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 Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 3:20 pm
West Wing
August 1st
01:05 AM
The night was cold...dark...the chilling breeze calming to the dark being as he walked among the many graves, his tattered, ancient duster whipping about him as he brushed his cold, stitched up hands along the stone markers, his soulless eyes looking about the graves as the grave-keeper walked closely behind him, carrying a shovel...
"I though you told me you had enough?" The shriveled man asked him as they walked, "I thought you said you had enough bodies to last you a few months...why are we doing this again so soon..."
Mortem slowly turned his head, raising a finger and placed it against his decayed lips, motioning for quiet, "We've all heard the news..." he whispered, "That there are...heroes...and villains walking around. I need to keep my stock up...should I encounter these...beings...and you're going to help..."
"I can't. I-It's m-much too soon! You barely escaped detection the last time! My boss nearly had my head on a platter for it. If we get caught again, I could lose my job..."
Mortem slowly turned his head, his manic eyes growing steadily with an anger, looking at the grave-keeper in spite, "What...is more important? The lives of your family? Or yours? Remember our deal...you help me...and I do not come near them..."
"No." The grave-keeper firmly rebuked, "You need me. I alone know where the shallowest graves are and when they were put down. You would spend forever in here trying to find suitable corpses without my help...corpses rotting beyond usability for you...you need me alive..."
"Is that...your final...answer?" Mortem hissed slightly, taking a step towards the grave-keeper, and the old man held his ground, shakily holding his shovel, "Indeed it is...y-you need me...else you'll...just fall apart...literally..."
Mortem slightly smiled for a moment, laughing ever so quietly before his arm blurred, a long, pike-like bone shooting from just above his wrist, penetrating and piercing through the grave-keeper's eyes, pushing all the way to the back of his head and out as the grave-keeper screamed, his cries echoing through the night before he became limp, hanging on the protrusion like laundry on a clothes line.
"I guess I'll just have to use fresh corpses from now on..." Mortem laughed insidiously, kicking the old man's body off from his spike that slicked back into his arm, his frail skin slithering and rippling as it returned to the bone and he walked along the courtyard, leaping onto the top of one of the larger statues in the graveyard and looked up at the dark night sky, thunder rumbling lowly, promising a storm soon...
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Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 6:01 pm
A light blue streak filled the night sky above Keystone City, zooming gracefully above the city at a high speed, but slow enough to be seen and tracked. Elasa Atu'me, the newest Blue Lantern, had been sent back to Earth from Odym to attempt to find the whereabouts of Earth's Green Lanterns, but had no luck. So she had fallen back on her secondary objective: protecting Sector 2814's inhabitants from danger when she could. That had been relatively easy for her, and had actually gained her some fame as a minor hero from the people of Earth, and so they simply called her "The Blue Lantern".
On this night as she was patrolling through North America, Elasa's ring-- and her ears-- detected a disturbance in Keystone City, specifically a burial ground. So she quickly changed direction and landed in the center of the cemetery, looking around. She quickly spotted a dead man, impaled through the eyes.
"G'ho Leyu..." she said softly, frowning at the needless bloodletting. Then she looked up at a nearby statue, where a lone being was perched.
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Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 8:02 pm
The dark being slowly turned as he saw the light approaching. His sensitive eyes spotted the anomaly immediately and he knew who it was. The Blue Lantern...just perfect...the day he had to kill the grave-keeper, the day she had to find him in his neck of the woods...
He watched silently as she approached, his eyes ever wary of her, his long nails gritting slightly along the statue's surface as he crawled around it, his body contorting and holding onto it in the manner a spider might have, watching her curiously...
"The Blue Lantern..." He softly chuckled, cocking his head slightly to the side, his hood keeping his stitches from being completely shown, "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2011 10:35 pm
"That," Elasa said, not missing a beat as she pointed to the dead grave-keeper. "Who are you, why are you here, and why is that man lying on the ground with his skull stabbed through?" she asked.
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:56 pm
Mortem watched the woman curiously, eying the subtle, lavish curves of her body from underneath that skint tight vest, a smirk of lust coiling along his right cheek...
"Heh...so many questions...so little time..." His voice rippled from his throat, having an eerie, sadistic tone to it, "Who am I? I'm just...a shadow...making his way through a fate, worse then death...why are any of us here? What meaning does anything have? And the poor man...he upset me..." He laughed a little more, his vile teeth glistening in the moonlight as his eyes traced along her figure, his tongue slightly licking his upper lip...
"Such a nice...look for you...I've never been a fan of tights myself...but you make it look good..." He chuckle a little more, cocking his head at an awkward angle to look up at her, his neck making a horrible set of popping sounds as he did so...
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:03 pm
"Thank you," Elasa said absently, before frowning. "I am here... because I have a mission to complete, but as I cannot, I had to revert to my secondary objective of keeping this planet and it's people safe. You just killed a man because he upset you. That is... utterly reprehensible."
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:18 pm
Mortem would slightly laugh at that, bringing his fingers to his lips, as if to close off the sound...
"As if...come on...it's not that big of a deal...people die every day, every few seconds actually..." His voice was coated in a very leisurely manner, having no qualms at all with what he had done, or what it meant, "Heh...practically a favor. I mean look at him...the ripe ol' fart must be in his 90's. If I didn't kill 'em, he would've died soon anyway..."
Mortem would slip backward from the statue, somersaulting once before he landed on his feet, making a slow bow as he regarded her in a courteous manner, "And that, moja piękna pani, is that. Enjoy your night...do-gooding and all that jazz..."
And he would leisurely walk along the tombstones, making a soft whistle as he tapped each gravestone he passed with his hand...
((Translation: my beautiful lady))
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:31 pm
As Mortem walked away, Elasa huffed, and raised her ring. She projected blue energy out of it, encasing the man in a dome.
"True... but you murdered the man. That is a crime. You are going to go to jail now... am I understood?" she asked, her voice still ringing with a sort of innocence.
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 6:30 pm
Mortem sighed as the dome of energy came around him. He looked back at the woman with a tired grin, not very impressed by her attempts at caging him and he leaned up against one of the gravestones in front of him, looking up at her...
"Well...looks like I'm going to have to play hard to get then..." Flashing an attempt at a sexy smile, before his face became one of urgency and anger, his claws digging into the stone of the grave marker and ripped it up from the earth, using it like he would a battering ram and smashed it into the wall of the dome, causing a section to shatter in which he leaped through and made a break for, running at an inhuman pace, quickly blazing through the field of stones while orb-like bones would expand from the tips of his fingers...
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2011 6:35 pm
Elasa frowned. So, the man was tougher and more resourceful than she had realized. That made her job more difficult. She zoomed over to Mortem, easily keeping pace with him, and used her ring to construct a sort of energy lasso, which she hurled at him, attempting to ensnare him with it so she could subdue him properly.
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Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 7:12 pm
Seems like playing hard to get was much more then just a fantasy now. Her long rope constricted around his arm, trying to evade it but did not completely succeed. He grunted as he was halted by the energy and gripped onto it, tugging on the rope and tilted as he pulled, using his strength force her into a spin with him as he outstretched his free hand at her, the small orbs at his fingertips snapping off and firing straight for her, acting like bullets of bone...
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Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 8:23 pm
Elasa moved with the lasso she had made, surprised at the movement (as this had never happened to her before and she wasn't expecting it), Her superior reflexes to a human's allowed her to sense the oncoming orbs, and she quickly cartwheeled through the air to dodge them. With that done, she increased the strength of her lasso, making it difficult for Mortem to move at all, let alone twist around.
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 4:34 pm
The man growled louder as her rope constricted harder on his arm, forcing him to be pulled towards her but braced himself against a statue, trying to keep himself from being pulled away...
The strength of the rope was unearthly. Mortem knew it could not be a normal rope, for it would've broken from the strain by now if it was, leading him to realize that it was energy constructed from the ring, which meant that he wouldn't be escaping as long as she could retain focus on him, and so he decided the direct approach...
Using the bent up energy from their tugging, Mortem let himself be flung towards her, out from his palms coming long, blade-like protrusions that he would try to shake her with, one blade going for her left hip while the other was going for her right...
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 4:48 pm
"Uhtet!" Elasa muttered to herself as Mortem approached her. As he neared, she quickly dissipated the lasso holding the criminal and proceeded to beat the ever-loving s**t out of him once he got close enough to be attacked (and she made sure she did it before he managed to attack her). She used a wide variety of chops, kicks (her heels actually managed to take chunks of flesh off of him) and body strikes thanks to her training in the ven'ari ways of combat, before finishing it off with a kangaroo-esque kick to Mortem's face (specifically his eyes) that launched him several hundred meters-- all the way to the other end of the graveyard.
"Oh dear..." Elasa said to herself, zooming over to where Mortem had fallen. "Are you alright?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 5:14 pm
Mortem slowly moaned with pain, pressing his palms against the ground to try and stand, but could not do immediately. His vision was in a slight daze from the pounding he received, some parts of his stitched up skin having been ripped open, exposing some of his insides. The hicks to his head had kicked back the hood, revealing his patched up face and neck, patches having different skin-tones from different ethnicities he had taken from...
He could hear a faint rumbling in the distance, slowly growing louder as he tried to focus, his dizziness keeping him from looking up or moving very much, groaning as she slowly approached, but as she did, another would as well, a dark being astride on a glistening motorcycle, stopping and shutting off in front of him...
He slowly looked up to see his eyes looking at the high leather necks of the beings SWAT boots, and slowly craned his head further, looking up at a man who's face was very gentle, almost attractive whose black hair malevolent whisked this way and that with the wind...
He could only stare as a blue flame began to burn in the being's eyes as he whispered to Mortem, his voice having a sorrowful tone to that, but one of strong authority, making him sound like an old judge passing judgment, "Guilty..."
At the word, the man's body became inflamed, bursting into fires of an unholy blue, a strange symbol burning across his chest and forehead and his skin vanished, leaving behind bone that was carved by the flames, his clothes becoming ragged and spiked with the studs...
Mortem immediately began to stutter out of fear, crawling backwards like a frightened child upon seeing the dark being, who did not let him escape, gripping him around the throat and lifted him, bringing him face to face, speaking in an oddly demonic voice, "For thousands of years you have been cursed by evil, and have used your curse for evil. Hundreds of souls scream out through your stolen flesh, praying and screaming for vengeance. You will know their pain, their suffering...look into my eyes..."
Mortem struggled against the creature's grip, looking deeply into the swirling nether of blue flames, doing as he commanded, but to Xaronazar's surprise, nothing was happening. The gaze was not activating and his memories were not being ripped into...something was wrong and Mortem, not understanding this, drew his face dangerously close, and spat, "How about you look into mine!"
He then focused, his body erupting into porcupine-like state, jabbing Xaronazar everywhere with the spike-like bones, forcing him to be released and as the spikes retracted, he ran forward and jumped onto his chest and pushed off, rolling backwards as Zeso was sent into his own bike, crashing and skidding along the ground...
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