that blocks most of it. There's a small crevice that people can squeeze through, just to give these heroes hope that they can still get these people out. "Exactly, Autobot! And if you are truly so concerned for this vermin, then I highly suggest that you do something about your reckless compatriots before THEY kill EVERYONE HERE!" Hopefully that will keep this superhero pest occupied.
But he knows that not everyone here is so concerned with the safety of the civilians. Now where is she?
Ah, there. Quite a taste for dramatic flair, this one has! He is almost proud of his nemesis. Slaughter can only chuckle at Carolyn's comment, turning to stare down the barrel of her gun, a maniacal grin on his face. He twirls his cane around in his hand, ready to make his move. When she fires, he dodges it by diving to the side. But that is about as far as he gets, before the contents of an entire pool get dumped on his head and flood into the cave. Octavian is knocked to the floor, sputtering as he tries to get back up. By the time it's over, he has miraculously managed to stay where he is without being swept away. He is drenched, ankle deep in water, but standing.
And now looking at Arlen with a confident and disturbing smile.
With the speed of a thought, his eye-patch breaks apart and slides away into his socket.
With the speed of another, he demonstrates his new optic gun by firing it.
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Post by Carolyn Blake on Jul 11, 2012 11:36:01 GMT -5
//Arlen gates at <coordinates>. Stella drop my bag*. We need an alternate exit for the civilians. Floor plans indicate hidden emergency exits at <list of coordinates>, most are blocked. Watch yourselves, this stuff can be highly volatile.//
How does she know that?
The above exchange happens in a split second, as Slaughter is being swept off his feet. Carolyn is likewise soaked, her dress acting like a sponge. She rips the silk away, exposing her legs to varying degrees from knee to thigh. Good thing she was able to wear a portion of her lightweight stealth suit under the skirt, else she'd be indecent.
She glares at Rodney, "Tend to the civvies, supersuit, and would you both quit with the <deity cursed maternal unit loving get of a female dog> Autobot and Decepticon scrap!" It hurts her head, and distracts her and getting distracted right now....
Arlen!
"What's the matter, Slaughter, am I not good enough to hold your attention anymore? I'm hurt, really I am," she says. She champers a new round and fires at the supervillain. The banter is unlike her, really unlike her, despite being more "like" her than she knows. Carolyn doesn't notice that, however. She just wants to keep Slaughter's attention focused on her, not her fragile brother.
*Stella may or may not show in thread later, so don't wait for a post from her.
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Post by Rodimus Prime on Jul 11, 2012 20:47:57 GMT -5
Rodney - well, Cavalier at this point - lifts an eyebrow at Lord Slaughter's 'suggestion.' "You're expecting me to reign in someone 'reckless'? My eyes work, you know. I see who's already killed, and I see who blocked the exits that are keeping them from getting out. If more die, I know who I'm holding responsible." His tone turns cold at these last words. Rodimus Prime never enjoys the taking of a life, and yet he's capable of almost shocking ruthlessness. Sometime later along his own timeline, he will be responsible for the complete eradication of all Decepticons. He can weigh a death now against five, ten, twenty, more later on. Sometimes, the lives he's forced to weigh are even innocents...
... And other times, they're not innocents, but not actual Decepticons.
One of Lord Slaughter's flunkies is lifting a gun towards the guy with the glowing chest (he seems like a potential threat, right?) and Cavalier takes off, flying straight for her... into her... and carrying her straight into one of the blocked exits, smashing through the crystal in a shower of shards...
... and killing the human in the process.
For the moment, he doesn't respond to Carolyn. Busy 'tending to the civvies', after all! Sort of.
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Post by SceneMod on Jul 13, 2012 20:59:10 GMT -5
Arlen opens a portal in front of Slaughter's eyepatch as it starts to open, because anything coming out of there s probably going to be a bad thing. The other end of the portal is opened in front of a blocked door. Thusly, the laser is just going to blow into a door, maybe opening it? Then he brings Carolyn's bag. Arlen's going to run out of gates soon, and he's really not... heroic. He had better keep enough distance to make himself an exit.
Arlen really has no idea what he was thinking, but it seems to have cleared up since... since Addison left?
Hmm.
He tries to hobble off behind a large cluster of crystals for cover, even though Carolyn has warned him that they're explosive.
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