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They say life always finds a way.

In hindsight nothing should have survived the explosion. The technology originally used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had leapt forward like arcs of lightening in the subsequent decades, each culminating in short and sudden streaks of destruction progressively deadlier than the last. If a nuclear warhead had actually hit New York, there wouldn’t even be ruins.

Still, the ruins stood; hollow rusting skeletons of construction acting as a scornful reminder of what used to be an of what use to be and could still have been even as they stood in mocking defiance of a blast which should have left nothing.

The Church of Humanity had been right about at least one thing; mutants had brought about the end of the world.

Mankind though, mankind had finished the job.

As he stared down at the desiccated remnants of the once famous city Zephyr doubted there were many still alive who would appreciate the irony. Then again, most people hadn’t emerged from the One Day War as relatively unscathed as he had.

Shifting his gaze away from the lifeless blue skies which surrounded him the elemental tilted his captain’s hat down over his eyes as he lowered his head and lounged further into his seat. A strange, bittersweet nostalgia overtook him as he recalled, only three years ago, those first terrified moments where the whole world had seemed to end and it felt as though he were racing death itself.

He’d been over a mile away when the explosion had hit, people watching at a café as he waited to meet someone. His senses being what they were, he’d felt the blast a scant second before anyone else had even begun to hear the rapidly growing thunder. He recalled preempting a number of terrified screams by rocketing into the air without any thought of subtlety or decorum, switching from an idle sitting position to a vaguely human shaped speck in the blink of an eye.

And he still hadn’t been fast enough.

Looking back, the real danger hadn’t been the force of the explosion itself but instead the debris which had been dragged with it. Even now, three years on, Zephyr doubted he could have blocked or deflected ever piece of shrapnel or other lethal confetti when it was all moving at just under the speed of sound.


That realization had bought him true fear for the first time in nearly a decade. He’d panicked and in that panic he’d taken what he’d seen as the only option , let himself fall apart and unravel, escaping into the air just before the expanding mushroom cloud overtook him.

A minivan.

They’d gotten a minivan.

Far be it for Dan to question the taste of a giggling, blood soaked, mentally unstable, well racked, homicidally inclined, rag wearing, bone wielding, backstabbing, well endowed chick but, well… He opened his mouth, and then promptly shut it as his mind replayed the last few minutes of his life. There were times when keeping quiet was just the better option and this was one of them, especially given that the bone bitch had managed to walk away from an explosion that should have leveled a small building.

Yeah he was just gonna keep his mouth shut.

The modified six point harness the girl had made was a little excessive though; where was he going to go on foot? The slut was a god damned walking armory, even if he had tried to make a run for it he’d probably get a whole three steps before she gunned him down.

Again though, Dan said nothing, merely hotwiring the car while the soaked psychopath loaded her partners corpse into the back. One of the first lessons he’d learned on the streets was ‘thou shalt not question those who will put you six foot under’. It was a rule which hadn’t steered him wrong yet, even if he didn’t always remember it. In any case, by the time he’d gotten the engine running the nameless backstabbing bitch had just finished climbing in herself.

Chicago is a big place. People always seem to think new York is the only city in the country worth mentioning but the windy city was definitely up there, and on a night like tonight it was all too easy to see how the place got its name.

The earlier drumming rain had turned into a full downpour which threatened to flood the streets. It seemed to slam into the windshield in waves, screening everything from view for a few brief seconds before the next wave followed up and repeated the underwater effect.

Then there was the wind. It didn’t howl; that would mean it actually stopped at some point. No, this thing was an everlasting bellow and at every cross street it only gotten louder as thunderous gales slammed into the vans side and threatened to shove it up onto the curve.

Each time though, Dan simply sighed, awful though the weather might be, it was just another day in the big city and a part of him welcomed the constant distraction as he fought to keep the machine in the center of the road. He made a careful effort not to look at his passenger however since the girl seemed a little off put by the screaming wind and if he watched her jump one too many times he might start laughing.

Start, but he very much doubted he’d finish.

Finding Biggs was fairly simple task in and of itself, the guy had been the first to make a move after Jarcone had disappeared and had spent nearly all his time camped out at Jarcones reserved floor of the Willis Tower trying to get his hands into as many pies as he could reach. The man had even managed to replace most of the buildings normal security with his own muscle, a fact Dan found himself quietly thankful for when he was made to carry the skinny ass corpse of the bone bitches former partner.


That being said, he still wasn’t thrilled with the idea of carrying a body out in the open for everyone and their mother to see. While he might prefer prison over immediate mutilation and death, neither one was high on his list of things to do. Still, he kept his mouth shut and didn’t complain as per the rule above.

What he did do was park illegally on the lower of the two tiered streets beside the Tower and carried, or more specifically, dragged the stick thin corpse in through the back entrance he’d been guided through earlier when Biggs had called him in to give the bombing mission which had started this whole mess.

It had been an interesting, if brief tour, the Tower was largely what people would expect from an oversized sky scraper. There were windows and views everywhere you looked, white (fake) marble flooring on almost every floor and artwork placed every few feet ranging from traditional classic prints to apparently modern pieces which looked to have been thrown together by toddlers.

The best way Dan could have described it was to cross an art museum with a bankers convention center and then stretch the whole thing straight up for 160 stories. The elevator rides weren’t fun.

That being said, at night the building wasn’t so much impressive as oppressive. The large lack of interior lighting coupled with the abundance of windows and the storm outside gave off a feel which was very much very much a prelude to a B horror movie. If it weren’t for the fact that he seemed to have a living horror movie reject following behind him the entire time Dan might have actually found it amusing in a sad way.

As it was he struggled not to sweat or stumble over his words as he tried to explain things to a rather muscle bound gun wielding guard by a large bank of elevators who, after being shown just how quickly the bone bitch could literally spike someone.

Nails weren’t meant to grow over six feet in less than a second.

Eventually they made it up to the 60th floor and even more muscle made its way out of the wood work, quietly watching and following as Dan dragged his targets corpse, and by extension, homicidal brunette towards Biggs’s office at the end of the hallway as he tried not to think about just how many guns were going to be pointed at him if he screwed up.

Honestly at this point he was just happy the body wasn’t getting the carpet bloody.

Finally, they made it inside, and as he glanced about Dan tried not to think about the unfairness of it all; the room was easily five times as large as cramped little crevice of an apartment and actually had a view which wasn’t of a backwards alley and it all now belonged to a guy who’d grown up on the same street as he had.

It wasn’t until he finally looked at Biggs himself though that Dan began to winder just what he’d done wrong in a past life to deserve his current predicament.

Biggs was a tall man and built like an elephant. Coming in at anywhere from early 30’s to late 40’s the man capped off at around 6” something with a short, almost militaristic haircut and drooping green eyes which swept lazily over the paper in his hand. A hand which was covered in three solid gold rings and was only missing a fourth because the finger in question had been removed under circumstances of which no one was entirely. In short Biggs gave the impression of a shaved gorilla someone had shoved into a suit and by himself would have carried an ample intimidation factor.

When he had six shotgun wielding thugs at his back well... even he faded into the background to a degree.

“I gave you a simple job Dan,”[/color] The voice was low and while it didn’t rumble and while it didn’t rumble it seemed to carry with it an air of restrained violence ; as though the man wanted his words to connect in the same way a bat does a baseball.

“yet you’ve come to see me personally, and with… complications. I do hope you haven’t disappointed me.”[/color] At those words all six shotguns were pumped but not raised, and Dan found himself quietly calculating whether he was too far away to make a dive for Biggs’s desk.

This was not going to end well.

This wasn’t happening.

This wasn’t @#%&$*! happening.

It was just a dream, a bad &%@#^$! dream. Any moment he’d wake up to the sound of the usual morning dump truck going past his cramped littered apartment. He wouldn’t be nailed to the street, half drowned by the rain and looking at Matt’s sever-

He was shaking, his breaths came in ragged gasps as he fought to get ahold of himself again even as stomach tried to dry heave.

He was going to die. Hewasgoingtodie. He was-

Something hit his throat and he choked, eyes flying open wide as he glanced about frantically in the dim light for whatever had hit him but he only saw empty air.

“do you want to live?”

If he hadn’t been pinned down he easily would have jumped a foot. The words were soft, but clearly audible and for all the world they seemed to be coming straight form the decapitated head on his left.

“$#%!, $#%! I’m going crazy..”[/color] The whimpering words were cut off before they could fully form as the same choking pressure hit his throat and allowed the voice to interrupt.

“maybe, maybe not, think of me as the voice in your head that doesn’t want to die. now listen…”

---

”H-Hey! Is he dead? If he is he had a price on his head. I, I think we could help each other outI [/color]

Tracking Duskmoor reeling figure from the corner of his vision Zephyr raised a hand to the bridge of his nose to ward of a headache which was only partly feigned as fought to remain impassive. Credit where it was due the girl’s macabre, and petulant display, had provided a rather effective does of intimidation and it had gone a long way towards loosening their captives tongue.

Annoyingly however the soubrette had been, as usual, overzealous in her efforts and so the pairs only lead had become gibbering wreck, spouting a feckless blend of prayers, curses and other heedless whimpering’s. The man was going to be useless for at least the next five minutes, possibly longer once he finally realized that his own ribs had been pulled loose and used to bind his hands.

Five minutes. A good deal could be done in five minutes; the elemental knew that quite well. It was just long enough to brew a pot of tea and, as he watched Duskmoor stagger blindly to her feet, he decided it was more than enough time to give errant upstart of a gamine a guiding hand, and that simply would not do.

He’d need to draw things out a little.

Rising from his crouched position Zephyr drew in a deep breath which then became an audible sigh as glanced at his companion with an expression of open irritation as she swayed towards him with motions usually reserved for those that had more alcohol than blood in their system. Any adolescent with a baseball bat could probably take her down as she was right now yet the gamine carried on regardless, so certain in her own lack of mortality that she didn’t even consider her safety and simply let her anger take charge.

“Think very carefully Duskmoor.” Stepping softly to his left Zephyr kept his gaze fixed on the ingénues silhouette, taking another short step away from their bound victim when the soubrette veered unsteadily in her course to match him, yet otherwise remained strangely silent.

“We’ve done this little dance before, are you truly so eager for another lesson in discipline?” He kept his arms loosely by his side now as he continued to step back into the shadows of the bridge, relying on his eyes less and less as the light faded by degrees and Duskmoor continued to trudge after him, the blade in her hand all to visible to his to his other senses.

In truth Zephyr knew that trying to talk the girl down was a futile exercise at best. The brunet was almost the perfect personification of the age old stereotype of brains without brawn all too easily stirred to anger. Once an idea became lodged in her thick skull the only way to change her mind was to beat the thought out of her. The only thing the gamine respected was violence and any lack of such was interpreted as weakness.

It was clichéd, it was foolish, and above all it was predictable.

“Last chance Duskmoor, back down, apologize and I might just forget this latest bout of idiocy.” He was being deliberately antagonistic at this point and he knew it. Unlike some however his bellicosity served a dual purpose; the greater the soubrettes anger grew the more she focused on him and thus less effort would be needed to guard their panicked captive. At this point Zephyr had his doubts the girl even remembered the man lying some ten feet behind her.

As for his secondary motivation in aggravating the girl well, suffice to say he’d been anticipating teaching the girl restraint for quite some time.

It worked all too well; fury coloured the girl features as she abruptly urged herself into an awkward run, water flying with every footstep. Her shoulders weaving from side to side as she fought to keep her precarious balance over the short distance. Then she lunged. Her right hand lashing out and down with a shard of bone in a motion which would have gutted her target from shoulder to hip.

It never landed, if she’d been in a better state the soubrette likely would have been far faster, but she was angry and still more than a little dazed. Evading the strike would have been child’s play yet Zephyr went one step further, seizing the brunettes wrist with one hand he pivoted, pulling her forward and further off balance.

The moment her momentum carried her passed her passed him Zephyr shifted his grip and pulled again, forcing the girls arm across her body as he all but dragged her towards him. The movement caused Duskmoor to all but trip over her own feet as she spun, a second spike of bone appearing in her left hand as she tried another ill-advised strike, only for it to be caught in the elementals grip as the blow went wide and the two collided with each other.

For a moment they simply stood still, the brunettes blood stained shirt quickly soaking the elementals own attire as they stood front to front with the gamines arms held in an awkward X with each hand lightly pinned to the opposite hip.

Then the moment passed and Zephyr sighed, his insides feeling hollow and his grip failing almost as soon as his partner gathered her wits and began to struggle.

“Pathetic.” The disdain was evident in his tone as he looked down at the gamines furious features. “I shouldn’t even be able to stand this close, let along hold you down. How di-“

A sudden series of coughs wracked the mercenary’s body. His shoulders slumped as a slow burning pain in his chest began to penetrate the haze of his medication. He reeled briefly and released Duskmoor before taking a step back, lifting a hand to his chest and glancing down at it even though he knew what he’d find there.

A spike of bone protruded from his ribcage, one far too large for comfort and turning crimson at a rate which was far from healthy. Before he could even try to remove the weapon his legs buckled and he fell.

When Duskmoor finally managed to grasp the crux of his words the resulting flush of colour which spread across her cheeks proved to be both entertaining and somewhat appealing. In all the months he’d known the girl a mixture of embarrassment and shock were one of the few tried and true ways he’d found to render the brunette speechless and remove her nearly perpetual scowl.

It truly was quite a sight to see; still soaked to the bone the girl’s crimson features became increasingly flustered, her hazel eyes gradually widening as she stared back at him with an abashed disbelief even as her lips open soundlessly and refused to form words. Even the gamines posture fell prey as her stance lost its defiant edge, arms dropping mutely to her sides as she leaned back with a motion which nearly unbalanced her and caused the drenched material of her white shirt to tighten its already revealing embrace of the brunettes voluptuous figure.

She was at an utter loss and as he appreciated the view before him, the elemental couldn’t deny a certain satisfaction at having brought it about with nothing but a few well-chosen words.

Unfortunately however Duskmoor did eventually marshal her wits, if not her composure, and the soubrette swiftly replaced embarrassment with anger and began muttering a rather limited selection of curses as she hunched her shoulders and willed a band of bone over her breasts to try and regain what little modesty she could.

Surprisingly, although the girl muttered, cursed and gave all the other signs of one about to throw an impotent tantrum, the brunette actually did as she was told and proceeded to bind her two latest victims to the tarmac side by side with what were essentially nooses of bone not dissimilar to croquet hoops along with some form of internal stitching which fasted the wrists across the ribcage in an almost vampire like gesture.

The elemental was just beginning to wonder where in the world Duskmoor had managed to find a grain of self-control and how far she could stretch it when the screaming began and the soubrette turned back to him with an impudent glare and rested a bare foot on one of the ivory hoops just as the second man began to stir.

“Duskmoor…”

Zephyr’s tone carried a clear warning even as he narrowed his azure eyes at the gamine and fought to keep the rest of his features impassive. The soubrette intent was too apparent, and before he’d finished uttering her name the elemental knew the girl wouldn’t back down; she was simply drawing out the moment to sooth her ego and prove she could do whatever she wanted even though the brunette had to realize she’d be giving him a perfect excuse to retaliate.

That being said he could have stopped her; it would have been child’s play to unbalance her as she was and force her to remove her foot, cutting off yet another puerile outburst as he’d done far too often.

He did nothing.

Bone sliced through flesh with a sickening squelch and blood flowed across the ground in small torrents as the decapitated head of the luckier thug rolled out of view.

“Whoo-.”[/color]

She never heard herself finish. Air collapsed around her ears in a sudden violent burst, stunning her and destroying her balance just as though someone had clapped both her ears. A second blast of wind swept her legs from under her before she’d even truly begun to fall, leaving her parallel to the ground just long enough for the third blow which followed almost immediately, striking her stomach and crashing her into the tarmac back first and causing her head to follow in an almost whiplash motion.

The entire thing took roughly three seconds and when, after a further ten Duskmoor failed to do more than wheeze, Zephyr turned his attention to the thug who was his last remaining lead. The man was pale and shaking but had managed to stop screaming during the last few moments, though whether that was from control or mere lack of breath was uncertain.

Crouching down by the crouching victim the elemental treated the incompetent killer to a deathly serious stare. “We are going to chat, you and I, he spoke with a slow, deliberate cadence. “and if you’re very, very lucky you’ll tell me what I want know before my companion wakes up and repeats her performance.”

His right reached back into the shadows of the road and then returned holding the other mans severed, and still dripping, head. “She is quite the queen of hearts.”


---
((OOC: As always, do let me know if any edits are required.))

With adrenaline fueled panic still coursing through his system Zephyr gaze shot from side to side as he took in the wrecked room before him. Even with his last second precautions he’d been going far too fast for a safe landing, and though he’d manage to stop, all the excess momentum had had to go somewhere. In this case, it had knocked aside furniture and scattered the few shards of window glass still left in their frames.

None of that mattered though because as his azure eyes frantically swept over the ruined room a second time they only confirmed what he already knew, and what a part of him feared.

The room was empty.

She wasn’t here. Why wasn’t she here? She had to be here, he’d felt the blast. Why wasn’t she saying anything? She must have heard him. What the hell-

‘No.’ He clamped down on the torrent of thoughts and forced himself to breath even as his heart raced and both his hands curled into fists. He was not going to panic. He was not. She was here somewhere. He just needed to find her. He was going to find her.

Taking another deep breath the elemental closed his eyes and swept his senses through the air as he began to scan the entire manor.

--

Raising a hand to the pinch the bridge of his nose Alistair simply sighed as he heard the young blonde’s response, fighting down the urge to rap his knuckles against the side of her head as he reminded himself that, despite her appearance, the child before him was not his daughter. Sarah never would have tried to cozen him in such a crude manner. This girl didn’t even have the sense to try and look confused, instead gazing up at him with wide ashen eyes which were practically lit with guilt.

Again reminding himself that it wasn’t polite to discipline children who weren’t your own, and that it would likely win him no favours with Maya, Alistair slowly lowered his arm and stared down at the blonde gamine with a less than amused expressed designed to convey precisely how much he did not have for the girl’s puerile attempt at avoidance.

“Might I suggest,”[/color] He spoke in cool, clipped tones. “that you tell him something else? An apology perhaps? Preferably before he does something even more fatuous.”[/color]

After a moment, when the girl had continued to just gape at him, Alistairs impatience got the better of him and the man delivered a brief, but noticeable blow, to the ingénues forehead with the 2nd knuckles of his index and middle finger. “Now. Young lady.”[/color]

He was not going to take the blame for these childish antics, but he would put a stop to them if he had to.

The explosion was difficult to miss. Even with Duskmoores attempted containment the detonation had seemed to shake the entire building and the resulting chaotic blast of air had been an almost painful beacon to Zephyr’s senses. Air with that much energy was practically solid and it had rammed into the elementals unguarded thoughts with enough force to all but etch the scene into his mind.

It was an unpleasant, but largely annoying experience, akin to having someone shine a high powered torch into your eyes before then playing it over a dark room. In the less than a second Zephyr felt, and practically saw, the explosion as it took place. It was a surging torrent which tore apart everything it touched yet spent most of its power against Duskmoors shell so that, when the bone shattered, there was barely enough force to scatter the remaining mixture of iron nails and liquefied pizza across the motel room with the soubrette catching most of the latter.

Although everything had been over in a handful of moments it had still been jarring enough to knock the elemental off balance and caused him to strike the baths steel faucet as he fell, sending pain lancing through his back and rapidly turning what had merely been annoyance into outright anger just as the sound of squealing tires cut through the rain filled night.

Ignoring the residual ringing in his ears from the explosion Zephyr focused on the new noise and was able to quickly make out a sedan pulling away from the motel onto the otherwise desolate street. The elemental waited just long enough for the car to gather a good amount of speed before he slammed a fist into the tiled wall of the shower and wrenched the air out of the sedans front two tires causing the car to swerve wildly before it veered off the flooded road and collide into the side of a concrete ramp leading onto the interstate with an audible crash perhaps only two hundred yards from the motel.

Smirking despite the pain, Zephyr carefully pulled himself to his feet and stepped out of the shower, ignoring the negligible pulsing in the back of his skull as he inspected the growing bruise on his back through a mirror. What he’d done had been rather crude and inefficient, but it had been effective, not to mention satisfying.

Wincing as he tried to twist his back the hessians eyes narrowed for a moment in consideration as he sought out the air surrounding the wrecked sedan. It took a few seconds of concentrating but he was able to make out both a driver and passenger, neither of which were moving but both of whom were breathing.

He had some time.

Turning his attention back to his rather colourful bruise the elemental drew a deep breath and watched as the skin slowly grew pale and then began to fade...
--

A number of minutes later Zephyr stalked out of the motel clad in jeans and a grey button up. He’d paused only briefly to give Duskmoor a quick glance as he’d swept on his coat, seeing that she was fine, if something of a mess before then taking in the rest of the room. They wouldn’t be able to stay here for the night, hopefully though that wouldn’t matter.

“This is why we tip the help Duskmoor, I’ll go make sure our pizza boy gets his due. Why don’t you clean up?”