Lori followed a not so little Sammy up the stairs. They were following the sound of an explosion and there were definitely more following footsteps. Friend or Foe? It wouldn't matter by the time they reached the top, what Lori had assumed was friend showed that her loyalty was as thin as her own. She aimed with minimal hesitation. One shot, a quick retrain and the gun was on Lori.

She only had time to give widened eyes to the big-bowed Isabel before a thin dart took her in the chest. Her blood ran cold and she yanked the vile thing out from between her ribs, far too close to the heart for comfort. She looked at Sam and what she saw was not comforting. He had a similar dart and his was just as empty. She breathed out a shaky, open-mouthed breath. The breath came out like a fog, hot air against suddenly cooling air, but her veins no longer felt like ice. It was warm, nay hot. Just as suddenly burning in building waves to warm, electric power.

There was a part of Lori that never relaxed. Her power curled inside of her like a fist, tightly gripped shut with her only experimentally raising one finger at a time, one trickle of manageable power when she wanted. This was her worst nightmare. Whatever was in the dart that was falling out of her trembling hands was wresting her hard won control away. Not that she had a lot of it to begin with. A low-level current traced over her skin and she felt that fist inside of her flex.

Her eyes were wide and her feet were moving her back toward the stairs. Out. Away. She had to be somewhere else. Now.

It didn't quite hurt, but it might if it didn't stop. Or it might feel very good, better than anything else. It flowed through her seeking release, seeking the trigger that would open every last finger. She couldn't breathe. It felt like the thing inside of her that had called to lightning all the years of her life was boiling, coiling, flaring against the inside of her skin. Lori was being eaten from both ends like a piece of wood going up in flames. The power was too much. It had to go somewhere. She had to do something with it or it was going to burn her alive.

Lori fought the panic, her breath coming in quick gasps. She was going to hyperventilate and pass out if she couldn't get a handle on it. She was trying to ride the power and her own fear, and she was losing. So she did the only thing she could. She let it out.

The power roared through her, raising every hair on her body, creeping through her skin until she thought she'd come apart. She sent it all outward to the personal field of hers. She filled it up and still there was too much power. The look in her eyes was the emptiest still feasible in a living human being. It was as if when she looked at something, she wasn't seeing anything at all. It wasn't like she was blind. She saw something, but it was unclear what that what was. The power continued to reach outward, outward, and found what it was seeking. Metal. Electricity. The very building around her hummed with fuel and ammunition.

She turned, heart hammering, threads of electricity arching between her person and her invisible personal field. It was all secondary to the roaring, white hot power. The world was gold-edged, almost floating. Sound returned slowly and it was like listening down a long tube.

Lori walked toward the window. Metal debris, staplers, belt buckles, a million and one paperclips and staples and thumb tacks and wall mounts and wall supports and floor structuring wriggled toward her as she moved. The very building sort of wobbled, but it was trying to watch a flower bloom. You knew it happened, you could feel it, but you never got to see it. One look and there were staplers trailing behind her, and another glance showed the floor supports pulled upward. There'd be one more piece of metal, one more bit of debris that wasn't there before. It was unnerving as hell.

((OOC: Godmodding done with permission from both Isabel and Ghost.))

--

BOOM![/i]

The concussive force of the explosion shook the very foundations of the industrial structure, at least that was how it seemed to the Canadian killer, however his rather hazardous proximity to the blast zone was bound to have some influence over his perception of the detonation which had caused several tremors to travel through nearby areas and possessed sufficient impetus to take malevolent anarchists feet out from under him as he had fled down a desolate stairwell. The abrupt lack of balance resulted in the former soldier tumbling gracelessly down the remainder of the flight stairs, collecting a fair share of bruises and possibly concussions before his blood drenched back at last slammed into an opposing wall abruptly halting his momentum and causing him to collapse in an upside down pile of limbs.

‘oohhh, look at all the pretty birdies… I oughta kick their avian assess, teach em to mock me.’

Slowly rising from his crumpled position the twisted traveler released a pained groan as his mind gradually took a mental inventory of the latest contusions his body had acquired from his brief and somewhat painful fall. The number was slightly depressing but the overall accumulated damage was far from crippling, at most it would be source of constant irritation for the next few days as body set about healing the damaged tissue. For now though the malevolent wanderer would simply have to deal with aggravation until he managed to vacate the premises, before that however the sadistic slaughterer intended to conduct another cursory examination of the facility in order to determine if he could wreak any further havoc while the mutant brawler’s continued their unwitting role as decoy’s.

Placing a hand upon the guardrail which encircled the stairs Hull gradually began his descent once more wincing occasionally as his frame worked out some of the newly kinks and accustomed itself to the little aches and pains. A few flights of stairs later the deranged wander’s movements had become markedly less hesitant as he picked up speed and began vaulting down multiple stairs at a time in his eagerness to reach the structures lower levels and the mass of machinery which resided therein. The sudden sound of scampering footsteps, along with a suspicious clacking sound directly below however caused the twisted bomber to come to an abrupt halt as his viridian eyes narrowed and his head craned forward to catch the sounds below. The footsteps were easier enough to distinguish, likely some sort of heeled shoe judging by the solid clamor they created, the strange clacking sound which followed them though was something the anarchists couldn’t seem to place. It almost made him think of a cane, but anyone who required a cane wouldn’t be able to move anywhere near as swiftly as the sounds indicated.

Leaning his head into the center of the stairwell the former solider brushed his obsidian hair out of his eyes as he glanced down and managed to catch sight of what appeared to be a feminine figure with auburn hair racing down to the lower levels, his narrowed gaze just managed to catch the faintest hint of green in the flowing brown locks along with a glint of metal in the girls hands and some sort of strange protrusions from her back before she twisted out of sight, leaving the demented traveler with more questions than answers as he once again began to descend the stairs, carefully checking each floor to try and determine precisely what the woman had been running from.

The former soldier found the answer to his curiosity when the light tinkling of broken glass caught his attention and drew him what seemed to be a recently vacated hallway, well if the broken window was any indication at least. Creeping cautiously forward Hull’s senses were taught as his viridian eyes carefully swept the abandoned corridor, spotting a pair empty hypodermic darts haphazardly tossed across the beige carpet before a sudden sizzling filled the air and chaotic streaks of light danced from around a bend in the hallway, steadily moving closer to the shattered window frame until what might best be described as luscious blonde with an exceedingly bad hair day crept into view.

The woman in question was fairly petite, something which only seemed to be emphasized by the way her hair somehow managed to stand on end. Her features were dull, almost blank as she continued forward at almost a snails pace with intermittent streaks of lightning circling her lithe form. The overall image was really quite dramatic, possessing a certain Frankenstein’s bride element that the sinister traveler found almost amusing. Any element of humour however swiftly diminished as the seemingly brain dead blonde began to take the building apart piece by piece, the entire building seemed to moan as metal supports began to buckle inwards towards the strange female and shower of lighter metallic objects rained down the magnetic figure, creating a literal nimbus which began to obscure the woman’s figure.

Hull momentarily debated the pro’s and cons of attempting to halt the spaced out bimbo rapidly growing sphere of destruction. On the one hand he had nothing against gratuitous violence and rather enjoyed seeing others taking up the mantle of anarchist in some form or another, however at the rate things were progressing it looked as though the entire building would come crashing down in a few scant minutes which meant that the ex soldier himself would be robbed of the opportunity to cause his own special brand of destruction down below and that simply would not do.

‘Bye bye Barbie.’

With a cruel smirk on his features the malicious murderer raised an open hand, preparing to summon one of the many firearms he had picked up over the last few weeks he had resided within the metropolitan city known as New York. Just as argent fingers began to curl around an imaginary hilt though a metallic filing cabinet burst through the brittle drywall of a an adjacent room and promptly shot towards the Canadian killers intended target where it then proceeded to twist and writhe as it orbited the oblivious blonde bimbo causing the foreign anarchist to think better of summoning a metallic weapon. He could already feel what he assumed to be loose change in his stolen jacket begin to gravitate the magnetic female and thus abruptly decided to leave the woman to her work as he leapt back into the stairwell and began to descend once more.

Bolting down the stairs at a rather breakneck pace Hull kept one hand placed the metallic guardrail which was already beginning to tremble as it struggled to rise upward. Such behaviour did nothing to comfort the serial killer who quickly determined he wasn’t moving quite fast enough and promptly tensed his muscles and shifted his weight as he flung himself over the railing and onto the lower opposing portion of the stairwell where he landed upon the balls of his feet and descended a few additional steps before swiftly grasping the guard rail and repeating his previous action. It was in such a manner that the disturbed anarchist rapidly gained upon the brown haired female he had spotted moments previously.

With no intention of reducing his speed Hull simply allowed himself to close the distance, emerald eyes shifting back and forth from his next handhold to the girl before him as he began to pick out additional details; pigtails were one of the first things he noticed, separated by a series of emerald ribbons the woman’s bounced around her shoulders as she ran down the stairs. The second thing the Canadian wanderer took note of was the rather odd attire the girl had chosen to don; seeming composed of multiple of layers of varying shades of green the overall image put the malicious murderer in mind of a waitress or possibly a maid, the thought was no doubt influenced by the strange apron at the woman’s front as well as the slightly short skirt beneath it.

The final item which caught the killer’s attention was the unusually designed dart gun clutched in the young woman’s hand, clearly a custom made weapon it drew the ex soldier attention back to the empty hypodermic darts he had spotted a few floors up as well as the electrified Barbie who was currently remodeling the building. Viridian eyes abruptly narrowed as the various cogs within the twisted bombers mind clicked, associating the empty darts with the overly energized blonde bimbo and the resulting destruction.

‘Berserker bullets? Damn this place does have everything… I should ask where she got- actually screw it.’

“My Toy!”

The final words left Hull’s lips just as he vaulted the last landing of stairs, swinging his entire weight over the discolored guardrail and adroitly adjusting his trajectory so that his military issue boots approximately aligned themselves with young woman’s shoulders. A mere split second later Hull’s booted feet made contact with the front of the faux maids shoulders and the girl’s back and skull collided roughly with the stairs, making a somewhat suspicious clicking sound which the malevolent murderer failed to take heed of as he rapidly through his weight forward and crouched his blood stained legs to maintain his own precarious balance. Even with such pre-emptive action though the ex-soldiers equilibrium was not absolute and he instinctively cast out his argent hands in order to better anchor his position.

While the anarchist had possessed his mutation for a good number of years his control was by no means perfect, and he still occasionally experienced the odd flare where his powers would activate without his conscious consent. Generally this was in response to some innate reflexive action, attempting to catch a knife, or perhaps block a thrown object. In either case such flare ups usually ended up benefiting the sadistic slaughterer one way or another so he had never attempted to rid himself of the reflex. It was because of slothful behaviour that things swiftly began to go downhill.

Literally.

Cast out in momentary panic sterling fingers immediately buried themselves in the closest material to hand, which just so happened to be the front of the pseudo waitresses dress. Sadly, or perhaps happily depending on the readers perspective, the Canadian killers fingers had begun to glow the moment they made contact with emerald material and thus it immediately flickered out of existence, leaving the somewhat dazed girl bare from the waist up with the exception of her light viridian bandeau. Hull’s green orbs widened in shock as he found his temporary handhold had abruptly vanished, leaving him without a means to anchor himself and so he once more began to tilt backwards towards the bottom of the stairs.

In something akin to a mad rush the falling former soldier’s lightly luminescent fingers scrambled madly at the air before him as he sought something with which to cease his descent, clawed fingers arching down once again towards the spurious maids upper torso and roughly grasping the front of the flimsy brassiere. The last layer of material protecting young woman’s bust, and thus her modesty, from the open air rapidly stretched as it was strained far beyond what it had been designed for and swiftly snapped as the back band gave way and the shoulder straps traveled unhindered down inert limbs as the front of the garment came away in the wanderers hands, granting the tumbling anarchist a split seconds view of ivory breasts before gravity took hold and he was sent barreling down the stairs for the second time in so many minutes.

This time however, instead of impacting with a harsh, unforgiving concrete wall the improbable plummeting pervert collided with a pair of slender legs which, while not ideal cushioning material, was vastly preferable to the aforementioned option. Though precisely what the owner of said legs thought of such an outcome was up to debate.

The steadily growing sounds of scraping, ripping, thunking, and clunking from the upper levels was increasingly unnerving. Isabel knew fully well that Haywire had a knack for kicking in quickly, but that knowledge didn't make the effects of the virus any less alarming. There was also the infected's temper to take into account. She wasn't so worried about the little X-Nerd. They were so headstrong and determined to get along with everyone, that she'd be willing to bet the young man she'd shot would be moving slower than the petite blond that had been trailing him. It was her that Isabel was worried about, especially if the other woman held any feelings of betrayal after the dosing. She was dangerous enough without any help from the virus. She could only hope she'd be able to make it to the ground floor before the entire building came down around her.

Gradually she picked up her speed as she descended the various flights of stairs, occasionally skipping a handful of steps and taking corners more sharply and recklessly. Scrapes and bruises were something she could live with, and she had little to no fear of broken bones. She could most certainly walk away from an accidental tumble down a few stairs. She couldn't be so sure about a run-in with the electric blond. The rhythmic thumping from the descending stranger didn't even register in her mind above the symphony of noise that was already echoing throughout the stairwell. The exclamation that soon followed, however, did catch her attention.

Stumbling slightly in her descent as her head snapped back to allow her gaze an attempt to locate the source of the outburst, her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open at the unexpected sight that met her. She wasn't given any time to react, any attempt that would have been made to move either up or down the stairs she was occupying would have likely ended much the same as her current predicament. She wasn't able to hold or divert the sudden weight that was pressed down on her shoulders, the unknown body pushing her back and down on the stairs more easily than she liked. A pained "Goomph!" escaped her as the back of her body slammed painfully against the stairs, the skin pinched between the concrete against it and the bone beneath it as well as the heavy boots weighing her down. She could practically feel the bruises blossoming as she began to squirm beneath the unknown male.

"Get the hell off me!" she blurted, struggling to get some sort of hold on something to relieve the pressure on her back and shoulders somehow, only succeeding in adding to the increasingly painful shifting of her weight and the stranger's as his balance wavered and he attempted to keep himself upright. An uncomfortable "Gurk," escaped her as a pair of hands joined the boots that were planted against her torso.

The sudden intensified cold of the concrete against her back was unexpected and confusing, as was the momentary feeling of fingers touching bare flesh that had only seconds before been hidden beneath several layers of fabric. A sudden wave a panic hit her on top of the confusion that flooded her with the unexplained sensation. She made an attempt to push herself up into a sitting position once again to inspect her current situation for the cause of her predicament, finding the task only slightly easier as the intruder's weight shifted further back.

Panic quickly escalated into horror as she felt a sudden, harsh tug at a more intimate piece of fabric, her current state of dress becoming terrifyingly clear. With the sudden rush of conflict that cluttered up her mind, she ended up freezing. Should she grab hold of him, or attempt to shove him away? Should she attempt to sever his hands at the wrist and let the rest of him fall? Would her interference yield any positive outcome in an already negative situation? The tumult of conflicting thoughts effectively kept her mind frozen, and therefore her actions were momentarily paused. The result of her lack of interference all seemed to move in slow motion. The final snap of the strained clasps, the slip of the newly freed fabric, the final lack of unfamiliar weight on her body, the tumbling of the stranger down the stairs.

Her freeze only lasted a moment longer, her shocked expression quickly shifting to mirror the horror that had gripped her as her complexion rapidly deepened into a deep crimson. The first action that was able to wriggle through the mess that her mind was in was to shriek, the shrill sound filling up and echoing through the stairwell until her breath ran out. And as the sound died away, her motor functions seemed to return to her at an alarming rate as she scrambled to get to her feet. A thick band of bone erupted from her ribs on the right side of her body, crossing itself over her bare chest and burying its edge into the ribs on the left side of her body in an attempt to scrape together whatever dignity she had left.

"I'll kill you!" she screamed, her rage quickly boiling up in response to the utter embarrassment that had accompanied the destruction of her outfit, her hands balling into fists as she glared down the path the offending male had taken in his fall. She was only mildly surprised to see that he had collided with another female. Isabel didn't particularly care. The woman wasn't an Order member, so any accidental bleeding on her part that could occur in the ribboned mutant's advance would be of no consequence.

As she began to move down the stairs once more and advance on the pair, she uncurled her hands, slender spines of bone sliding smoothly from her fingertips until they reached approximately six inches in length. She was going to rip the unfortunate little man to shreds.

Running up the stairs and toward the action occupied most of Ghost's mental time. She was readying herself for the fight, for what she would have to do, for what she might encounter. Of all the things she'd thought to prepare herself for, Ghost had not counted on being flashed.

Or have her legs crushed against a wall by a falling stranger. Ghost brought up one hand to cover her eyes against the bare bosoms she'd spied, but as she lowered her eyes demurely, she saw something much more frightening. Her eyes affixed on the man that was looking up her skirt. Green eyes as toxic as sludge, as corrosive as any number of acids, and as scary as she'd remembered them in her nightmares. This was the man who had strangled her, eviscerated her, stabbed her, and scared her to death and back.

Distantly Ghost registered that someone was shrieking. She added her panic to the mix and raised a wind so strong that the stairs they stood on shook. Or, perhaps that was a byproduct of something that was happening upstairs? The wind went upward, lifting the stranger in a single, violent heave. She didn't really pay attention to where she was throwing him so long as that somewhere was well away from where she was. The wind died down just as quickly as it had been summoned.

Suddenly, Ghost wasn't so sure about all this fighting stuff. If he was here then she really didn't want to go up the rest of those stairs to see what he'd unleashed up there. It could be anything from a velociraptor to a sentient ice cream truck from all she knew. This man was capable of some of the scariest surprises. Something Meld had told her was suddenly sounding like a good idea. If the world was without this man... if he were gone... certainly she would feel so much safer.

Ghost realized with a start that she had somewhere along the line drawn both of the guns that she had taken off of the security guards several flights down. Her hands were shaking, but she clicked the safety off of each gun carefully. She wouldn't do it... she just.. wanted the threat. That was okay. She was okay. She swallowed hard.

She wasn't any kind of okay. She was afraid of guns, but she was really afraid of this man more. She'd never ever wanted to draw down on anyone before, but if anyone deserved it... if anyone had asked for it... She was so spooked that some movement set her off. Her eyes were closed but she was clicking the triggers. One gun clicked empty after only one shot. The other gave off a more satisfying and frightening 3 shots before it too clicked empty. It was deafening in quarters as close as this.

((OOC: let me know if I need to edit anything.))

--

The malicious murderers short descent down the stairs seemed to happen almost in slow motion the instant his mind registered precisely what he was seeing. Autonomic gears within the wander’s mind shifted abruptly as his photographic memory pushed itself into high gear, recording every passing second with excruciating detail, everything was noted and committed to memory; the flickering fluorescent light cast from the ceiling, the discoloured guardrail which encircled the stairs, the pale yet pert breasts of the brown haired female before him as she swiftly bent at the waist and lifted her bare back from the cold concrete of the stairs, unwittingly raising her ivory assets into greater prominence and granting the sinister traveler an extra split seconds view of rosy areola before head went over heels and disorientation set in.

As the sinister anarchist proceeded to tumble down the brief flight of stairs his viridian orbs barely had time to blink at the somewhat blurry sight of a rapidly approaching white haired figure before his descent was brought to a sharp halt as the laws of physic’s abruptly took hold and transferred the slaughterers momentum to the slender legs of the now crushed against the stairwell wall. A second blink was swiftly taken as the former rapidly tried to reorient himself now that he was once more stationary; viridian eyes quickly refocused and a micro second of confusion passed the perverted traveler’s features as he stared upwards at a petite strip of polka dotted material with a blue a white theme. The moment passed almost immediately though as the ex soldiers gaze instinctively panned out, taking in the slender alabaster legs which and short skirt which surrounded the strip of cloth.

‘Polka dot panties? Seriously?’

Before a more coherent thought could be formed on the matter though a piercing shriek filled the air as the topless faux waitress finally came to terms with her somewhat unusual wardrobe malfunction. Hull’s gaze reflexively flashed back towards the screaming woman and his eyes unconsciously drifted downwards a few key degrees to settle once more upon the pseudo maid’s bare breasts before a flicker of motion crossed his peripheral vision and the Canadian killers emerald eyes instinctively tracked the movement, catching sight of widening honey brown eyes below a short mane of shocking white hair. The multiple mechanism’s within Hull’s mindscape once again acted upon an autonomous process, instantly recalling the series of events which took place in times square no more than a month or so ago. The foreign killer’s features twisted into a deranged grin as his emerald eyes sparked with recognition.

Dove, that was the sobriquet the sinister slaughterer had given the pallid sylph, bestowed with a quiet intimacy the moniker had been whispered into the woman’s ears as he had slowly dragged her mutilated body into the veiled shadows of an abysmal alleyway. The malicious anarchist had fully intended to terminate the witless waif’s life at that moment, however there had been…extenuating circumstances, and the guileless gamine had somehow managed to slip away from the jaws of death. However Hull had never been one to shy away from adversity, for as the age old aphorism states…

If at first you don’t succeed, rip rend and ravage.’

Argent hands swiftly rose from the dust encrusted floor and swept upwards towards the shocked sylph’s bare thighs, sterling fingers began to glow with a faint luminescence as they once again adopted a clawed arrangement fully intent on gouging out the woman’s femoral artery and adding it his growing collection of macabre souvenirs, after all the section of intestine he’d taken from the girl midriff during their previous encounter had been getting rather lonesome and dislodgement, for as they say; misery loves company.

Fate and fortune however seemed to be against the malevolent murderer’s sadistic intentions, for when Hull’s finger’s were no more than a millimeter away from their intended target an unnatural torrent of wind burst into creation. Intensifying the already noticeable vibrations of the stairwell and all but drowning out the screeched death threats of the disrobed brunette above. It was in the midst of this effusive chaos that the former soldier abruptly found himself being lifted from the floor, carried as though he were no more than a rag doll. Sinister fingers which mere moments prior had been positioned to end a life suddenly grasped at empty air as the Canadian killer felt himself gaining upward momentum. Instinct once again took over as the sadistic wanderer scrambled blindly, searching for some form of anchor and, by either chance or design, the pads of his fingers came into contact with the hem of the female windmancer’s short skirt which abruptly followed a similar path to the viridian brassiere of the faux waitress above, though with a slightly different twist.

Hull’s contact with the light garment had been so brief and unfocused that despite it’s relatively insubstantial mass the flowing skirt only flickered for an instant, merely long enough for the article to be separated from the waif’s hips before it entered reality once more and slipped from the sinister traveler’s curling fingers. The amber coloured garment was immediately caught by the aberrant wind howling through the rattling staircase, soaring swiftly past the macabre wanderer the short skirt streaked across the short width of the stairwell before it blew into the pseudo maids face, momentarily blinding her and thus preventing any type of coordinated preemptive action regarding the human missile streaking towards her.

‘Soaring through the air’
‘Towards a topless dame’
‘My that’s quite the pair’
‘She must have no shame’

The deranged travelers internal jingle was abruptly cut off as his sizeable form rapidly crossed the short span of the stairway and collided bodily with the now homicidal ribbon wearing nymph for the second time in so many seconds. Briefly the anarchists mind registered the fact that the woman seemed to have sprouted some bizarre form of chest plate to defend her wounded dignity as his arms reflexively wrapped around her lithe form and pivoted her slightly in an effort to ensure that she would land beneath him and therefore cushion the impact of the stairs. Unfortunately the ploy was only partially successful as the winds had twisted the murderers position somewhat during the short flight, aligning ex-soldiers chest with the brunettes torso and placing his head just to right of the strange breast plate so that his own skull hammered harshly against the solid concrete of the steps.

Normally such a blow to the head would result in a concussion and possibly lack of consciousness, in Hull’s case he managed to avoid the latter yet in exchange had to suffer the resounding pain and disorientation of the former. It is, perhaps, not overly surprising therefore that the impetus suffered by his cranium caused the former soldier to lose control of his mutation yet again as the hands wrapped around the faux maids midriff momentarily went slack and drifted down over the viridian skirt and tan pants which covered the girls callipygian figure. Argent fingers glowed almost imperceptibly in the fluorescent lighting of the stairwell and a mere microsecond later the pseudo waitresses derriere was disrobed in the same manner as her bust leaving the unfortunate bone manipulator with nothing but the ribbons in her hair and the improvised breast plate, indeed had the wanderer’s knee not fallen between the woman’s own spread legs the white haired sylph below would not doubt have received quite an eyeful.

Raising himself up slowly the malicious murderer released a pained ground as he placed a hand against his head and attempted to resolve the resounding pusling in his skull, paying only half attention to the body beneath him and completely disregarding the pale waif below him. At least he recalled who had tossed him back up the stairs in the first place, at which point the wanderer’s head arched round to glare at the timid sylph. The hand clutching his head fell away and the fingers began to curl around a non existent hilt as the Canadian killer prepare to withdraw a firedraw and place several rounds in the ingénue’s skull.

Imagine the anarchists surprise then when he found that he had actually been beaten to the draw and that Dove already had not one, but two pistols in her trembling hands. Hull’s eyes immediately widened in shock as he noticed what little colour the sylph possessed drained from her face as her body subconsciously prepared to fire the shot even as the girl closed her terrified eyes.

Adrenaline rushed the former soldiers systems as he realized that the guileless gamine was actually going to pull the trigger and years of training immediately overtook command of his muscles, compelling his body to curl up in order to minimize the chances of being hit. The result of such a maneuver was that the former solider all but wrapped himself around the dazed brunette below him as he attempted to roll himself beneath her in attempt to turn her into a human shield. Irritatingly though the woman was proving to be somewhat heavier than anticipated and due to the awkward positioning Hull’s efforts were met with little to no success until one of his hands found its way down the front of the faux maids hastily crafted breast placed and utilized the convenient hand hold to spin the girl up around his own body, at which point a searing pain lanced through the demented bombers shoulder at the same time a earsplitting crack reverberated within the tight confines of the stairwell.

The first shot was swiftly followed by several others as the ivory haired waif rapidly pressed the depressed the triggers on the two firearms and Hull felt another bolt of lead pierce the edge of his thigh and released a muffled curse as his free hand went to grip the new injury while other arm remained in place down the bonemancer’s breast plate due to his wounded shoulder.

When the echoes had died about half way down the malicious killer allowed his muscles to relax slightly as he twisted his neck to catch a brief glimpse at the female air elemental below in order to determine whether the witless waif was trying to reload or was in fact… at least until he realizing there was currently a rather warm, shapely and over all exposed brunette lying on top of him. Viridian eyes immediately darted back to the pseudo waitresses honey brown orbs and increasingly scarlet features.

“Comfy?”

As impossible as it seemed at the current moment, things continued to spiral from bad to worse to positively horrible. It appeared as if Isabel wouldn't have to go very far to catch up to her intended target after all. However, she would have appreciated it more if the gap between them had been closed in a different manner. Never before having bumped into the snowy-haired young woman on the stairs below her, Isabel didn't know the extent of her mutant abilities and almost immediately wished they had been used in another fashion. The sudden wind that whipped up and caused the stairwell to reverberate also made the ribboned girl pause in her descent, her hands instinctively raising about eye level as the harsh gust swept past her, violently disturbing her hair and its decorations and making them whip around and into her face.

She certainly hadn't expected a piece of the other woman's clothing to join the mix, the light cloth effectively blocking her view of the two strangers as she struggled to get it away from her, the sharp spines at the ends of her fingers ripping into the material and destroying it as quickly as possible. She had just barely managed to remove a majority of the scraps before something hit her hard. A muffled "Guh!" escaped her as some of the air in her lungs was expelled with the force of the offending male's shoulder planted itself against her stomach. The muscles in her midsection immediately protested and her back curved forward in a combination of applied force of the strange body and a reflexive action meant to lessen the pain that spread across her flesh.

A sharp inhale was taken as her ability to breathe returned with the surprise of once again being forced down against the stairs, her body striking painfully in places where the edges of the concrete steps caught her. For a moment she just sat still, mentally taking stock of what hurt and why on top of hoping the sound of skull hitting concrete had seriously damaged the brain of the man it belonged to. The only other thought that managed to get through the state of confusion her mind was in was the various questions concerning how exactly she'd ended up in such a predicament.

Though as it turned out, she wasn't afforded too much time to continue wondering. The sudden feeling of fingers sliding against her bare flesh stood out above the aches and pains that had previously demanded her attention, resulting in a revolted shudder running up her spine while her gaze attempted to focus on the source of the discomfort. She made an absentminded attempt to adjust her body in an instinctive desire to reach some level of comfort when a familiar feeling of intensified cold renewed the horrified panic that had seized her only moments before. With mild disbelief one hand struggled to flutter down the side of her own body, desperately seeking out some form of familiar fabric only to find more bare skin. She shrieked again.

How the hell had this happened to her? What kind of mutation did the unknown male possess that could cause all of her clothing to simply vanish in a split second? All she could seem to come up with was his hands. His hands had done something that she couldn't even begin to understand. The confusion over his abilities, however, utterly paled in comparison to the panic and mortification that gripped her so tightly over the loss of any remaining modesty and dignity. She finally managed to get her gaze to focus on the individual perched above her, only to find that he was focused elsewhere. No doubt it was the other female that had grabbed his attention, though for what reasons Isabel wasn't sure. She didn't particularly care, either. Why couldn't the other woman have made herself useful and blasted the man down the remaining flights of stairs, rather than up half a flight?

Unfortunately, whatever had so effectively captured the silver-fingered male's attention quickly caused him to react as his body curled much too close for comfort. Continuing to panic, she wriggled beneath him in an unsuccessful attempt to slither out from under his body, her hands curling up by she shoulders as if the very thought of any unnecessary contact with the stranger disgusted her. To her utter horror, it didn't take long before her makeshift means of covering herself was used against her, another shiver gripping her with the feeling of fingers slipping down between her cleavage so their owner could get a grip on the strip of bone. Another short screech was given in response to the feeling, though before a more physical retaliation could be put into effect, she was quickly hoisted up and over the offending intruder.

The almost immediate sound of gunfire that followed made the stranger's actions a little clearer, her own body curling, her eyes squeezing shut and her head ducking down in response to the deafening sound. A searing pain ran up one of her arms as the skin was grazed by one of several bullets, more blood splattering up against her exposed skin as her newest adversary was also struck. Why the hell was a mutant using a gun in the first place? Wasn't her mutation enough? For a moment she found herself mentally cursing the human means of protection as the ringing in her ears gradually softened once the last of the shots had been fired.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the relaxing of the body beneath her as she opened first one eye and then the other, finding herself to be much, much too close to the young man than was at all comfortable. Immediately she reared back, her progress somewhat hindered by the hand that was still stuck down the front of her breast plate, the realization of which caused her to pause. As her mind registered that the man attached to the hand had spoken she turned her gaze from the buried digits to his face, her eyes going wide and, if at all possible, her face turning even redder as full realization of her current position dawned on her.

"Bastard!" she expelled as she scrambled to remove herself from atop the young man, one hand yanking at his wrist as the other swiped at his face, aiming to drag her claws along his flesh and give him something else to focus on. At the same time she hastily contorted the hidden armor around her hips, bringing it to the surface in order to cover the newest portion of exposed flesh. She was hesitant to bring any more of the armor to the surface of her skin, especially if the other young woman had any more ammo left in her guns, though a few small, scale-like pieces of bone did manage to rise to the surface of her skin in her panicked movement.

Isabel was beginning to get tired, her erected defenses on the ground floor having taken more energy and effort than she would have liked. She would work on creating a more suitable amount of covering for herself once she'd reached the ground floor and could reabsorb a generous amount of expended bone. Until then she needed to figure out what the young woman on the stairs below her was doing as well as deciding on what part of the sprawled male she wanted to remove first.

Through the roaring power, there was no room for thought or imagination. Just floating golden bliss. Lori power fed on itself, the magnetic field around her slowly rotating past the metal in her body. It wasn't an indefinite flow, there was no such thing as a perfect system and surely the masses of twisting metal were wasting energy, but it was enough.

When there was no floor left, Lori's feet dangled uselessly. Her force opposed the earth's natural field enough that she remained exactly where she was, visible support or none. Walls, pipes, steel beams put in place to keep upper levels supported: everything metal was at her beck and call. The power didn't care.

Pieces of the outer wall were visibly crunching inward now. Pieces flew off as the metal weakened. Everything flowed in a strangely organic way. Debris soared upward and downward, split by it's natural choice in polarity. Pieces arched around. If the debris was heavy and solid enough, it found a place in a growing shell around the sparking Lori. If it was light, the item more than likely flew off propelled up or down by the immense force behind the field.

The building groaned and shuddered down its length as more and more bites were taken from its support. If things continued uninterrupted, spanning several floors there would be a nearly perfect oval bite taken out of the side of the building.

Ghost was shaking from head to toe. Her arms were still outstretched, guns clicking empty again and again. Her eyes were so wide that the tears in them blurred her vision as they pooled across the membrane before leaking out and down her cheeks. She wasn't really seeing anything anyway. She shot him. Ghost breathed out a wild laugh that through her ringing ears sounded something more akin to a sob. She shot him. She shot him. She shot him.

The stairway gave a sudden lurch and then she was shaking on her panty-clad butt, firmly seated on the concrete. The guns in her hands were in the way of her hands cupping her head. She couldn't seem to let them go. Was he dead? Was the girl? Was she in trouble now?

The building's instability was in no way helping. Her airway seemed to be getting smaller as the possible ramifications of her actions started to dawn on her. She shot him. Ghost rubbed at her eyes with the guns still in hand to attempt to clear her vision. There was movement and reflexively the gusting wind started up again. Her skirt didn't ruffle in it this time. Was that because she was sitting on it? Or because the stairwell was starting to jiggle in an unhealthy way?

The stairway twisted and writhed like an animal alive. Something metal snapped and her winds only increased in strength with her panic. The whole stair shifted and Ghost started to scramble to her feet to cling to the last remaining rail that would keep her upright on the very sideways stair. That wouldn't matter to people who were airborne.

It was practically impossible to tell who was who through the glaze of her panic and tears. She spoke louder than she had to since her ears were shot for having fired in such a small space. If either of them spoke to her she wouldn't have heard it. "Sorry." And she really meant it as she heaved the both of them straight toward an already glassless window. It was somehow less dramatic for the lack of glass.

Ghost realized the sudden irony in the fact that the stairwell was starting to collapse. She had possibly just saved them and doomed herself. Yes. Hopefully she had saved the girl. And the man would be gone. Not dead. Not a problem. Just gone. Oh dear, what had she done?

((OOC: continued here))

((OOC: Continued for Hull and Isabel in Man and Machine.))

Power. Enough power that no one dared stop her. No one could even come near.

The mass of floating and rotating metal debris was moving, swirling around Lori and feeding back energy. She'd created a sort of generator and was feeding from her own power. It could only get better from here. To surrender fully to that which she feared most: her power.

The power rushed in waves out and back in, reaching out and grabbing and pulling those pieces of metal closer in to the metallic spinning shell that fed her. If it had been fire, she would have burst into flame; if it had been water, she would have drowned; but it was neither and both.

Electricity. A flow of electrons that her body feasted on and in return changed into more magnetism, which in turn caused more pulling pieces off of the building, which in turn moved through her magnetic field and continued to feed her.

It was wonderful. A never ending, self perpetuating flow of utility.

Her power filled the air and crackled fantastically. Bolts sliced through the super charged particles lining them up and finding an avenue for release. His power seemed to fill the immediate area. Like breathing was something more solid, like seeing was something too brilliant. The world was narrowing down to light; light was everywhere.

A small rumbling thunder rolled from the false jags of lightning.

((Continued from (KP: Haywire) Man and Machine.))

"The stairs are not an option." She pulled at Jacen's arm. Impatience was not even going to begin to describe what she felt. "Please. Faster." Because being this close to green eyes was making her scared, more scared than all the fighting. She didn't have a single thing to use against the man.

She'd shot him and thrown him out of a building and he was only dazed. It wouldn't last forever they needed to move. Maybe it seemed counter-intuitive since she slowed his fall, but she didn't want to be a murderer... she just wanted to be far away from the man that was at this point far too close.

"E-elevator?" That seemed like a bad idea with electric girl frying everything. "Or maybe up the shaft at least. Come on." She turned and ducked under another shower of small bits of metal and ran. They could figure out something once they were safely inside.

Ghost tripped on something fleshy and got back up so fast it was hard to say she was ever down. She gulped, but kept moving. This scene was a little like the camp break out. A little too messy for her tastes. The blood on her hands wasn't helping her stay calm.
There was a little place where the second floor was spilling out and down the bone barrier. Who knows what had been thrown down through the window, but Ghost wasn't complaining. It was a way in.

She picked her way carefully over the rubble. If she had known she was going to be climbing through glass she would have worn gloves.

"Great... no stairs." Jacen muttered as he broke into a jog, following the young woman to wherever she was leading. How in the world were they supposed to get up there? There was no construction lifts nearby that he could see and Jacen hadn't been able to go over building plans to know whether there was a fire escape anywhere.

"Elevator?" He asked, raised eyebrow as he looked over at the woman, "Why in the... up the shaft? How are we supposed to go up the shaft?"

Once again she was tugging on him and they were running, tripping and scrambling over the fallen bodies that scattered the ground. Thanks to the fact Jacen had taken off his shirt to give Isabel, there was no way that anyone would even recognize him as being a member of the police. Well, other than the standard issue police belt and weaponry that he was carrying strapped around his waist.

"In case you don't remember, your powers are useless around me!" Jacen yelled, doing his best to ignore the small cuts that were growing more and more numerous on his hands. With all the glass, rubble, and rock it was almost imposible to keep yourself in one piece and there were no exceptions made just because someone was an Adapted!

"Do they have some sort of ladder inside an elevator shaft? I must have missed that fact on my mission debriefing!"

"There could be different stairs... and I know there are little strings the elevator goes up and down on. Weights too for counter balance." If they worked it right they could go up ninja-zip-cord-style. Ghost make it to the top first and offered a pinkish hand down to Jacen. She was by no means strong, but it was the thought that counted.

"I know my powers don't work around you. You think I'd be solid if I didn't have to be?" Boy, this guy was just a big poopy pants. "And you don't have to yell. If we're going to die together in a collapsed building, I'd rather not do it crying because you hurt my feelings."

Ghost went straight for the elevator shaft and worked at the doors, an action that was pretty useless until Jacen came to back her up. Once the doors were open it was clear that the elevator shaft might be a bust. The walls were concrete and smooth. It would most likely not collapse with the rest of the building, but the elevator was some floors up and the lights were flashing off and on. Not only did she not know how to get past it without being inside, but she didn't trust that it would remain where it was.

Just for kicks, Ghost tried pushing the button to call the elevator, like riding in it would be any safer, but the box didn't budge. "I know I can get to the top myself, but I don't know what to do to get you up there... and in this situation I think you'd be a lot more useful than myself." Her brain was humming. There had to be more than one set of stairs. Had she passed some in her wanderings on the bottom floor?

"Let's try this way." She darted across the hall toward the back of the building. "The front stairs have collapsed, but we're more likely to find a way up the further we go from the destruction zone out front." And if he wanted to take the lead or point or whatever police people called going first, that was fine by Ghost. She wasn't particularly looking forward to visiting the electric lady up top.

He was acting like a jerk. The white haired girl was probably right but she had to cut him at least a little bit of slack, didn't she? After all, he was dealing with a really stressful situation. Didn't that count for something? Of course, she was also dealing with the exact same situation which was probably why she was touchy at the same time he was.

For a few more moments, Jacen was silent as he and Ghost attacked the elevator doors, managing to pry them apart with a broken piece of trim work before using their hands to leverage it the rest of the way open.

"I'm sorry." He finally managed, controlling his voice much better and keeping the volume at an acceptable level, "Way to many people have died already and that's just a little upsetting."

The young woman pushed at the call button while Jacen glanced around the hall. Would the Fire Marshall really have let this building get away with only one stair case? Jacen wasn't up on the latest fire safety codes but it sure didn't seem like having only one method of emergency egress would be a very smart idea.

As the two began to make their way down the hallway, Jacen moved to take the lead. Every door was carefully checked until finally he saw the glowing red sign up ahead.

EXIT

Jogging forward, Jacen stopped and glanced in. Not a surprise it was a door that led into a little room that accessed an outside door. Also not a surprise, it was yet another set of stairs that by some miracle seemed to be in pretty good condition. Placing a foot on the first step, Jacen paused and looked back over at the young woman as he had a sudden thought.

"You said you wouldn't be solid... does that mean you can take a form where you can't be physically injured?" Jacen asked with raised eyebrow, "If you can, then why don't you get about fifteen or twenty feet ahead of me. Make sure you stay that distance away so you can't get hurt and let me know what's happening up ahead. Does that work for you?"

Ghost apologized as well. She had been trying very, very hard not to think of those people as dead. If Sebastian were here, he was surely bringing people back from the brink right at this very moment. Surely someone had called him. Or another healer. And just as surely those people were being brought back from wherever they had gone. Yes. They were being saved. They had to be.

She nodded a little too quickly and a little too often in response to his question about her incorporeal nature. "very few physical things can harm me." And she was all too eager to oblige.

The stairs flew by two by two as per her norm. She went up to the landing, unsure of how far 15 feet was. So for good measure she went up the first full flight before even attempting to change her nature. She tried to send him a message as per her norm, but it died before it reached him. Heh. Maybe she did need the reminder.

"Ready and moving." The words echoed around the stairwell from no where in particular. There was an open space in the middle of the stair almost al the way up. She could go that way, but then she couldn't warn him of the trouble he might come across.

Ghost raced up the stairs noting places that were collapsed, places where he might come across some climbing or uneasy terrain. On one floor, a few floors up, the railing on one side was gone. Just all of a sudden gone, though the concrete wall. "Not too far now." Why electric girl was sucking up hand rails like spaghetti was beyond Ghost.

Once she reached a floor where the door was missing, she was pretty sure that was it. The stairs had the worst of it at this level too, equally mangled above considering a chunk of concrete was dangling from it's mooring... well, not dangling. It was almost like it was being pulled to the side. Like the gravity here was messed up. She didn't linger on it, but made her way across the small gap and onto the floor that was surprisingly empty for being this far away from the action. The walls were... not walls anymore.

Ghost started the process of becoming solid before Jacen caught up so that she would not be ousted from her gaseous state. Once solid, her eyes noted that the large spherical thing at the other end of the floor was definitely not part of the original architecture. Not only that, but the oblong orb was sending out juts of what appeared to lightning. It was making the hairs on Ghost's arms and neck stand up just being this close to all that highly charged atmosphere.

From her perceptions she had noted that the metal shape wasn't perfect, nor solid. It was also not attached to the building in anyway that she could tell. The gravity was all kinds of messed up here. pieces of wood, concrete, and sheet rock littered the floor and partial walls. "So... this is it. Gameplan?"