Pariah #1: 'New Arrival'

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Sargeant
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Hey there... the fiction on here, and places like here, has long been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine and since I'm trying my hand at developing a modest set of writing skills, I thought I might try and contribute a little something something. I'm sure that I will have fun trying to format this (I'm already thrown off by my inability to indent) and there might be a criminal lack of proof-reading, so I fear it will be littered with errors... but hey, nothing ventured, nothing learned, right?

All feedback is welcome (encouraged, actually) and I'd love some tips or thoughts if I could format stories better in future. I'm caught in a slight dilemma about whether stories like these are best told in 1st or 3rd person (I even briefly toyed with 2nd person) and I would love your thoughts on that. In this case I took the coward's way and included a bit of both.

If anyone wishes to contact me directly to leave feedback, make a request, ask or answer a question then you can reach me here: [email protected]

Fair warning: Will probably include some hard sexual content at the deeper end of heroine peril. On the other hand if you're just interested in that type of stuff, you may want to skip through a lot of this as there will be plenty of exposition along the way. Also, my ambition plainly got the better of me and this wasn't the simple doodle that it was meant to be.

I'm kicking this off with a proper origin backstory to introduce (establish) the world and character, so skip the WHOLE first section if you just want to get to the heroine, heroining about.

Anyways, hope you enjoy!

Edit: I'm just going to reiterate. The first part of this is PURELY backstory to build up the world. Skip to the second part if you want to roll on to the actual story/action.

Edit 2: If you just want to fly right to the real peril (I confess I sometimes do that) then skip riiiight the way down to Part Four.

Pariah: New Arrival

Part One: The Pariah of Azure

Azure City

There are worse places, to be sure. There are ravaged warzones, cities built solely on corruption, and whole countries that have known nothing but abject misery and hell - I have seen these places. To compare Azure City to them would be... unjust. No, Azure is something else, something altogether more elusive to pin down.

Where there are places that are wholly defined by the worst aspects of this world, Azure defines itself on the end of both spectrums. The very best mixed in with the very worst, like a set of scales barely managing to keep balance between two unimaginable counter weights - always threatening to lurch violently to one extreme or the other. A city at odds with itself, ever teetering on the edge as its polar identities clash.

Perhaps it is the disparity between these extremes that makes Azure seem so distasteful. Here there is true virtue and humility, and it stands in stark contrast to the avarice and filth that it rubs shoulders with. Many a journalist (and politician) enjoy describing this as a city of black and white, with clearly defined borders marking out where stands the purely good, and where lie the objectively evil.

The reality, though, is that the two inevitably mix, leaving a city of grey that is trapped in twilight and prevented from reaching the soaring heights of its potential. The worst people of this world mingle their lives with the best of us.

And there is suffering.

The advent of the meta human which started perhaps thirty years ago has only exacerbated the situation. The cause is uncertain and still a topic of great debate between academics. The main arguments sway between an irregular solar flare, a natural step along human evolution, alien intervention, or a combination of one or both. Whatever the cause, the effect was undisputable. A very small minority of people across the globe began exhibiting powers and ability beyond the ken of conventional science. What made it that much harder to understand was the lack of any universality to it. A girl in Peru has the ability to morph her body into the shape of any other human, while a boy in France can control the flow of electricity, while in China an elderly woman suddenly has the ability to possess people - there was no order to it, no sense.

The meta human was understandably feared and coveted in equal measure. The need to understand how it was possible, to understand how they do the things that they do caused many to be persecuted in the early years. Whether by fear or curiosity, or likely both, many metas were severely mistreated; unethically experimented on, imprisoned indefinitely, or simply executed. Any chance at reasonably integrating them into society was woefully squandered.

There were conflicts. Some were people pushed too far, finally lashing out and fighting back. Others were bad men and women who used their new found power as license to circumvent the law and further their own ends. Others still were simple accidents by those who were ill-equipped to manage their powers. These events widened the schism and hardened attitudes on both sides. Those metas that didn't go underground were usually hunted by their own governments.

Despite it all, I have some sympathy for the governments and corporations that stepped in. How do you regulate the man that can turn invisible at will? He can break your laws and do so without your pre-established measures from preventing him. Do you simply hope he will obey the law by sheer power of good will? What happens if he does break the law, what happens if he turns to terrorism? There could be no single failsafe because each meta was different and would need different precautions specially suited to them in order to contain them. It was a problem that left no easy solution, I acknowledge that. If you pressed me on the topic, I might even admit that I don't know what should have been done. I might admit that.

Whatever the case, what was done was all wrong. It led to the vast majority of modern day metas being exiled figures living beyond the scope of civil justice. Many turned to crime. Many turned to things even worse than crime. The situation spiralled, perpetuated, and the world is now a much more dangerous place for it.

Specifically Azure City.

Perhaps it was the allure of the big city, the promise of a bright new start at the pinnacle of the western world. More likely it was the pre-established criminal cartels that riddled the city like a pox. Maybe you came to hide, maybe you came to work for a criminal syndicate, maybe you came to find others like you - but you came to Azure City. Over the years Azure City seems to have called out to the meta world and it has become something of a focus point for the exiles.

The conflict for Azure's soul seems a fitting metaphor for the conflict within meta society concerning what their place in the world is. Maybe that's why they like Azure.

I think that is why I came. My own uncertainty over my place in the world. What better place could there be to decide that than Azure City, where the good meets the bad? Perhaps I just came to hurt people... or to protect people - I have certainly done a fair amount of both since I arrived here.

My name is Evelyn Lawson, I was born twenty-five years ago to unassuming parents in a nice little town out in the backend of nowhere. My early life was quaint. It was nice. I developed my meta abilities around the age of three, when I blew out the kitchen wall rather than my birthday candles. It wasn't until many years later that someone gave a name for what I do.

Telekinesis.

Its a fancy word simply meaning that I can move objects with my mind, given enough focus. Without clear focus I can't much do anything more than the average human being. But with it? I can connect with a point at the centre of my attention and create force.

During those early years I did all that I could to keep my powers hidden. My parents knew what awaited me if the truth ever came out, and they did their best to teach me to control it to the point that it wouldn't spring up when it wasn't welcome. Of course it would pop up now and again, but for the most part we coped.

Then one day, nearing my sixteenth, a group of drifters came to our town. Each one of them was a meta. They were kids, really, none older than twenty-one. They were crazed; drunk on power, and filled with fear and anger from the recent persecution that they had suffered.

They had excuses. Of course they did.

They ran amuck, doing as they pleased. Exerting their will on people that they now considered beneath them. People suffered. My home town, the place of my serene childhood, was changed into a nightmare. When real authorities turned up to challenge them, the resulting conflict pulverised what was left of the town that hadn't already fallen to the hedonistic ravages of the drifters. When the smoke cleared, the survivors of the drifters had scattered and fled, and one of the most notorious chapters in early meta history had been finished.

The siege of Everwood Springs.

It took everything from me. My family, my friends, my home, the future woman I might have become. The things I had seen in that time tormented me together with my utter helplessness to prevent it, to protect myself or the ones I cared for. I was left with a lot of anger. Anger at the animals who had destroyed my life, anger at the government that could not protect us, anger at society for allowing this chain of events to take place, and most of all I was angry at myself. I was consumed by rage - I would have drowned in it.

I took to a life on the road, foolishly trying to find the remains of the gang in order to enact some kind of vengeance. I didn't care about hiding my power, I only cared about using it to hurt the people that had wronged me. In that time my misguided anger caused me to do a number of things that I'm not proud of, and I would certainly have spiralled down that path had someone not stopped me.

My saviour was an unlikely one. I had finally tracked one of the gang down to a drug-running biker cartel operating out of an abandoned rest stop in southern Texas. My plan then was to simply confront them and do as much harm as I could until I was unable to do more - be that because they killed me, or because I killed them. When I arrived, they had all already been beaten senseless and lay sprawled on the floor at the feet of the greatest man that I have ever known.

His name was Shingen Kamura, and he had been a bounty hunter of sorts. He wasn't a meta, but he was terrifyingly skilled and equipped. He had once been a powerful enforcer for a Japanese criminal association by the name of 'five shadows,' before events in his life had given him a radical new perspective. He used his extensive training and resources from the five shadows to effectively destroy them from within. After that he had become a sort of vigilante, traveling the world with many passports and diffusing situations which local authorities might be struggling with. This usually meant hunting down especially dangerous people and handing them over to an appropriate jailer. He wasn't after money or respect; he simply wished to make the world a safer place. Looking at it like that, I feel he was a superhero before there were superheroes.

He had tracked this lot down purely because of the danger they posed, and had incapacitated them with non lethal force in order to cart them off to the local authorities. Back then I could not understand that kind of altruism. I wanted these men - one of them in particular - dead and I would have done anything to do it. Kamura saw me for the wounded animal that I was, and I think he took pity on me... or perhaps he wished to protect the world from the person I was becoming, I'm not sure. He didn't try to talk me down, he knew that I wouldn't hear reason, so he simply knocked me unconscious.

When I awoke some time later, I was bound and blindfolded in a warm room. Kamura spoke to me then, measuring and assessing my character while I could not force him to fight me - when I had no choice but to speak or, at the very least, listen. We conversed like that for many hours. They were the most important hours of my life. It had been the first time I had really spoken to someone since Everwood, and it was... emotional. He didn't try to smother me in kindness or platitudes of sympathy; he simply listened and responded with the cold truth.

The cold truth was that I was broken, and that I was set on a path that would see me become just like the people I was hunting.

He gave me a choice. I could choose to go on stumbling along the path of hate and regret like I was, or I could choose to try and fix myself - to make something of myself. Of course, he also made it clear that he would hand me in to the tender mercies of the US government as a confirmed meta if I chose not to change - which helped along my decision a little bit.

Choosing to change involved staying under the guardianship of Kamura and thus becoming the man's understudy. At the time it felt like I was a prisoner and I rebelled against him wherever possible. I must have been an absolute nightmare for him - but he managed it well.

The first few years with him were tumultuous and a very steep learning curve for me. He equipped me with a new identity and I travelled the world with him, learning from him and watching how he operated. He and I clashed many times, perhaps like a teenage girl might clash with her parents, but increasingly we developed an understanding. I, in particular, started to mature and gain some mastery over my past. Soon he was addressing my meta ability and teaching me to hone it as best he could, and not long after that he started allowing me to assist him on his various marks.

Some might think it cruel to bring a young woman into his world. That perhaps he should have left me; that taking me under his wing was a selfish act of a lonely man. His world was a violent one, with frightening people lurking behind each new target, I will definitely grant that. Equally, while I was being educated as any teenager should be, I was being vigorously trained in the arts of violence. These are not things for your average person, but they were most definitely what I needed. Violence had already forced itself upon my life and I had been broken long before I stood before Kamura. Knowing he could not reverse time, he instead sought to make the best of me as I was and guide me to be a force for good - for my own sake even more than the sake of others.

By the time I was twenty-three I was a different creature altogether than the helpless girl staring out over her devastated home in Everwood Springs. I was an apex hunter; a force not to be trifled with. I also liked my life. I liked the poetry that I was bringing a kind of justice to people not dissimilar from the pack that killed my family. Kamura and I lived in balance with each other and we were a great team when it came to doing what we did. I think perhaps I was content... maybe even happy.

Of course, nothing in this life lasts forever.

It all came to an end one fateful night in Hong Kong. A terrorist cell by the name of 'Black Hydra' had amassed a small army of metas and professional thugs, and was tightening its grip around the city - inveigling itself into everything, gradually corrupting the whole city - like a giant plague-ridden snake crushing its prey. Kamura and I sought to lay a deathblow on the organisation, taking them out from the top down. This meant infiltrating the Tsen Yun building near the centre of the financial district, from where the Hydra was based. The plan had been a good one, mainly hinging on taking out the cell's leaders and leaving them unable to operate as they had before - making them easy pickings thereafter. The odds were pretty steep but we were pretty sure of ourselves.

Perhaps we had gotten too confident.

We had not counted on the remnants of the five shadows also being involved - expressly to hunt down Kamura for his past betrayal. It was the most trying night of my life and I shall never forget those frantic hours in the Tsen Yun building, fighting tooth and claw with some of this world's real monsters. If I ever had any qualms about facing down my own death, then I well and truly dealt with them that night. When the sun rose the next day, the Hydra had been slain and the phantoms of the five shadows had been exorcised - but Shingen Kamura was dead. We had apprehended the whole lot of them, delivering a salvation of sorts to the region, but the cost had been high.

After I had seen to Kamura's burial, I was left with the pressing question of what to do with my life without his guidance. I had always followed his lead and now I was in a world without him; back with bitter regret and a bubbling anger.

And so Azure City called to me.

Kamura had long been planning to head to Azure City; it was fast becoming a hotspot for the kind of activity that attracted an eye like his. The growing meta community, the elaborate organised crime, the endemic corruption, and the alarming density of unadulterated psychopaths; it was a natural target. Apparently he wasn't the only one to consider it so. What newsfeed we saw often reported clashes within the city involving vigilantes. Prominently, one of the first people to ever be dubbed 'superhero,' was a heroine by the name of Lady Avalon who seemed to be a powerful meta taking to the streets in a costume in order to protect the people. Not long after her, a more secretive, seemingly non-meta heroine appeared by the name of Night Spectre, and the two separate heroines seemed to maintain a kind of order in the city. It is probably why Kamura kept holding off our trip - perhaps he thought the city was guarded enough.

However as I sat listening to worsening reports of the state of Azure City, the prospect of heading back to the states and commencing the work that Kamura had long planned to do gave me a sense of direction. It just felt right. So I took what resources that Kamura had left me, and made my move back home to America.

I brought back my true identity of Evelyn Lawson and made sure to craft a life for myself such that I wouldn't need to be a non-existent shadow all the time. My finances from Kamura left me quite secure but even so I started a modest career for myself as a free lance artist - perhaps the last real talent of my life before all the violence came - and I made for Azure. I came for many things. Kamura's legacy, to find some kind of home, to try to protect people, to take out my anger on people deserving of the treatment... But I think most of all, I came simply to try and find my way - to find out what kind of person I am with only myself to decide right from wrong.

I eschewed hiding in the shadows as Kamura had done, and instead followed in the footsteps of the City's current guardians. I would not hide... or at least I would claim ownership of my own actions. The gear I had used from my old life hunting marks more than sufficed for a 'heroine' costume, all I needed to do was go bolder than Kamura liked to do. To announce myself. The way I see it, heroes mean something to society as symbols. Be that a symbol of hope to those who are oppressed, or a symbol of terror to those who would abuse others. With Azure City's conflicted identity, these symbols matter a great deal. So be a bright, vivid, undeniable symbol. Be a beacon that washes out all the darkness and leaves only light.

So that is what I did. I went large. I took to the night and unleashed all of my training and powers on those who prey on the weak. I have rules, of course, which have been instilled in me by Kamura. I do not kill, not ever. Nor can I allow an innocent to be harmed if I can avoid it. Beyond that, however, I don't mind going further than the current heroines of this city do. Putting a mob enforcer away for a year or so on circumstantial evidence for beating up a young lady is difficult; putting him in hospital for months is remarkably easy. As such, I have certainly made my mark in a short space of time. Opinion has been divided on whether or not I am a good thing in this city, and I am wanted by ACPD on charges of vigilantism (which are hardly unfair) as well a whole host of transgressions. Necessary transgressions for a symbol to strike fear. My altar ego status as a meta is hardly a secret either, which is just another reason why I am sought after by both sides of the law.

The Azure Herald did me the honour of giving a name to my altar ego, as it had done before with both Lady Avalon and Night Spectre. I had been quite nervous that they would call me something unbearable like 'Star Dove,' so it had come as a relief to me when they instead gave me a practical name that summed up my position in this city.

Pariah.

With that super heroine alias, I had truly arrived. The Pariah of Azure City. I'm only just into my second month but already I feel a sense of something worthwhile in this life that I am carving out. I look forward to meeting the other guardians of this city in time, though I fear we may not see eye to eye, and even more so I look forward to getting to grips with the very worst cretins of Azure.

Though they be many, I am undaunted. I am Pariah.

Tonight, I come for people traffickers - slavers by any other name. Tonight I ease the scales of Azure City ever so slightly back to the light.

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Stay tuned for more... as I valiantly walk my dog.
Last edited by Void 9 years ago, edited 15 times in total.
Lost in the night, and there is no morning.
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Sargeant
Sargeant
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Joined: 10 years ago

Onwards, to part two! I got carried away with backstory but now that I've got that set up... the world is ripe for exploring. So explore it we shall.
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Part Two: Alley Snakes


Night was setting in and a familiar chill was gently plying its way through the streets of Azure. Stuttering street lamps had come to life along with a plethora of contrasting neon lights from various establishments and advertisements. Above it all, the lights of the city's vast skyline lit the sky and seemed to surround the city in a halo of light. It was often joked that Azure seemed a brighter place at night than it ever was during the day. Perhaps it was a sad reflection on the city that this was often true.

In either instance, you never had to look long to find darkness.

In the Gallowgate district not far from Ravenport, a great many of the street lights did not work and so it was cast in half-light from the surrounding city. This was a place that expected darkness, a place where light was seemingly tolerated but never welcome. In a city with numerous forlorn areas where the ACPD feared to pass, none were as much a dump as the Gallowgate. The only people who desired to stay in a place such as this were the ones who were drawn to darkness and misery - the rest simply didn't have the option to leave.

Markus Crowley was born here, he had lived all twenty-three years of his life here, and it seemed that imminently he would die here.

In a lifetime of dodgy deals and pushing his luck, he had finally overreached. It had seemed like a fantastic idea at the time: The eastside blue snakes were the most drug-addled nut jobs a guy could find - how are they going to tell the difference between premium moon dust and, say, sugar mixed with flecks of pepper? The thing was, they actually bought it at first and handed him over his money - a tidy sum of two-hundred dollars. Once they figured it out, it was more than his duplicity that enraged them - they had been humiliated. Further to that you'd have to admit that it called into question the many other times that they had dealt with him. What if those shipments of amber bliss hadn't been purely legit?

So they had come for him.

And he had been stupid or bold enough to stay in the 'gate. They came for him just outside his 'workshop,' and he had led them on a merry chase for as long as he could manage, but they finally cornered him in an alley between two abandoned warehouses.

Everything was 'abandoned' in Gallowgate.

He sank to his knees, as much to catch his breath as in resignation, realising that he was surrounded. There were seven of them in total - nearly half of the gang, if he recalled - and they bore down on him from both sides of the alley. They were all hard men, conditioned by the unforgiving life in the 'gate - much as he had been - and they had turned to violence as a way of life. Pleasure, profession, just to pass the time - it didn't matter - they were violent people. They were comically similar to each other in appearance: all dressed in similar torn garbs, all had shaved heads, and all had inked various tattoos of blue snakes over their bodies. Their rampant drug use was plainly visible in their eyes.

'You worm!' hissed the leader of the group, Kruger Matlock, or 'Venom' to his pals. He was thicker set than the rest and just about a head taller. 'How fucking stupid do you think we are?'

Crowley tried to control his breathing, tried to keep his mind off of wandering why they hadn't simply gunned him down as he ran, tried not to think about the story of what they did to that guy from the 21st street hawks. He was scared of death, and pain, and certainly of a painful death, but he'd be damned if he would show them that.

'Heh... hey, Kruges, are you sure you want me to answer that? I mean, you did buy it. This is a seller's market, you know? There's no refunds to delinquent buyers who don't know up from down.' He tried to infuse it with as much sass as he could. Maybe if they were angry enough he might get an opening to push his way out.

The big ganger shivered with anger, 'You are such a derelict, Crowly. You haven't even got the sense to beg for your worthless life, have you?' A smile cracked across the man's beefy face, 'But don't you worry there, Crow, we're gonna be your pals and remind you how to beg. You're gonna sing for me, and we're gonna keep makin' ya sing until you can't sing no more. Then I'm gonna...'

Crowley suddenly dived down the alley away from Kruger and towards the three snakes at the other end. Startled by his sudden move, he managed to push the first snake over and get around the second. The third snake wrapped his arms around Crowley's waist and managed to hold on to him long enough for the other two to reach him.

'No!' Crowley yelled as he thrashed about and tried to kick them off. He was a reasonably tough guy. He could probably have taken one of the snakes in a fight if he had to, but this was too much. He got off some good hits but it was only staving off the inevitable. Blows rained down on him until two of them managed to grab his arms and pin them behind his back, forcing him to his knees. He tried to stand and got a fierce kick to the stomach for his trouble. The rest of the pack stalked up the alley towards him until they all stood right around him.

'Nice try, Crow, but I think we're about done with foreplay, what do you think?' Kruger leaned down until their faces were level, glaring at him with his baleful, bloodshot eyes. He reached behind him and lifted out a rusty machete before tracing the edge of it along Crowley's jaw.

Crowley returned the look wearily, still trying not to show his panic. He felt blood leaking into his mouth, the taste acrid on his tongue, and prepared to spit it out over Kruger's face. A bad idea in the long term, but he'd feel better for it in the short.

Crowley - clearly - wasn't the long term kind of guy.

Before he could muster the energy to commit his last stupid gesture, he was interrupted by the sound of a soft thud from the middle of the alley behind Kruger's back.

Kruger heard it too and his eyes twitched in surprise before he straightened up and span to follow the noise. The silhouette of a figure was standing motionless a few metres away, watching them. As if they had been there the whole time.

As details of the figure resolved out of the gloom, Crowley could see it was a woman. She stood at about 5'7, her frame athletic and powerfully built. She wore a tight-fitting bodysuit that clung to her sleek figure like a second skin. The suit looked liquid smooth and gave off a very faint sheen like it was a kind of leather, though he wasn't sure of its material. It was predominantly black, though it had areas of jade green where segments of the suit seemed to have a thicker weave. These spots looked to be points with greater rigidity as well as bulk, suggesting there might have been form-fitting panels of armour built into it. This gave the decorative effect of veins of dark green trimming her body through the black of the suit. The suit had a subtle zip up the front which extended from her neck all the way down to just above her crotch, which was currently zipped up to just above her shapely C-cup breasts. Though barely visible, Crowley could make out the start of some kind of skin-tight black vest top covering her beneath the bodysuit. She wore a dark metal belt clasped about her waist which had subtle pockets dotted around it, though Crowley couldn't see what they contained. Around her shoulders was wrapped a long black cloak of exceptionally thin material. It fluttered faintly in the wind behind her, revealing the inner lining of the cloak to be a similar jade to the green trimming her suit. The hood of the cloak was pulled up over her head, obscuring her face somewhat, though not completely hiding it. She had a mask of similar material to her suit stuck across her pale blue eyes, further hiding her face from identification. Feathery light blonde hair framed her face and seemed to reach just above her shoulders.

They all gawked at the newcomer. She was quite a sight. Nearly enough to make Crowley forget about his dire situation. Very nearly, indeed.

Her pale blue eyes stared back at them from under her hood, measuring them.

Kruger was the first of them to rally. He leered at her and grinned, 'Hello there, birdy. You're a little bit strange, aren't you? I like strange.' Crowley could see Kruger weighing the situation up in his head - if he wanted to continue making sport of Crowley, or move on to the newcomer. 'I'm kind of in the middle of a thing here, darlin, but you're welcome to watch if that's your thing.'

One of the snakes by Kruger's side was far less cocksure, 'Uh, Venom, I... I think that might be the chick from the papers - the Pariah.'

Kruger craned his head and gave the other man a sideways look, 'Do I look like I read the fucking paper?'

Her eyes settled on Crowley's. The hint of a smile touched her lips before she spoke, her voice calm and cool, 'Markus Crowley. Crow. I have a proposition for you... It involves you leaving this alley alive and then being something of an advisor for me. A crow in my ear. Sound good?'

As grunts of confusion spread about the pack of snakes, time seemed to slow for Crowley. The remnants of his conscience flickered and reminded him it would be wrong for this woman to die for him - especially the way that these people dealt death. It reminded him that it would be wrong for him to use her pain and death as a means to save his own skin. He swatted the consideration away; he was all at sea with no life line but her. He was going to grab it.

He tried to speak but his voice faltered and he rasped into a cough before trying again, 'Yeah... th-that sounds pretty goo...good to me.'

Her gaze swept up to Kruger, 'I'm not really here for you,' she gestured her head behind her, 'Leave him and go. Do it now.'

Kruger laughed, 'You're a funny bitch, I like you,' his smile dropped and his face pulled into a snarl, 'But I've had enough of this now. Fang, keep her quiet while we see to Crow here - leave me a piece of her though.'

One of the snakes stepped forward - evidently Fang. He grinned with anticipation as his eyes crawled up and down the lissom figure of the woman. He made to grab her, and suddenly she was moving. She moved with absolute surety and it looked almost like her and the ganger were in completely different time streams. She stepped aside from his hand and grabbed it with her own, violently yanking him forwards to follow his momentum. She span around behind him, her cloak billowing out around her, and her leg snapped out, kicking him high on the back and launching his fall towards the wall. He impacted headfirst and dropped like a stone to the floor. As he sank, she already had her back to him and was facing the snakes.

'You had your chance,' she whispered.

'Get her!' Kruger bellowed, rapidly revaluating the threat she posed.

Crowley was callously discarded as the gangers ran in. A heavy blow to the back of his head sent him to the ground and on the verge of unconsciousness. He sat on his feet in a heap and watched, slack jawed, as the action commenced.

The first ganger to reach her, a lean piece of malice named Coil, faired little better than Fang had. He ducked in close to her and threw a punch aimed at her face, which she swung away from before pin wheeling around to connect her foot with his jaw. His head snapped down from the kick and in the moment that he was stunned she launched a barrage of her own shots. Quick, rapid jabs and kicks that allowed no time to recover.

As more reached her, she stopped hitting Coil and immediately tangoed with the newly arrived snakes. Coil stood for a moment after she stopped before slumping to the ground in a heap. She flowed around the snakes as they tried to use their numbers against her, rapidly moving from one snake to the next, always moving. Her speed and technique kept her one step ahead of them as they tried to close her down. Though she couldn't focus on one snake long enough to put him down, every moment she was laying a new smack down on one of them and they were showing the wear for it.

As two more snakes slumped to the ground Kruger charged in at her, swinging his machete. She darted back and fired a sharp jab at his wrist, forcing him to release his grip on the knife. As the knife fell, she kicked the handle and sent it spiralling away down the alley. He snarled in open frustration and kept coming at her. Every punch he threw connected only with air and was met with a rapid succession of counter attacks. But Kruger was a big man and she was a lithe woman, her attacks stung and bruised him but he kept tanking the hits.

Taking advantage of their leader's onslaught, the remaining two snakes circled around her and attacked together. Without room to dodge out of the attacks, her speed and technique was less effective and Kruger finally connected a partial blow, doubling her over at the stomach. Seeing their chance to stall her movement altogether, the two gangers at her back lunged down and seized her by the arms. Suddenly she was anchored to the spot, their strength enough to keep her from pulling away.

'Yeah!' Kruger exhaled through pants, 'That's more like it.' He made a fist and hit her again in the stomach, this time making a full impact with all his force.

'Ooof,' she heaved as she hunched in on herself, showing vulnerability for the first time.

It didn't last long.

As he drew back to hit her again, she lifted her feet off the floor so that the gangers were now supporting her weight, and launched a sideways kick at the knee of the ganger to her right. The man's knee buckled and he started to fall, no longer supporting her weight and leaving the other man holding her off-balanced. She brought her weight down hard as she fell, breaking free of the last ganger's grip and falling to the floor. She immediately swept her feet around her and tripped him, sending him flying into the incoming punch from Kruger.

Kruger's fist connected squarely with his man's face and knocked him out for the count. 'Argh!' he roared as he tried to close her down again. She quickly darted back once more but not before he grabbed a handful of her cloak, preventing her from moving any further away. 'I got you now, bitch! You're not so flash if you can't get away, are you?'

She pulled back against him but his grip was solid, and he started heaving the cloth in. In one deft move, her hand went up and undid a clasp around her neck, and suddenly the cloak came free of her. All of Kruger's force on the cloak was suddenly unmatched and it easily came with his pull, firing over him and enshrouding his vision. Groaning in annoyance, Kruger swept the cloak aside only to find the woman spinning in the air before him, her flying kick easily connecting with his unguarded face. The hit knocked him from his feet and sent him a few paces backwards, landing with a loud thump.

The woman landed in a crouch and slowly drew herself back to her feet, breathing hard. Free of her cloak, her blonde hair cascaded down her face, blowing lightly in the wind. There was some anger in her eyes now as she looked down at Kruger's supine form.

As she came to finish him off she was interrupted by the sudden return of Fang and Coil, recovered from their earlier beating. The snakes were tough hoods, not just because of the lives they had lived but because of the swirling cocktail of stimulants that filled their veins. Their bodies carried on past the point that the average body would shut down - Fang and Coil gave evidence to that.

Their unexpected recovery, combined with her focus on finishing Kruger, meant they got her somewhat by surprise. As Coil launched in to attack her again, she dived to the side and found herself in the waiting arms of Fang. He was a big man, only marginally slighter than Kruger, and his mass dwarfed that of the woman.

His arms enveloped her and he lifted her into a great bear hug, forcing air from her lungs. 'Ugh,' she wheezed as she pushed against her attacker, the muscles of her body tensing with effort. With her feet lifted from the ground she had lost leverage to move her body and furthermore her arms were trapped within Fang's vice-like grip. Though she was strong, she had no hope to outmuscle the brute.

'Yeah, you got her, Fang!' cheered Coil as he closed in on the two of them and enjoyed the view. The tight body of the heroine undulated as she futilely tried to escape the hard muscle bearing down on her.

'You made me look bad in front of my boys, lady,' Fang rasped into her ear as he squeezed with all his might, 'so I think I'm gonna settle that score.' She coughed and spluttered as she struggled in the big man's grip. Pressed in so tight, he could feel every contour of her body and he savoured the sensation of her toned figure writhing against him. 'Hah. I gotta admit, you were pretty scary back there... But now look at you, you're not strong, you're just a weak girl with a death wish.' He breathed heavily into her ear as he redoubled his efforts to crush her, 'Well guess what, sweetheart? I'm gonna grant your wish!'

Acknowledging that she couldn't break Fang's grip, the woman relaxed her muscles and shifted her focus. 'I...ugh...tried to be nice... but...enough!'

The air rippled around the two of them for a moment followed by a blue glow as the particles in the air were forced to act against conventional physics. Fang barely had any time to take it in before he was hit by an expanding wave of force from the girl. The wave of glowing blue force threw him through the air and he connected heavily with a dumpster before bouncing off and falling to the floor. Rocked by both impacts, Fang tried to struggle to his feet but passed out in the attempt

Freed of the brute, the girl landed back on her feet and turned her gaze upon Coil, her blue eyes seeming to glow slightly with the same eerie light as the wave of force that had just hit Fang.

A moment ago he had been enjoying the sight of his friend squeezing the life out of a little ragdoll, and now that moment felt like so long ago that Coil couldn't remember what it was like.

She was a meta.

The realization struck Coil like a hammer. He took a step backwards away from her, raising an arm in front of him as if he could ward her away, 'Okay! Okay, I'm done! You win, okay? Let me go.' He kept backing away from her, wanting to flee but scared of turning his back.

The glow remained in her eyes as she stared him down, her shoulders rising and falling as she recovered from her tussle with Fang, 'Much, much too late for that.' She gestured her hand towards him, and the air around it shimmered with the light as it had done when she blasted Fang.

Coil felt the air around him shudder, and saw the faint light that revealed the influence of her meta abilities. Before he could protest, he was violently pulled towards her by the very air. He hit the ground hard at her feet and looked up just in time to see her conjuring another wave of force. He raised his hands to protect himself, but it was a plaintive gesture as she brought her fist down, sending a solid bolt of force to his head and knocking his lights out.

With the last of the henchmen finished she turned to the sound of heavy foot falls as a resurgent Kruger tried to charge her. 'You think you can come to my neighbourhood and fuck with me and mine!? No! I don't care if you're a meta! I'm gonna mess you up!' As he screamed at her he launched a flurry of attacks which kept her ducking backwards.

With a grunt of effort, she reached her hands out and enveloped the leader in a cocoon of force, freezing him to the spot. He struggled in the blue telekinetic bubble, making it stretch and contort under the strain. She winced from the effort of will to keep him in place, giving her own frustrated groan before flinging the bubble at the nearest wall, sending Kruger crashing into it. His impact on the wall was immediately followed with her presence in front of him; she doubled him up with a knee to his kidney before twisting one of his arms behind his back and forcing him to his knees.

He tried to rise and she kicked him in the face, dizzying him and keeping him down. He felt the air rippling around the arm she was holding behind his back, and the hairs over his arm stood up as the air became charged with strange motion. The blue glow in the air was brighter than it had been before, emanating out from her hands and around his restrained arm. He was hit with a sinking feeling that something very bad was about to happen.

She lowered her face so that she spoke into the back of his ear, 'I wasn't here for you, miscreant, you weren't even on my radar. You could have walked away from this and we'd probably never meet again. But no, now I'll be keeping my eye out for you. If I catch you being anything less than the ideal citizen, I'll come back for you. All of you. Trust me, you don't want a repeat visit.' She rose back up above him, fierce blue light flashing from her eyes, 'I figure you're the type that forgets easily, so let me help you remember this...'

The force around his arm increased massively and pushed in multiple directions as she focused it. The big ganger screamed as the sound of cracking bone filled the alley, and soon the pain became so much that the man simply passed out.

Releasing her grip, she let him fall to the floor at her feet, and turned to walk back towards Crowley. The blue light gradually dimmed from her eyes until there was nothing there at all when she scooped down to recollect her discarded cloak. In a swift motion she wrapped the cloak about herself and refastened the clasp to hold it in place, yanking the hood back over her head.

The fight had been a rapid affair, with an awful lot happening in a small frame of time. Crowley had watched it all, trying to gather his senses and recover from his treatment at the hands of the snakes. He had reached the point where he felt able to run away, but something compelled him to stay. This woman had come for him, she had saved him, she had been fighting his fight - it felt uncomfortable to leave her. Upon the revelation that she was a meta, and a mean one to boot, Crowley felt good about the decision not to make her track him down again.

She stepped over the fallen snakes and made her way towards him, her cool blue eyes locking with his and that hint of a smile that he saw earlier returned to her face. 'I'm impressed. I thought you'd run.'

He bobbed his head, 'Thought about it.'

She reached out her hand to bring him back to his feet, 'But?'

'But I decided I was too comfortable sat here to bother moving,' he quipped as he took her hand and wearily climbed back to his feet, trying not to gaze at her curvy figure now that she was up close. She gave a soft chuckle and helped him to support himself against a wall. 'I have to admit, I have no idea why you would possibly come for me,' he mused. The thought suddenly alarmed him, 'Am I in trouble?' He gestured around at the unconscious gangers that, moments earlier, were going to torture him to death, 'More trouble, I mean.'

She gave a slight shake of her head, 'No, not more trouble, anyways. Don't get me wrong, Crow; you're a thief, a dealer, a user, probably a murderer and certainly a jaywalker... perhaps in another city you would need to watch out for me, but in this city? You're small fish. I'm not interested in you.'

'I guess that's a good thing,' he allowed, 'But for the record, I'm not a murderer.' She raised a dubious eyebrow at him but he pressed on, 'So what is it that you DO want?'

'I'm glad you ask, Crow. I'm after traffickers. From what I gather they do a bit of everything: drugs, weapons, people....,' her voice trailed off and her manner stiffened, 'Specifically people,' she glanced meaningfully at Crowley.

He paled as he realised who she was talking about, 'You...you're after Underhaven?'

She nodded, 'And you're going to help me, Crow.'

His shoulders sagged as he weighed up his options. Underhaven were not enemies he wanted - they were exactly the opposite. On the other hand he felt like he kind of owed this stranger something in return for saving him. Besides that, he had the creeping sensation that this wasn't really his choice. She could force him to tell her what she wanted. She could probably force him to do anything - and he believed that she would do if he refused her.

'Ugh. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, right?' He watched her carefully for signs of sympathy or wiggle room to negotiate, but saw only iron resolve staring impassively back at him.

He gave an over the top sigh, 'Fuck it. Why not? What do you want from me, ...er, what do I call you?'

She span on her heels and started leading him out of the dark alley and back into the half-light of the street.

'Same as everyone else, you can call me Pariah.'
Last edited by Void 9 years ago, edited 8 times in total.
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It's very well written , owes a lot to X Men in the set up but that's no bad thing, I'm still on first part but keen to read more, I'll pm you some thoughts when I get some!
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Yeah, indeed there ended up being quite a few comparisons to X Men that crept in. I was mainly looking for a nice catch-all excuse to shoehorn in 'superpowers,' without everyone needing their own messy origin story.

On the topic of powers, the field is wide open for different kinds of villains with weird and interesting powers. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has a kind of villain or villain power they'd like to see.

On a further, now quite loosely related note, I'm curious what you guys think about how far the peril ought to go for the heroine. Is it better if she's *very nearly* captured, or if she's fully caught. Then if she is caught, how far do you like the villain to go?

This will probably have two more parts to it. I'll see If I can shoot up part three on Monday.
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Alrighty then, on to part three.


Part Three: Underhaven

Turning to a man like Markus Crowley was a thorny road indeed, and Pariah considered it a necessary, if still treacherous, path to tread in order to understand the parts of Azure that only eyes like his had seen. Much of the criminal underworld of Azure existed well out of the light of the city at large and were largely invisible to those who existed outside their very particular world.

So she made a point of looking for someone who had seen it from within and had a thorough understanding of that world - earned from living in It. They would need knowledge, they would need to be reliable, and they would need to be low profile. Beyond that, it would be good if they had the means to be an on going informant.

Crowley had been her choice. His rap sheet was as long as her legs and his employment history made for colourful reading. He was a low-life who largely flew beneath the notice of both the law and the higher end crooks he had worked with. In his own way, he was a success; he had taken the poor hand life had dealt him and had managed to carve out a decent living. He had formed connections and he had found his way to having a finger in many pies over the years.

A final, crucial, factor played into his selection. There were the embers of a good man somewhere under all that he had done in the name of 'getting by'. He had come close to being somebody once, working his way towards the inner circle of the shadowy group known as Underhaven. He had abandoned it, though. Word on the street was that he thought he could take what they taught him and try and make a go of it on his own, dealing narcotics without being beholden to them. Pariah didn't think that was true. He had always been practical in the past, and he would have known that sticking with Underhaven was by far the more lucrative path. No, she was pretty sure that he walked away because he couldn't stomach the increasingly horrific things that Underhaven did. If that were true, then he still had some integrity stored away somewhere.

He would have been Kamura's choice.

They had snuck their way back to the garage lot where Crowley based his activities - his workshop. It was a ramshackle room filled with all sorts of detritus, the air filled with the stale scent of metallic chemicals. From the looks of it, it had been recently roughed up - most likely by the snakes that they had left bloodied back in the alley.

Crowley had been unfazed by the state of his base and had quickly gotten to work packing it up, lugging out large leather cases and haphazardly dumping armfuls of gear into them. Pariah stood at the entrance watching him pack. It didn't escape her notice that most of his gear was illegal.

He gave her a coy look as he packed away a large case of 9mm bullets, 'So, umm, how is this going to work?'

'The main thing that I want from you is information, Crow. If this works out well, perhaps I might ask you to actively gather specific information, but lets see how we get on.' She spotted his worried look and raised her hands in a placating gesture, 'No one will know that you are informing me. You're invisible, Crow, any info that you give me could just as easily come from hundreds of others. I certainly won't be telling anyone.'

Crowley nodded slowly. He turned his situation around in his mind, still absently packing away the garage. 'I don't suppose I have much choice...'

His statement hung in the air, unopposed.

He ran a hand through his greasy dark hair and sat down on a recently cleared work bench. 'I suppose I should thank you,' he muttered, 'I think you made yourself an enemy in the Snakes - those guys know how to hold a grudge.'

She gave a nonchalant shrug, 'Perhaps. Or perhaps they'll be too afraid to even think about crossing me again. Break the leader and the pack tend to split. Either way, it doesn't really matter.'

Crowley smiled at the reminder of Kruger's fate, 'If you say so, but you haven't met that dude's mean ass sister...'

'Enough,' she interrupted, stepping further into the room, 'Lets talk about Underhaven, shall we?'

He licked his lips and took a moment to respond, 'Okay... what do you know about them?'

'As I said before, they are traffickers. They act as an underground black market, dealing in illicit materials. It seems they have gotten very good at it. They started out in narcotics but have since branched out and grown. They now specialise in vice. They have a habit of kidnapping young women and... indoctrinating them somehow into becoming sex workers. Those are the girls that reappear, at least; many disappear and I have my suspicions that they are sold on as slaves. They are well funded, they are organised, and they are difficult to find,' she reeled off her knowledge as if she were reading it from a book, and she left emphasis on her final point, looking to Crowley expectantly. 'I've busted pimps with connections back to Underhaven, and a few dealers, but so far I've found no way to reach them directly.'

Crowley listened, his eyes occasionally straying down her body. He couldn't hide his surprise at her depth of knowledge, 'Wow,' he said, 'you really are a super heroine, huh?'

Again he was met with a vague shrug of the shoulders, 'Something like that, I suppose. Now, stop deflecting. Tell me what you know. Tell me where I can find them.'

'Alright, alright,' he took a breath, 'These people are serious business. I was only ever on the fringes, but I saw enough and heard enough to know that they're on another level than most outfits in this city. Like you said, they deal many things to many people, and that gives them far-reaching influence. They got plenty of people on the payroll and they even have a few metas working for them.'

Her eyes narrowed, 'Who?'

It was his turn to shrug, 'I don't know, I only have what I was told. They have a crew of four metas who act as serious enforcers for whoever the head hauncho is. All I know about them is that they scare the crap out of even their own people. Word is that they are kept on side by being allowed to, erm, partake of the various materials that Underhaven deal. Apparently, they clashed with Lady Avalon a while ago, before she vanished, so it probably says a lot that they are still working the streets. What I do know is that there is another meta who helps run the show; they call her the red mistress, and she is supposedly a telepath of some sort. They used to talk about her like she was some kind of dark goddess – like we all lived beneath her shadow…,’ Crowley was silent a moment, briefly distracted by memories that troubled him, before forcing himself to go on, unable to hide the apprehension in his voice, ‘So, as you can imagine, these guys have a lot of firepower.'

She listened to him carefully, the implications of his words sinking in. 'Good to know. I'll see what I can learn about this crew and about this red mistress. Now, point me where to look.'

'That is a tricky one. See, a lot of their safe houses and the like get moved around a lot. Not much would still be where I remember it.'

'But some of it would,' she pressed.

He nodded, taking a moment to build up the courage to begin his betrayal of Underhaven in earnest, 'Yeah. I can point you in two directions. The first is a place they have in the 'gate where they stockpile product and hold it until it can be shifted. In the later days, before I left, they started...'

His gaze dropped to his feet.

'They started processing some of the girls there. Due to its importance as a storage spot for large amounts of product its not the kind of location they will have changed. There's another place that they opened up in the 'gate but I never found out where that was - but it was basically a sister site to the place I know. I guess their expansion required more room to operate, and Gallowgate has plenty of places for them to do that.'

She frowned, 'If you only know where one of those places is, then that's one direction, not two.'

'No, no, I wasn't finished. The other place I can point you to is an easy one. You heard of club Surrender? Right in the heart of the Honeypot district? That joint, and probably most of the establishments down that way, is heavily connected with Underhaven. Nothing confirmed, but I'd stake a lot on Underhaven operating out of that club. Its probably where a lot of your girls go missing.'

Pariah gave a predatory smile from beneath her hood, 'Excellent. Now, where is this storage site?'

Crowley got up from his seat and gave her a careful look, something approaching concern written over his face, 'Look. These guys... With all the influence and funding they have, not to mention experience, they've gotten quite good at what they do. They get into your head, you know? Under your skin. All the girls that they kept holed up in that place... They didn't even want to leave, do you get what I'm saying?'

'You're saying they've developed methods to manipulate women, I get it,' she said, waving her hand dismissively, 'And I'M saying that they are disgusting monsters who should be visited and dealt with immediately. So tell me, Crow, where am I headed?'
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Last edited by Void 7 years ago, edited 5 times in total.
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Later...

Pariah sat perched atop the corner of a rooftop overlooking the former depot. The black and green of her tight bodysuit reflected little light and combined with the shrouding black of her cloak, she was all bit invisible. It was a good spot to survey the area, and she had been sat there scanning the building opposite for the past thirty minutes. Her eyes scoured the building, drinking in every detail and taking note of the slightest sign of activity.

It was obvious, really. She felt a tinge of embarrassment that she hadn't spotted this sooner. She hadn't thought to look at places like this. She hadn't expected this kind of audacity.

In better times it had been a postal depot for a private courier service. Much of the post that flowed through Gallowgate had once passed through here as a central hub. As the situation in the 'gate worsened, the private firm had pulled out and left their depot to public service. Even then the US postal service retired the depot in favour of streamlining their operations to a mega-hub down in the Glades. The increasingly unfriendly nature of the site only hastened their decision.

So it had been left, with seemingly no plan in place as to recycle the building into something useful. Or, she considered carefully, perhaps it had been bought by a new private owner and no questions were asked. She made a mental note to check up on that in the morning - a paper trail would be most helpful.

Any notion that the place was abandoned or unused was dispelled with even a cursory glance. Each window had been taped over from within, preventing any visibility in or out of the building, and two vans sat idle in the loading bay around the side of the depot. More telling still, two burly men in casual clothes had stood sentinel outside the main entrance the whole time Pariah had been watching. It was difficult to make out in the light but she was confident that they were both concealing weapon holsters under their jackets.

She supposed it might have been ironic how the depot had been converted into a sinister parody of what it had once been. They could load and unload whatever they wanted from their vans right into the seclusion of the depot's loading bays, and they had built-in storage to easily hold whatever passed through. It was a perfect set up, and it sickened her to think how coldly corporate the whole thing was.

After surveying the scene for long enough, she was satisfied that Crowley's information was accurate and she felt rising anticipation that she had finally found her quarry. Crowley had told her to expect at least a dozen men inside, perhaps as many as twenty. Each would be well experienced in Underhaven's trade and many of them would be armed. There was also a high risk of hostages inside given the likelihood that they were holding kidnapped women.

She considered her options. If the men became desperate it seemed inevitable that they would make use of a hostage, and she wanted to avoid that if she could. That meant hitting them hard and quickly; end the ordeal before any of them thought to turn to such measures. Being shot at also seemed inevitable, so she would need her powers at their sharpest in order to manage that threat - and it would be best if she could keep them from getting behind her. Focusing her telekinesis to such a level required great concentration and it needed her to be able to see the area she was trying to connect to. If they shot her from behind, she doubted she'd manage to deflect it.

She eased herself into a standing position, her cloak catching the wind and blowing lightly over her shoulder. She flexed and tensed her body in preparation, absently checking herself for battle-readiness and limbering up for what was to come. She was still a little sore from the earlier fight with the Snakes, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.

These people had played at slavers for far too long. Tonight the consequences had finally caught up with them. Pariah had no intention of taking it easy on them like she had with the Snakes - they would get no mercy from her.

You're mine, now, she thought with satisfaction.

Pariah leapt from the rooftop, her fall speeding her towards the street four storeys below and whipping the tail of her cloak into the air above her. As she neared the ground, she gripped the air with her telekinesis and guided her speedy descent towards the depot entrance. At the last moment, she focused on the air to hold her and killed all of her speed before dropping lightly to her feet barely a meter away from the stunned doormen.

As her cloak settled back around her shoulders Pariah flashed the thugs a predator's smile, blue embers lighting her eyes from beneath the hood, 'Hi there, fellas. I'm looking for a band of sadistic, spineless miscreants who like to enslave women - any idea where I might find them?'

The astounded doormen shared baffled looks before their brains finally kicked in. They both went for their holsters, reaching for slick black pistols.

She didn't give them the time. The moment they started to move, she was on them; her fists and legs a whirlwind of blows always preventing them from recovering. She pressed her initiative, bringing the first guy down as he wavered on his feet with a steep roundhouse kick to the face. As she flattened him she turned to see the second doorman on his knees, reaching back for his handgun. She built up a wave of force and threw it right at him, easily blowing him through the door that he was meant to protect and opening up a path inside.

Beyond the doors lay a dimly lit reception hall of sorts, with a heavy desk flanked on both sides by walls of storage lockers. A group of five very surprised men sat around the table, evidently mid-way through a poker match. They stared down in shocked silence at the crumpled form of their buddy.

Pariah took the sight in at a glance and charged in at them. She focused on the table and with a sharp effort of will sent it in a rapid series of spins. The thugs were bashed off their feet as they made to stand from their game, being scattered about the room by their make-shift poker table.

She released her connection to the table and let it come clattering down in the centre of the room. Even as it dropped she was still coming, she pounced on the first downed man, coming down on his forehead with the full force of her elbow. With him dispatched, she was quickly back up, running over the toppled desk and throwing herself at the other men as they stumbled back to their feet.

The ruckus had made quite a noise and Pariah could hear cries of alarm coming from further in the depot. She would need to move quickly to press her advantage or else risk them organising themselves.

She set about the recovering men, targeting them in descending order from the one who seemed the greatest threat. She connected a jumping kick with one guy's head before springing at the man next to him, pulling no punches as she hit him with a salvo of attacks designed to quickly retire him from the fight. As he began to fall back down, she gripped him in a telekinetic field and launched him at the next nearest man. Just as the guy pulled free his sidearm, he was hit by the hurtling form of his colleague and sent crashing back into the lockers before slumping to the floor.

Turning to the final man, she found he hadn't bothered trying to get back to his feet and had instead drawn his gun from the ground. Her heart caught in her chest with surprise and she reached into the air with all her focus as fast as she could, the air in front of her rippling with her influence.

The bark of the gun was deafening in the confined space and it echoed loudly throughout the depot. The bullet was met by waves of increasing force as it propelled through the air, gradually losing speed as it forced its way through. It stopped inches away from Pariah, leaving a bizarre trail in the air behind it where it had pushed through the force net.

The bullet's journey had taken the space of the blink of an eye, and the prone man looked in mystified disbelief at his bullet hanging in the air just in front of her.

Pariah wasn't about to let him fire a second shot.

Releasing her pull on the air, she let the bullet fall to the floor before she threw up a force bubble around the prone man and yanked him towards her. He had just enough time to scream as he slid across the floor towards her before he was met with a stiff boot to the face that knocked him out.

Pariah wobbled on her feet as the exertion of the last few moments caught up with her. She had pushed her telekinesis hard, and her head pounded with pain from the effort. It lanced through her temples and gave her a brief sense of nausea before she got a hold of herself, pushing the ache down to the back of her mind. It wasn't just her mind that had been pushed; her heart thumped in her chest from the vigorous activity.

She knew there was still a long way to go. The cries from deeper inside the building had turned to panicked alarm after the gunshot. She could hear heavy footfalls in the next room and multiple calls for response from the men that now lay at her feet.

Hard and fast. Keep moving, Evelyn, she thought to herself as she made her way to the next doorway.

She reached into a pouch at her belt and retrieved three flat metal discs. Her supply of equipment was witheringly difficult to replace but she needed to up the anti on this. This was no time to go slow.

'What the fuck is going on down there?' called a deep voice from beyond the doorway, 'Tully? Walters? Anyone?'

Pariah couldn't resist. 'Tully and Walters aren't in a position to talk right now,' she called out while prepping the charges on the discs, 'But I'm happy to explain what's going on... Better yet, why don't I SHOW you?'

She tossed the discs in a spread pattern through the doorway and hugged her tight body into the wall to wait for detonation.

She heard mumbled grunts of surprise next door and allowed herself a small smile. Each disc popped open on both sides and emitted a five-second burst of ear-splitting noise and blinding white light. Shouts of distress sounded out over the dirge, and Pariah's smile faded as she realised there had to be as many as nine more men through there.

The moment the deluge from the discs ceased, Pariah flung herself into the room.

She found herself in the loading area for the depot, closed shutters on the near wall revealing where the vans would drive in. The room was very large, acting as the warehouse and primary storage space for the facility. Crates upon crates littered the room in no real semblance of order and Pariah didn't need to look to know they would be filled with all sorts of contraband. At the back end of the room was a set of stairs leading up to what she presumed would be the managerial offices.

More pressingly there were men dotted about the room, still stunned by her flashdics. The majority of them - if not the whole lot of them - seemed to have been busy dealing with the crates before her arrival. Many had stripped to their waists, revealing lean tattooed torsos. Mercifully, only few of them seemed to be armed. In the centre of the room a tall and handsome black man seemed to be ordering them about, trying to rally the surprised thugs. His voice seemed to be that of the guy who had called through.

She assessed the situation even as she hurled herself towards the nearest of the armed men. Those with guns would need to be the first to go, then she'd go for the leader.

'Tyrone! We need to get the boss!' yelled one of the thugs, furiously trying to rub some sight back into his eyes.

'Fuck the boss,' called the leader - Tyrone, it seemed, 'Get her! Will someone turn on the god damned aria, already!'

Pariah took the first man down in short order and lifted the nearest crate to her with her telekinesis before flinging it in the direction of the next armed man. She judged the shot just right and the man was out of the fight before he was ever really in it.

The men that weren't armed grabbed whatever tools they could find and tried to close down with the flowing heroine.

Pariah unclasped her cloak and enveloped it in her power, bunching the material up into a long taper and flying it around her. It glowed with her power, coiling and moving as if it had come to life. She had practised this technique many times before and it made her cloak her most trusted weapon.

She sent the cloth out at the first man to reach her, wrapping it around his arm and pulling him off balance towards her. As he fell, she span a kick in to his face and was already sending the glowing taper out to the next goon, ensnaring his feet and pulling him over.

As Tyrone watched the heroine pummel his guy, he felt his fear rising. It had all happened so quickly. One moment he was ordering the next shipment of Rapture to be unpacked, then the next thing he knew there was an explosion of activity as some kind of force of nature tore through his people.

It was shock and awe.

He could see they had no hope of winning in a straight fight, so he ran away from the conflict and towards a workbench near the stairs, 'I'm going to turn on the aria, keep her busy!'

Pariah watched the man run but couldn't break through the press of attackers. She would need to deal with them first. As she punched out the lights of a man to the right of her, her cloak struck a man to the left of her as if it were a striking cobra. As both men fell to the ground she noticed the last of the armed men drawing a bead on her. The cloak rapidly uncoiled from its tapered state and instead spread out as a blanket in front of her.

The main reason that Pariah made such use of the cloak was its nano-bonded properties. Though the weave was extremely thin, the bonding in the cloak could not be separated. That meant that when she combined the cloak with a wave of force to hold it in place, she effectively had a protective shroud from bullets.

She heard the shots and saw the telling indents in the taut fabric where the bullets were impacting, but her make-shift wall held. When the man stopped firing, she fired the blanket out at him, wrapping itself around his arms and pinning them to his sides. Knocked by the collision and unable to arrest his fall, the man fell back and knocked his head off the corner of a crate.

Pariah ignored the gnawing ache that throbbed through her head from the use of her powers, and turned to see the last of her attackers fall to his knees, looking up at her in terror.

'What...what the hell are you!?' He called out to her as she made her way towards him. Her eyes were lit in blazing blue light from the use of her meta powers and it seemed to him like she was some sort of vengeful demon. 'Please! Don't come any closer!'

She stood over him, barely contained contempt etched over her face. She raised a hand to finish him.

Then the aria started.
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Last edited by Void 9 years ago, edited 3 times in total.
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To make this easier to index when its finished, I'm going to make this the start of the fourth part. The hard peril starts here and it might benefit from a clear sign post like 'Part Four' to make it easy to find for those who just want to skip to it. I'm really wavering on whether or not we're going to visit the second safe house in this story - I'm starting to think not. I'm actually starting to regret even including a second safe house... I may yet edit the whole thing out.

Anyways. Part four. Lets do it.

*Author gulps*

Part Four: The Aria

Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Pariah felt the change in the big room immediately, and she stood in a daze as she tried to gather her senses and to quantify what was happening. A deep sense of unease started to settle on her

The dim lights in the warehouse had gone off and in their place other, stranger, lights had come on. They were dotted about the walls and the ceiling, shining pulsing lights that gradually faded from deep red to vibrant purple. There were other lights that seemed to continually flash, but the flashes were so brief that Pariah was never sure if they were even there at all.

As well as the lights, concealed speakers that had been placed in the corners of the room also came to life. They played a strange din of contrasting and abstract sounds. A deep base filled the room with throaty vibrations to the point that she felt the sound as much as she heard it. Laid over it were bizarre pulses of sound that came and went so fast that Pariah found it difficult to pin down exactly what they sounded like. Finally there was a warbling, distorted choir that seemed to sing out in rhythm with the pulsing lights. The voices sounded at once beautifully angelic and sinfully dirty.

The mix of sound and light was chaotic, and yet the more Pariah focused on it the more there seemed to be some kind of order to it. The strange mix of finding order in chaos drew in her attention, making the whole thing disturbingly moreish. The experience was pleasant in ways that she couldn't even describe.

It was almost blissful.

It would be easy to just drift away with the lights and the sounds, following the choir deeper and deeper into the song. It was like the choir sang specially to her, like it was beckoning her. Tempting her. They sounded so passionate, and Pariah's mind wandered as to what could make them feel such ecstasy. Their voices were filled with pleasure, and the promise of greater pleasure yet to come.

It was so wrong.

The light ebbed from her eyes as her focus drifted with the aria, and she felt liquid warmth rush through her body as it responded to the subliminal messages barraging her.

She shook her head to try and bring herself back to the here and now, pulling her attention back from the choir. Though she was out of her daze, she threatened to slip back into it at any moment as the lights and sounds continued to play about her.

Ugh... need to focus.

She looked down in confusion at the terrified man cowering at her feet. It took a moment to remember where she was and why she was here. She brought her hands to her head as she tried to block out the sounds and lights. 'What... what is that?'

The man watched the change come over her. Moments ago she had been a terror the likes of which he had never known, about to punch his lights out - but increasingly her aspect had changed. The blue light had almost completely faded from her eyes and the frightening anger that he had seen on her face had morphed into confusion. Her cheeks were flushed with arousal and he saw the taut muscles of her body gradually relaxing.

She was starting to look weak. She was starting to look more like the girls he was used to dealing with - the girls that would call him master.

The man's fear started to slip. He started to smile up at Pariah.

Tyrone saw the change as well. He stood over a control panel by the workbench, carefully watching the aria take hold over the heroine. It looked like he had turned it on just in time. She was down to her last man before she would have come after him.

He tried to steady his nerve. This woman was Pariah - she had a reputation for brutality, and the criminal fraternity spoke of her in hushed tones like she was some kind of bogeyman. After having seen how fast she took apart his people, Tyrone had to say that she more than lived up to the hype. Even now with the aria pressing upon her, Tyrone considered fleeing the scene. This woman was a weapon; if she managed to shake off the aria, she'd resume her rampage and he imagined she'd take a particular interest in him after this. Fear beckoned him to run.

On the other hand, she was the most beautiful creature that he had ever seen. Under the effect of the aria they could go to work on her like they had done with so many women before. Whatever else she was, she was still a woman and still susceptible to the aria along with the arts of submission that Underhaven taught. It was a dangerous game to play - but what a prize.

Fear fought with perverse ambition, and his decision was made when he realised that it didn't need to be him who took the risk. He still had one guy left who could play the game in his place.

'We call it the aria,' Tyrone called out to her, his deep voice carrying over the din, 'It keeps the girls in line. Gets into their heads and opens them up - makes them compliant. Its got all sorts of subliminal signals designed to get into a woman's mind. You feel that, don't you, Pariah? Just relax and go with it.'

She tried to focus on his words and found it was a struggle to put anything other than the choir at the centre of her attention. His command to relax was a tempting one to obey. Weary from the fight, her body felt like it yearned for rest. Involuntarily, she slumped her shoulders and let all the tension bleed out of her sleek figure.

She shook herself again, trying to rouse her resolve.

Need to finish this before it gets out of hand.

'Lenny,' Tyrone called out to the guy at Pariah's feet, 'Why don't you help our guest to relax? She looks like she needs persuading.'

Lenny's smile widened as he grew in confidence; suddenly he was the predator and she was the prey. He rose back to his feet and made to grab her wrists.

The danger was enough to restore her attention, 'No!' she called out as she slapped an arm away and lashed out with a kick to his chest. It lacked conviction and was a weak effort, serving only to knock him back a few steps. 'I'm... I'm far from finished here.'

Lenny smiled at her, the dark features of his face looking exotic in the pulsing lights. 'You're right, baby. You are far from finished here... You're just getting started, aren't you? You want to go much further.'

He slowly approached her. Lenny was one of the group who had been working topless and Pariah was now acutely aware that he was gorgeous. Her eyes wandered down his hard abs and further down to the growing bulge in his pants, noticing what a pleasure he was to look at.

The aria sighed into her ears, the choir seeming to notice the drift in her attention and calling her to go further.

How many woman must this man have enslaved? How well must he know how to use his athletic body to bring a woman to ecstasy? She couldn't help but wonder, and her mind imagined how he might expertly play with her body if she would only let him.

Her heartbeat felt heavy in her chest. She felt tingling across her skin as it seemed to increase in sensitivity, heat starting to gather at her crotch. She bit her lip as she tried to rein in her errant thoughts and fight the effect of the aria.

This isn't real! You don't feel this way, its just a dirty trick!

She had left Lenny for last out of all her attackers because he posed the least threat. He was beneath her on every level; he was a vile waste of humanity. He repulsed her... and yet the prospect of being dominated by him struck a nerve deep down in her being. Fantasies came to her mind that she never even knew she had.

The choir seemed to grow more intense, the lights mirroring the change and altering their tempo.

As Lenny got within an arm's reach of her, she tried to reach out with her telekinesis but found she couldn't gather anywhere near enough focus to do it. It was hard enough just to think about fighting.

She threw a punch to his face but he caught her wrist in the air. She was slower now, her limbs not as responsive as they had been, and her muscles felt like they were going to sleep. Pariah felt like she was trying to move through sand. Worse, in her befuddled state she wasn't sure that she had even really wanted to hit him.

'Its okay, baby, just relax. Just be a good girl and let yourself go,' he cooed softly as he eased himself closer to her. He released her wrist and rubbed his hands up her arms to her shoulders, lightly massaging them and further releasing her tension. His touch was electric through her tight bodysuit, feeling almost as though he was touching bare skin, and it sent ripples of arousal through her body. It was so intimate; the wrongness of it matched only by the pleasure of it, and she shivered with conflicted desires.

She was just letting him touch her. His words assailed her mind much as his touch did her body and the choir compelled her to obey him. To just go with it.

Ugh... Must resist, she thought as she tried to rally a response. If she couldn't fight him with her mind or body, maybe she could use something in her belt.

Lenny saw in her expression that she was fighting it and he decided to press his luck. He rubbed one hand around to her neck and gently massaged it while he trailed the other hand down her back to grip her waist. He pressed his body in against hers, tilting her head to the side and started kissing softly into her neck.

'Nnnn....ugh... what are you doing?' she sighed, her voice sounding distant and timid. She pressed her hands up against his chest, weakly trying to push him away. She felt small next to Lenny, and she couldn't help but enjoy the feel of pressing into him. Her resolve threatened to crumble under this new assault and she moaned involuntarily from the new pleasure.

She had to fight him. He was a monster - they were all monsters.

She pressed harder against his chest, 'No... stop...'

He moved the hand tilting her head ever so slightly and pushed his thumb to her lips, shushing her protests. 'Hush, baby,' he whispered between kisses into her neck, 'Just relax and I'll take care of everything.'

Pariah was caught between fighting the aria and fighting Lenny. Trying to resist one left her vulnerable to the other, and the combination of the two was increasingly snaring her mind in a haze of lust. She started to feel meek and helpless; Lenny's dominating touch and words controlling her, exciting her.

His thumb played across her open lips, teasing them. She relaxed into his embrace, heeding his words. The aria filled her head with warm honey and her attention started to stray from resistance.

Feeling the subtle relaxing of the heroine's body, Lenny teased her lips for a moment longer before gently pushing his thumb into her mouth. Her lips instinctively embraced it and she started absently sucking on it.

'That's it baby, just like that,' he husked as he continued kissing her, slowly sliding the hand at her waist down to squeeze her ass. He lightly pushed the top of his digit in and out of her mouth, teasing her tongue until it started to play with his thumb.

'Mmmm,' she groaned.

He leaned back from kissing into her neck and enjoyed the sight as well as the feeling of her sucking his thumb. She was clutching his chest as much as pushing him away now. He could see that she was succumbing to the aria - her resistance gradually soothed into submission by his forced seduction.

He had used his craft well. Keeping her on the back foot, pleasuring her and teasing out her primal fantasies - her darkest desires. He could see that he had brought them to the surface and now, under the power of the aria, he would make her surrender to her fantasy.

'You like that, don't you, Pariah?' He said as he softly pulled his thumb from her lips, enjoying the way her tongue followed it out. He cupped her chin in his hand and guided her lips to his own. 'You can't fight it, baby.'

'Bu...,' Pariah tried to protest but she was cut off as his lips met hers. He kissed her gently, teasing her lips with his tongue.

Ugh... this is so wrong, she thought even as she began to accept his kiss. His lips captured hers and his tongue pushed into her mouth, playing with her own until she couldn't help but play back, kissing him in earnest.

She desperately needed time to gather her thoughts and straighten out, but Lenny kept pressing her, turning up a gear each time she felt a flicker of her will returning. Mmmm, maybe I should go with it for a little while, she thought, just until I can get my strength back.

'Yeah,' he breathed between kisses, sensing the dam of lust starting to break in her mind as she started to reciprocate, 'Let yourself go, Pariah.'

'Mmmm,' she moaned, spurred on by his words and returning his kiss passionately; her tongue entering his mouth now more than his entered hers.

It felt amazing. Pariah's whole body ached with need. She hadn't been touched in so long, she hadn't indulged in sexual desire for what felt like forever. She wanted this, she realised. She wanted Lenny to have her; to fuck her until she screamed with passion - and then to keep fucking her.

Enough! her voice shouted in her head.You're better than this Evelyn. Fight! Use your belt!

Even as she savoured Lenny's deep kiss, she realised that this was still a fight. It wasn't some kind of sensual dream. She needed to do something. Her mind was a fog of lust and desire, and she wanted him so much. She wanted to be taken by him, to just surrender and feel the pleasure that the choir was promising her. It felt so good. How could anyone not want this?

Yet she needed to fight. A deep, animal part of her psyche - even deeper than the primal desires that Lenny was kindling - demanded resistance. The conflicting needs clashed in her mind before the animal won out - just.

With immense effort she pulled away from the kiss, trailing their mixed saliva between them. The look of subjugation in her eyes hardened into defiance. She drew both her hands down to her belt, reaching for the pouches concealed there.

Before she reached the pouches, she felt strong hands lock around her wrists before guiding them behind her back. Looking over her shoulder she saw Tyrone had come up behind her, amusement and attraction written over his face. He pressed himself up against her back, allowing her to feel the fullness of his presence and pressing the erection in his pants into the cleft of her ass.

'You are a wonder, Pariah,' his deep voice growled into her ear, 'Aren't you tired of fighting it? Isn't there something much more enjoyable that you could be doing with your efforts? Just give in.'
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Last edited by Void 9 years ago, edited 5 times in total.
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First I have to say that I enjoyed the story, much of the environment that you created, as the heroine. I have to point out that your writing is very good.

About your question, I think we need not reach that far at first, I think the villains can play with the breasts of the heroin leaving very excited, but when they would take off all her clothes, she could recover and manage to defeat the villains.

I wanted to suggest an idea villainous woman, as the powers of Pariah are based on concentration, can have a mutant that has a tongue stretching,

Furthermore the saliva of this mutant (woman vilain) can produce a more powerful aphrodisiac ever seen, making any woman get too excited.
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*Author gulps again*

Part Five: Dark Desires

It was all going so wrong.

Pariah had come expecting underhand tactics and trickery. She had expected a tough fight. She had been warned that Underhaven had means to coerce and control.

What she he had not expected, however, was the betrayal of her mind and body.

Barely minutes earlier she had them on the run. She had demolished almost the entire crew - sixteen tough and trained men - with brutal efficiency. Those two that remained had almost fled for their lives in the face of her imposing might. She had almost taken the whole facility in the space of barely a minute. Almost added another impressive chapter to her list of achievements in Azure City.

Almost.

The intervention of the nefarious tool known as the aria had struck her in a way that no weapon ever had before. Its relaxing, arousing effects had dulled her senses, taken away her focus and inverted the scales of power within the depot. Pariah had gone from top predator closing in on the hunt; to prey about to be devoured.

Under the aria's power she had been led down the rabbit hole by Lenny, a low life abuser of women, and he had used all his seedy charm to entangle her mind in a web of submissive desire. HIs experience in seducing women was clear as he perfectly read her body, touching her in just the right way to turn her on, and leading her astray with his domineering words.

It was like he knew her better than she knew herself; always doing just the right thing to weaken her and tempt her to submit.

She had tried multiple times to muster her resistance, but he had spotted each attempt and expertly manipulated both her mind and body at each turn, diffusing her will even as she gathered it.

Under the mixed influence of a talented womaniser and powerful manipulation from the aria, Pariah's body had reacted profoundly against her will. She felt heat surging through her, making her weak at the knees and short of breath. Her mind had been similarly treacherous, following her body into a state of need and desire. Fantasies of being dominated and taken to the limits of ecstasy came unbidden to her mind, and she had found it increasingly difficult to think of this as something that she didn't want.

The effect had been something she was unprepared for. She found it was her own body and desires that she was fighting. Their treachery leaving her helpless and easy pickings for Lenny. It had been what he had used against her, the weakness that he had targeted to defeat her. Her mistake had been trying to fight him and the aria, when she first needed to defeat herself - to defeat the vulnerability that was being used to dominate her.

Deep in her mind, the angry animal in her had fought with the dark primal urges that were holding her down and she had ripped herself back from the brink of complete surrender.

Regaining some control over her will, she had come close to finishing Lenny a second time. Almost reaching the weapons she needed in her belt to fight the dangers that her body and powers no longer could.

Almost.

Instead, Tyrone, the handsome alpha of this pack of miscreants had stepped in just in time - adding his own skills into the mix to pull Pariah down into the depths of their combined desires. It frightened her and excited her to think that all three of them probably had the same fantasy that they wanted to enact right here, right now.

She stood pressed in tightly between the attractive men, their lean bodies pressing into hers and leaving little to the imagination as she felt them through her bodysuit. Tyrone held both her wrists in each of his hands and he pressed them into the small of her back, forcefully keeping her in place each time she attempted to move. She felt the hard erections of both men pressing against her through their pants and knew that her own crotch was equally ready.

Both men had made a risky choice. They passed up the chance to escape in favour of pushing their luck and trying to use their skills to seduce her, boldly trying to control her as they would their victims. They were committed to it now, either they would use the aria to tame her wild spirit or they would fail - and there would be a reckoning.

Lenny grinned at the arrival of his leader and took advantage of Pariah's inability to resist, sliding both his hands to her chest and rubbing just above her breasts.

'Oh, baby girl. Are you still fighting this?' He spoke softly as he plied her flesh, reaching inside the top of her suit to massage the skin of her throat, 'Or are you just pretending to fight?'

It would be so easy to just go where this was leading. It seemed inevitable now, and Pariah could not deny that she felt the prospect shamefully appealing. Though recently freed from the trance the aria had put her in, it was already pressing back in on her, lulling her back into its silk embrace.

The situation had spiralled out of control. Pariah couldn't believe how drastically things had changed in such a short space of time, and she struggled to understand how it had happened.

It's not over yet. You can still fight, Evelyn, she thought, staring back angrily at Lenny as he touched her.

She tried again to pull her hands free from Tyrone but in her weakened state his strength was more than enough to hold her steady. Unable to move her arms, she tried to knee Lenny in the crotch but found that they were pressed in so tight that she had no room to raise her leg; instead just rubbing her thigh against his and weakly half-kicking his shin. Groaning in frustration from her ineffectual moves, she tried to toss her head back and butt Tyrone.

Tyrone saw the move coming and allowed her head to come passed his before leaning around and kissing deeply into her exposed neck.

'Ugh...' she moaned at the unexpected sensation, and her eyes fluttered as she allowed herself to enjoy his attentions, easing up on her attempts to wrestle free.

The aria responded to her moment of weakness, soothing her and easing her back down into its thrall.

'That's it,' Lenny said, savouring the sight of her, 'Settle back down now, baby. Settle down.' He rubbed his hands down either side of her lithe body, feeling the sides of her breasts through the skin-tight outfit. He ran his hands down across her stomach and settled them on the sides of her belt. 'You don't really want this, do you, baby?' he whispered as his fingers played across its surface towards a clasp at the centre. 'Here, let me unburden you.'

Pariah squirmed in Tyrone's grip as a metallic click sounded out from her belt before she felt it being pulled away from her waist. She tossed her head to the side to try and strike Tyrone but he simply took that as license to kiss into the other side of her neck.

Pariah felt so slow. She felt so helpless.

'Ngh...I'm going to...ugh... you're going to regret this,' she managed through gritted teeth, trying her best to sound menacing but unable to stop it coming out as a whimper.

'That's it baby, keep pretending you don't want this,' Lenny said slyly as he dropped her belt to the floor and ran his hands back up the sides of her body. His finger tips danced over the tight fabric until he reached the zip at her chest. 'Keep pretending you're not trembling with anticipation.'

She struggled meekly in Tyrone's grip. The gesture was half hearted, almost more for show than because she thought it could possibly free her. She began to wonder if Lenny was right. Did she really want this to stop?

'Uhhh... Don't...'

Tyrone interrupted her, kissing into her ear and whispering to her, 'It's okay, Pariah. This is what you want. Don't deny it.'

The combined influence of their domineering, insidious words played through her mind along with the enrapturing tune of the aria, and Pariah watched in resignation as Lenny slowly pulled the zip of her bodysuit all the way down. As she watched, she absently undulated her body against both men, enjoying the feel of rubbing against them. She could feel their hard cocks pressing into her and started to focus on the feel of them both as she rocked between them.

'That's good,' Tyrone whispered into her ear, 'Just let yourself go, one step at a time.'

The zip was pulled all the way down the front of her body to her crotch, revealing pristine white skin. The top of a black thong was visible under the outfit and further up, her breasts were concealed beneath a skin-tight black sports bra. The stretchy fabric of the top clearly revealed that her nipples were hard.

Lenny marvelled at her chiselled body and ran his hands up the bare skin of her stomach, pleased at how she quivered under his touch. 'You are stunning, Pariah,' he exhaled as his hands cupped her breasts through the fabric of the sports bra. 'I wonder when the last time was that someone touched you,' he mused, 'It's been a long time, hasn't it, baby?' His thumbs found her hard nipples and teased them through the fabric, arousing them further.

Pariah moaned softly as she watched his hands touching her body. Her cheeks blushed red with a mixture of shame and excitement. She was completely relaxed in Tyrone's grip, no longer resisting at all.

Ugh... Oh God...

Her options were rapidly closing down and her attention wavered between thoughts of escape and thoughts of surrender. Increasingly her mind was awash with anticipation for where this was going. As she watched her hard nipples being toyed with, she forced her mind once again to think how she could end this.

Her belt was gone, or at least it was beyond her reach for now. She was in no physical state to mount a fight even if she could be released from Tyrone's grip. The aria threatened to steal away her will at any moment, and the longer this went on the more it took control of her thoughts. Her telekinesis would fix this dilemma in the space of moments if she could just muster the focus to bring it to bear. But with the aria all around her and the two hunky men mercilessly pleasuring her, it was next to impossible.

But not completely impossible, thought the angry hunter in her. It could still be done. She had done it while under immense strain in the past - it was just a very different kind of strain to this. The pleasure she was experiencing now was difficult to pull away from, where times in the past where she was in pain were much easier to deal with. Even so, she could still do it.

The flicker of hope set her mind working again, keeping her just on the limit of submission.

She shut her eyes to blank out the lights and the sight of the beautiful man doing wonderful things to her body. She tried to send her mind somewhere else, tried to leave this moment and find an inner peace from which she could focus her power. The aria begged for her to stop, and a part of her begged along with it, but she pressed on.

'God, you are so turned on,' whispered Lenny as he touched her, 'You love it, don't you, baby?' Lenny's own breathing was fast now. He was even more intoxicated in the moment than she was.

He reached under the fabric of her bra and pulled the stretchy material up and over her luscious breasts, rolling up the fabric to stay put where he lifted it to.

She shuddered with excitement at being bared this way, feeling the cool air of the room meeting her exposed nipples.

Ignore it. Concentrate.

'Oh, Pariah, baby,' Lenny gently kneaded her soft flesh, allowing his hands to completely explore her sensitive breasts, occasionally letting his fingers teasingly flick her taut nipples.

She bit back a moan, trying to keep her mind on track. The storm of feelings was close to uprooting her from her place of calm but she just held on. When Lenny pinched one of her hard nipples and rolled it between his fingers, she couldn't hold back a weak moan.

Lenny noticed her reaction, and adapted his technique to better seduce her.

'That's what you like, isn't it, Pariah?' He said softly as he alternated between teasing her nipples and pinching them. 'You love that. Moan for me, baby.'

'Uhhh...ooooo...' she mewled as he squeezed down on both nipples, both unable and unwilling to hold it in.

'Yeah, good girl,' Lenny cooed, 'Let it out...let it all out.'

His touch was divine and Pariah felt her body sing out under his attentions, begging for more. She had never allowed anyone to control her like this, but Lenny was doing it so easily, making her feel like a helpless piece of meat instead of a strong heroine.

Her lips trembled as she fought the erotic sensations and the urge to give in.

Ugh... almost there... Despite the rising tide of pleasure, she felt something like focus start to form in her mind. She only needed a little bit. Just enough to end the aria.

Tyrone had been enjoying the show, occasionally switching between kissing into her ear and kissing into her neck, but he noticed the concentration etched on her face and realised she was trying something. He pressed his lips to her ear and spoke into it, his voice deep and powerful.

'Open your eyes, Pariah. Look at how much your slutty body loves it. Look at how your nipples are begging for more.'

His command was enough to make her addled mind obey and she opened her eyes to look down at herself. The pale blue of her eyes had the faint embers of glowing blue light returned to them. The sight threatened to over take her, sapping her focus.

'Aww...gawwd,' she moaned as she looked down at her breasts being manipulated by Lenny. Her nipples screamed out with each new caress, hard as little diamonds, and the sight of Lenny owning her body sent a thrill of exhilaration through her. He worked her body like a professional and it was almost hypnotic to watch him work.

More of her focus drained away but she gritted her teeth and persevered, holding on the last vestiges of it by a thread.

This moment wasn't going to last long. If she had the ability to do something, she would need to make it count. With great effort, she tore her eyes from the sight of her nipples being played with and turned her head to look for the control panel for the aria.

Just as she locked sight with it in the distance she felt Lenny's hands leave her breasts and move up to her chin, pulling her face back around to look at him.

'Don't pretend you don't love the show...,' his voice trailed off as he saw the light in her eyes. Alarm crossed his handsome features as he realised that she still had some fight in her.

She locked eyes with him, looking at him with a mix of yearning and hate. If she couldn't turn off the aria, she supposed she could settle for turning off Lenny.

The air started to ripple around Lenny as she reached out with her influence.

Lenny held her gaze, leaving one hand on her chin and lightly pulling down on her jaw while his other hand pushed two fingers into her open mouth. The move took her by surprise and she hesitated as he pushed his fingers over her tongue, letting her taste him.

'Uh uh uh, Pariah,' he whispered, his voice tense with fear of what she was doing. 'That's not what you want, baby. You've not gone far enough yet. You want to go further.'

His words pulled at her mind, stalling her even more. She knew, even if she hated it, that on some fundamental level he was right.

The hesitation was all Lenny needed. He pushed his fingers back and forth in her mouth while his other hand went back to squeezing her hard nipples like he owned them. He moved himself in against her, pushing his thigh between her legs and firmly rubbing it up and down. After all that had happened, the sensation of finally getting attention to her throbbing loins was overwhelming.

The rippling in the air started to lessen.

'Suck,' Lenny commanded, going for broke, still holding her gaze. 'Give in and suck, baby.'

Tyrone mirrored the command, speaking deep into her ear, 'Submit, just stop fighting.'

The moment seemed to last an age as Pariah teetered.

Then, still looking into Lenny's eyes, Pariah clamped her lips around his fingers and started to suck them, the faint light dying away in her eyes.

'Good girl,' he said, enjoying their shared look as she gently sucked his fingers, 'That's my girl.'

She was sick of fighting. Sick of trying to go against it. She was enjoying this. She wanted this. Wanted Lenny. Wanted the aria to never stop singing to her. In her fragile state, she couldn't find any sense in why anyone would pull away from this: It was her fantasy, and it was coming true - only it was even better than any fantasy she could have ever dreamed.

Right at the crux moment, caught between possible victory and certain defeat, in a moment of weakness she fell down on the side of surrender.

Both men sensed the heroine's final submission, and both let out a small sigh of relief. They were well aware that had that gone the other way, they would likely have been beaten to death.

Instead she was defeated.

With the heroine's resistance finally broken down, they set about conditioning her just like they would any of the other girls.

Lenny pulled his fingers from her lips and leaned down, sucking her left nipple into his hot mouth while he teased her right with his slick fingers - rubbing her own saliva around the nub.

As he licked and teased her nipples, Pariah pushed herself back into Tyrone's body, moaning without hibition.

'Aww...fuuuck...' she groaned, finally allowing herself to release her pent up resistance and rocking her ass up against Tyrone's erection.

Tyrone grunted with approval, 'That's it,' he said pressing the bulge of his cock up and down her ass, 'Lose yourself in it.'

Lenny came back up to look into her eyes, palming his hands up her breasts to either side of her shoulders. She looked back at him submissively, pure lust in her blue eyes.

'Isn't it so good to just give up?' Lenny sneered, rubbing her shoulders and gently pressing down on her. 'I know you, baby girl. I may not know kung fu or magic, but I know women and I know sex.'

As she listened to him her knees buckled and she was pushed down to kneel before him. Tyrone knelt with her, easing her to the ground.

'And I can read you just as easily as I can please you,' Lenny carried on, his eyes alight with passion. 'I noticed you loved sucking my thumb earlier, and my guess is that you revelled in the naughtiness of it.' She watched him unfasten his pants as he kept talking down to her. 'You've lived a really disciplined life, right? Always playing the virtuous girl. The idea of just cutting loose and letting yourself go, being a naughty girl - gets you really hot.'

She looked up at him as he lowered his pants and pulled out his long, hard cock. She stared at it in fascination, her breath catching in her throat.

'So tonight,' Lenny said, savouring the sight of the heroine looking up at his cock, 'You're going to finally let go of all those shackles that hold you back, and you're going to let that dirty girl come out to play.'

He held her face with one hand while he guided his cock to her lips with the other. He teased the head around her flushed cheeks, dragging it across her face and leaving a trail of pre cum.

Pariah felt the warmth of the hard shaft as it rubbed across her face, breathing in the heady aroma of it. The remains of her pride caused her to pull back ever so slightly from the cock but she couldn't back away far with Tyrone holding her.

'No... I can't...'

'Shush, baby,' Lenny whispered, pulling her head back and guiding his cock head so it pressed against her lips. 'You can do it, let yourself go,' he pushed his cock and softly pulled her head down on him, taking charge. She made no effort to resist this time as he pushed his thick cock into her hot mouth. 'Be my good girl and let it all go.'

His rod stoked her passion and Pariah groaned as she accepted it, her lips embracing it like a fine delicacy that she had denied herself her whole life.

'Aww, yeah,' he groaned as he started softly pumping in and out of her mouth, 'Pariah, this is what you need. Take it deep.'

Pariah's mind was adrift on a sea of passion. The decision to stop fighting the aria allowed it to drive her desire ever onwards and steal away her will. She was putty to the manipulations of the two men, lost in her fantasy. There was no coming back from here. It was possible that she would want to continue even if the aria were to stop.

This... This is what I need...

She started to tentatively suck Lenny's cock, swirling her tongue around it as he pushed it deeper, savouring the taste. She knew on some level that it was wrong, and her cheeks burned red with equal shame and excitement - the illicitness of the act serving to turn her on even more.

'Ahh, there you go,' Lenny encouraged her softly, almost paternally, as he reached down to pinch one of her erect nipples, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, 'There's my dirty girl.'

'Mmmm,' she moaned around his cock, spurred on by his words and getting more into it. Lenny no longer needed to pump his cock as Pariah started doing all the work, sucking him in earnest as her shame started to give way to lust.

Lenny was right about her, she realised. He had spotted her darkest desires, and urged her to enact them. Debasing herself like this and surrendering to him - it drove her crazy. He had known exactly how to push her over the edge.

Tyrone watched her intently, picking up on how much she was beginning to enjoy sucking cock, and knew that she was done as a threat. He released her wrists, reaching his hands around her to rub her breasts and explore her body. Without his hands supporting her arms, they dropped limply to her sides.

'Oh Pariah,' he growled into her ear, 'You are such a naughty little slut. We are going to fuck you until the sun comes up.'

She enjoyed his degrading words, turned on by the dirtiness of it and by the prospect of the fucking that Tyrone promised. Pariah couldn’t help but imagine how both men would take turns dominating her body with their exquisite cocks, and it kindled a primal hunger in her. The orgasmic choir of the aria seemed to mirror her own feeling as if it were her inner emotions being projected out into the room.

Her moans came forth uninhibited as she felt the other man feeling her up, caressing her breasts like they were his property and occasionally flicking her excited nipples. The cock in her mouth became slick with her saliva as she continued to lavish it with her attention.

Ughhh... Feels so good...

Tyrone was ready to go further. He slid his right hand down her abdomen and pushed it under her thong, firmly running his fingers down her wet slit. Pariah jumped as she felt attention being given to her burning crotch, shooting a hand out to grab Tyrone's arm and squeezing it.

'Wow, you are so wet, heroine,' Tyrone mocked as he teased the lips of her sex, 'Such a sweet little pussy... such an eager pussy.'

She pulled herself back from Lenny's cock, the new intimacy of Tyrone's talented fingers sobering her up a little bit. She moaned loudly as Tyrone start to rub her engorged clit, touching her in ways that she had never been touched before.

'Ugh...wait...oooo...stop,' she protested as the last of her shame reminded her that she shouldn't be doing this. This shouldn't be happening.

How had it come to this?

She moaned like a school girl as Tyrone slid his fingers down from her clit and easily pushed them deep into her pussy.

Lenny grinned down at her, taking in the sight of her writhing in Tyrone's arms, squealing at his touch. He prepared to seal her defeat - to guide her to the end of her fantasy. Her submission had been a masterpiece, the best he had ever done, and now it was time to finish her subjugation.

He waggled his cock in front of her face, the movement catching her attention, and ran a hand through her feathery hair, affectionately brushing it out of her face.

'You don't really want this to stop, do you, Pariah?' he spoke down to her warmly, looking into her blue eyes and seeing the haze of desire there, 'Why don't you show me what you really want, baby?'

Her gaze dropped to his slick cock and she looked at it longingly.

'...okay...' she breathed, her voice husky.

She wrapped her free hand around Lenny's cock and guided it to her mouth, caressing the head of his cock with her tongue. She intently licked around the head before guiding it to the sides so that she could lick down his shaft.

'Yeah... good girl,' he whispered gently, groaning with approval as she pleasured him, 'That's it baby, be my good little whore just like you want to be.'

'Mmmm... yes...,' she groaned, genuinely pleased that she was making Lenny feel good, and excited that she was being a good girl for him. She brought her lips up around his cock and sucked him in deep.

Lenny watched the heroine as she wantonly sucked his cock. The sight of it exciting him more than anything else he had experienced in his whole life. This had been the demon woman who had stood before him like some kind of terrible myth, a nightmare that had come to punish him - and now she knelt at his feet submissively fellating him. It had been a scary move to try and play the heroine; but it had been exhilarating. It had been like taming a dragon.

And tame her they had.

'Look at me, baby,' Lenny commanded. Her blues eyes flashed open and she obediently looked up into his eyes as she kept bobbing her head up and down his cock. The intimacy of the connection spurred on both their passions and they both neared climax, 'Mmmm, good girl. You have such pretty eyes.'

Pariah enjoyed the connection too. She blushed under his compliment like a smitten valentine and batted her eyes up at him bashfully. Looking into his eyes while she indulged his cock was the ultimate reminder of who was in control - and how far she had fallen. She felt dirty, and she liked it.

Lenny felt himself close to blowing, his usual stamina defeated by his excitement at what he had accomplished. Pariah felt it too and she increased her efforts to satisfy him.

'Mmmm, sweet baby,' he groaned, straining to contain himself, 'Ahh, here it comes, baby. I want you to be a good girl and swallow every drop, okay?'

Pariah moaned in acquiescence, reaching ever closer to her own orgasm and feeling Lenny tensing up.

'Argh!' Lenny cried out, his knees threatening to buckle as he experienced the biggest orgasm of his life, 'Ugggh... take it all baby...take it.'

Her cheeks ballooned as he fired his seed in her mouth and she started greedily swallowing his cum, still obediently looking into the eyes of her master. After a moment she dropped her gaze back to his cock and started dutifully licking him clean.

'Oh... oh yeah...look at you go, dirty girl,' Lenny whispered as he tenderly massaged her scalp.

She caught a glimpse of something in his eye. Something malicious and cruel. He loved her humiliation, it was the thing that seemed to have most stirred him, and the sadistic look on his face reminded her that Lenny was a vile, evil man. The observation served to remind her that this wasn't right. It was really very far from right.

With it came another, unwanted, thought. What would Kamura think if he could see her right now?

The thought reminded her of her shame and humiliation. It hurt, and the emotional pain stirred her even more. The flicker of resistance ebbed back into her mind, coming through the fog of the aria as a small but nagging sensation.

As she struggled to hold on to the thought, to use it to climb back up out of the dark place she had sunk to, she felt Tyrone remind her how close she was to coming. His fingers drew out of her slit wetly and began firmly rubbing her engorged clit.

'Ooooo...ugh!' She moaned as she drew away from Lenny's member and starting to fight her impending orgasm.

'That's it, Pariah. Its your turn now,' Tyrone said hungrily into her ear as he began to up his tempo, 'Time for you to get a nice reward for being a good slut.'

She clutched at Tyrone's arms, half trying to pull him away and half clinging to him as a lover. 'Fuuuuuck...' she rasped as she contended with the growing feeling. Her spark of renewed will would be completely turned out if she let Tyrone climax her. She needed to fight it if she was ever going to come back from this.

Lenny saw the conflicted look across her face, and knelt down in front of her, letting his hands roam over her body freely. He couldn't believe she still had anything left. Any other girl would have been completely enslaved long before now and yet still Pariah seemed to have just a little bit more fight in her.

He was going to snuff it out.

'You're almost there, baby,' he said to her reassuringly, idly toying with the breast that Tyrone had left unattended. 'You are so close now. Just let yourself go a little bit further. Its too late to fight it,' He leant down and suckled her nipple, batting it with his tongue as his hand kneaded the flesh around it.

'Ugh! Ahhh...Ooooo!' Her moans came louder and louder as Tyrone rubbed faster and faster.

What was the point in fighting it? What could she even do? It felt too good.

The heroine's body shivered with pre orgasmic spasms as she continued to try and hold it off. Lenny felt her continued resistance and went in for the kill.

He moved his face up to hers, pressing his nose to her own and held her face so that she couldn't move away. 'Look at me, baby'

She obeyed, looking into the depths of his dark eyes.

'Tell me what a dirty whore you are, baby, tell me you love it,' he commanded, 'Say it.'

She wanted to obey Lenny. Wanted to please him. It wasn't even untrue - she would be lying if she pretended she didn't love it. And yet, it was still wrong.

'Nooo...oooo gawwd...nooo,' she mewled, teetering on the precipice of an even greater fall than before.

'Say it baby, don't be shy,' Lenny pressed, 'Tell me you love it.'

'Aww fuuuu.... I.....' she felt herself starting to fall over the edge, '....I love it...'

Lenny grinned as he guided her through her final defeat, rewarding her by toying with her nipples just the way he knew she liked. 'Good girl, say it again. Say it louder.'

'Ugggghhh...I LOVE IT...' she cried, feeling her body starting to cave in to the tempest of pleasure as Tyrone began furiously rubbing her towards climax.

'Yes! Good, baby, you love it,' Lenny pressed, squeezing her nipples even harder, 'And why do you love it?'

Because I'm a dirty slut, she thought miserably. She knew it was what he wanted her to say, knew they would be the last words she would ever choose to say. She took in a breath to speak the damning words, to submit to Lenny one final time. She felt the biggest climax of her life ready to explode through her body.

'Because I'm a...' her voice faltered, abandoning the words as she tried to say them.

The tamed animal in her rose its head back up in defiance. Lenny had already humiliated her beyond anything she thought possible, and yet even now he was daring to humiliate her even further. How dare he.

I'm better than this, she thought with renewed clarity.

She remembered once asking Kamura what the point was in fighting the impossible fight. Kamura had been confused at the question. He replied that if you are still alive, no fight is impossible.

Her belt lay out of reach. Her focus was hopelessly lost in the aria. Her strength was a fraction of what it was.

And yet, she still had some strength. She could still move, couldn't she? Her arms were free. Thinking her helpless, the two men now only concerned themselves with raping her.

Some attacks need barely any strength at all to be effective.

They had underestimated her.

She looked back at Lenny, the cloud of submissive lust in her eyes being parted with anger. Indignant anger.

Lenny spotted the move and began to try and enact another of his ploys to diffuse it - but this time she acted before he did.

She made a fist and punched an uppercut below the guard of Lenny's hands and made contact with his unguarded balls. She hit with a child's strength - but that was more than enough.

Lenny's eyes bulged at this turn of events and he doubled up, falling to his side.

Tyrone went to react, drawing his hands away from ravaging her body and trying to restrain her, but he was too late. The hand that hadn't struck Lenny was already moving, and she jabbed her thumb into Tyrone's left eye socket with all the force she could muster.

'Argh! Damn it!' Tyrone roared as he backed up away from her, clutching his face.

She rolled to her side and collected her belt where it had fallen, taking advantage of the two men's brief incapacity. She reached in and drew out two more flashdiscs, prepping them and dropping them at the men's feet in one deft move. She staggered to her feet and stumbled away from the imminent blitz of sensation.

White light and noise exploded out around the room, eclipsing the aria.

Tyrone fell to his knees, holding his head and trying to clear the disorientating effects of the discs. His ears rung and his sight was covered with spots. Time felt like it was passing slower as he stumbled back to his feet and shook off the effects.

He noticed just out the corner of his eye that Lenny was running - his pants still around his ankles - for the doorway leading to the main entrance, diving through the door as if trying to escape an exploding bomb.

Idiot, Tyrone thought bitterly. The girl had just had a last go at defiance. What could she do now?

Then he noticed something else, and dread spread through his body.

The aria had stopped.

He turned to the control panel to see the heroine leaning against it, adjusting her outfit to cover herself again.

Like a scene out of a horror movie, she slowly turned her gaze upon him, bright blue light flickering to life in her eyes. She raised a hand, reaching it towards him. He turned to run, to try and join Lenny in what now must be considered his best choice to date, but found he was running on air. He looked down to find he was floating above the ground and uselessly treading the air.

'Aww shit...' he mumbled just before he felt himself flying through the air and slamming into the workbench by the control panel.

The impact was hard. He felt two ribs crack and he moaned in pain. He looked up at the woman by his side and saw nothing of the submissive slut that they had been conditioning.

He saw only rage.

The tools on the workbench floated into the air and danced about her as she looked down at him.

'I don't know much about women or sex, Tyrone,' she spoke down to him in a snarl, her breathing still fast from her near-orgasm. 'But there is something that I know ALOT about. Do you want to know what it is?'

'Oh Christ... please, you don't need to do this,' Tyrone pleaded, 'It's just a job, you know? I'm sorry!'

'Pain.'

The tools in the air descended on Tyrone and the depot was filled with his agonised screams.
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Phew! So my first question is: too far? too soon? Right at the bit where she can choose to suck his fingers or to blow him away, I swithered on which of those directions I wanted to take it. I am more than willing to edit the story such that she makes the other decision at that juncture, if this was too much.

Having said that, though the scene is incredibly intimate, they don't go THAT far... There's a lot further it could have gone, at any rate.

Thoughts?

I will probably round this off with a 5th part that concludes this particular adventure. We totally aren't going to that second safehouse in this story... But I'm happy to pay it a visit in a second story. There's plenty of legs on this to have a few other stories, actually, but we will see. I'm also thinking of giving Lady Avalon her own thing - she would be much more of your conventional super virtuous heroine. I'm rambling.

I'll fire up the 5th part... sometime... might not be until next Tuesday. It will effectively be an epilogue, though, trying to neatly tie this up.

P.S I know it looks bad for Tyrone, but don't worry. He won't be dead or tortured when we see him again - just suitably pounded on.
Last edited by Void 7 years ago, edited 18 times in total.
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@Valugi

Hey, thanks man, those are kind words. I like that you see where I'm going with this whole needing focus to use powers thing. That it means being distracted by sex is a proper weakness that can be exploited.

I'm totally up for some kind of villainess like you describe. I love the idea of a sexy female villain who is filled with toxins of one kind or another. Stretchy tongue is cool - it might be good to add more to her, though, but its a feature I'd like to include.

I'd like Pariah's next serious peril encounter to be a lesbian thing. I'm torn between it being a meta or being a regular person using underhand gear like Lenny and Tyrone did.

Food for thought!
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first I would like to say that chapter 5 is very good, maybe I was not that far, but I also see no problem with that. I think it would interessanteque the next challenge of heroin were a mutant.

this villain would be woman and take pariah to its limit, beyond what Tyrone and Lennin did.
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Part Six: Integrity

******Six years earlier…******

‘Why don’t you kill them?’

After years of biting her tongue and following his rules, learning his lessons, living his life and dancing around the topic – she finally asked him directly.

They had been staying in a low-key hotel on the outskirts of Madrid at the time, having just apprehended the Cult of Diablo. The case had been a drawn out affair and the crimes of the cult had been the most gruesome that she had ever seen – which was saying a lot from a survivor of Everwood Springs.

She had stayed in the shower for a full forty minutes trying to wash the experience off of her; trying to cleanse her body of the things she had seen. Since they had come back to the hotel she had been simmering with angry discontent.

The men of the Cult had done such things. Such terrible things.

And Kamura had spared them.

Instead of putting them down like the rabid animals they clearly were, they had been anonymously handed over to Interpol to be prosecuted. They would spend the rest of their lives in jail, stripped of all but the barest necessities with no hope of bail. They would rot alone in a cramped cell until the day they finally died, their death mourned by no one.

It wasn’t nearly enough.

After all that they had done with no hint of remorse – they were going to live out their lives being attended to in prison. They would continue to live – in relative peace - while their victims rotted in the ground or were forever tormented by what had been done to them. There seemed to be no justice in it. Worse, it allowed for the possibility that they could inflict further pain in the future. It had been the final straw for Evelyn.

So when she padded out of the shower, she marched up to Kamura as he sat maintaining his equipment on his bed and put him to the question.

Why don’t you kill them.

He studied her for a moment before turning his attention back to disassembling one of his gauntlets.

‘You are asking me why we didn’t execute them?’

‘Yes.’

‘You would have killed those men?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

She stared at him, incredulous. She prowled around him and sat down facing him on her bed, holding her towel around herself, ‘Because they deserved it.’

Her reply hung in the air for a few moments. Kamura did not immediately respond, instead working methodically on cleaning his gear. Eventually he looked up from his ministrations.

‘Is that what you think we do, Eve? Punish people? Perhaps you think we are avengers bringing retribution to the guilty? Or perhaps we are crusaders, hmm? Bringing the righteous wrath of God down on the ignoble. Like God, we judge them and decide what their life is worth; we decide what must be done to balance the scales, to make the world right again, and we act. There is no greater moral authority than what we feel people deserve, right?'

‘You’re making fun of me,’ she pouted.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘But I am simply reflecting back what you are saying to me. You are making fun of yourself.’

She growled, ‘I’m not saying we play at being Gods, you know that. But there are people that do deserve to be punished. Surely you can see that?’

Kamura gave a pained look as she spoke, visibly disappointed. ‘You have a lot to learn, Eve. You still look at the world in terms of punishment - like it might somehow improve the world if the man who does wrong is suitably damaged. When in reality punishment does nothing to fix the crime. The dead do not come back to life; the damage is never undone. Punishment only serves catharsis… The active desire to cause another distress in the belief that it will make the aggrieved feel better.’

He gave a derisive snort, ‘It is foolery of the most dangerous kind. It is where wars are born, where feuds spiral, and where pain rules.’ He gave her a hard look, ‘You know what becomes of people when their lives are governed by pain.’

Evelyn averted his gaze, feeling somehow shamed by how their conversation was going.

‘I…,’ she took a moment to formulate what she was trying to say, ‘I know it doesn’t undo their crimes… I just… I want to make them sorry, you know? They should be made to regret what they have done. I know that line of thinking is a shady road to go down but I can’t help it... Besides, why are we even hunting down all these people if we aren’t interesting in punishing them? What the hell are we doing with them?’

Kamura leaned forwards, seeing his chance to impart some meaningful values on to the troubled young woman. He had waited a long time for her to be open to a discussion like this – waiting for the day that she would want to examine this for herself.

‘We are stopping them, Eve. They do terrible things to their fellows and so we step in; we prevent them from doing any more harm. That, is what we do.’

She thought about that a moment, pondering what it meant.

‘If preventing them from doing more harm is our main goal,’ she said carefully, ‘Why not simply kill them? I’ve yet to hear of a criminal who committed a crime after his own death.’

Kamura laughed out loud with genuine humour, ‘I actually know more than I’m comfortable admitting,’ he mused, ‘But you are making the equation too simple, Eve, as you often do. It would be wrong to kill them. Resorting to such measures is the act of a monster – it corrupts the soul to deal in death. You lessen yourself down to the levels of the people you seek to stop, and you set yourself on the road to playing God; judging who shall live and who shall die. We do this because we want to protect people, Eve - to make a better world. You will not make a better world if you build it using the methods of evil men. You build it using the methods of compassion.’

His gaze bore into her, ‘We live with dignity and integrity above all else. Without them we have nothing. You should never walk the path that leads you out of the world you wish to protect and makes you a stranger to it. A monster might kill all the guilty men and leave a world of only the virtuous… but there would be no place in the world for that monster – it would need to kill itself to finish the job.’

‘Sounds like a pretty heroic monster,’ she said softly.

‘Yes, but still a monster. That is not what I am, and nor is it what you are. We are knights. We keep the land safe and protect the people.’

She sighed. She saw sense in Kamura’s words and they served to put her mind somewhat at ease. Even if she sometimes struggled to understand the man’s ideals, she still liked to hear about them.

‘You know,’ she said mischievously, ‘Knights slay monsters.’

Kamura laughed again, ‘True enough. Though I think the monsters are metaphorical, no? I think the knight does not slay a person but rather he slays a danger, thus protecting the people… Or that is how I like to see it.’

She giggled and lay down on her bed, ‘Maybe I’m just not good like you are? Maybe I’m a bad person…’ her voice trailed off and her tone became serious again, ‘I certainly wanted to kill those men today.’

Kamura reached out to her, gripping her hand and grabbing her attention. He looked at her with sincerity.

‘If you learn anything from me, Eve, please learn this. You know right from wrong - even if you like to play devil’s advocate - and there is nothing wrong with admitting you would take satisfaction from punishing the guilty – even killing those men today. I know you will still put what is right ahead of whatever your own personal feelings are. Acknowledging those things that would please you, and yet refraining from them in favour of what is right – that is integrity,’ he eased back from her and went back to seeing to his equipment. ‘Wanting to kill those men today; that is human, Eve – perhaps a small part of me felt the same way. However, making the choice to actually kill them; that is inexcusable. Do you understand? ’

Evelyn looked to the ceiling, seeming to stare off at something only she could see, ‘...I understand.’
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******Now…******

The moments after I turned off the aria and freed myself from its pervasive influence passed in a blur of activity.

I was almost entirely running off of my anger, using it as a crutch to power me through my own vulnerability. With the aria no longer wrapped around my mind, the world returned back to the plain one that I was used to living in and I felt a little bit more like myself. It felt like coming back up for air, even if it brought an ache of withdrawal from the addictive sensations I had been so immersed in. I clung to my anger like a life raft, using it as the point to draw focus from.

And I turned it all on Tyrone.

Lenny had been running for his life from the moment I detonated the flash discs, seemingly prescient to my plan to disarm the aria, and his removal from the situation put me in a difficult position. If I were to try and chase him it would mean leaving the depot behind – which would put the girls I was here to save at risk. Letting him run meant allowing him to escape tonight unpunished for all that he had just done to me.

It was a tough call.

However I had to stick with my priorities. Hunting down Lenny and taking my pound of flesh would have to wait for another time – I certainly wasn’t going to forget about him. As much as my pride demanded satisfaction, I knew that I couldn’t leave my business at the depot unfinished; I had to stick to my primary target.

I had another reason for not giving chase – a reason I was desperately trying to ignore. I was still in such a weak place after all that had just happened. I didn’t want to face the man who had so recently been completely dominating me and leading me to a depraved place that I had been sorely tempted to never leave. He had come into my mind like a sickness and subverted me to the point that I had wanted to serve him. I had willingly, wantonly followed him and a big part of me still wanted to.

So soon after the event, I didn’t trust myself. I wanted - needed - to have some space to process what had just happened and regain control of my urges.

So I was left with Tyrone, completely at my mercy.

He had been right on the verge of bringing me off barely moments earlier, touching me like I was his possession. He had abused me – along with many, many women before me – and he would have happily forced me down the road to sexual slavery or worse.

It was a strange feeling; caught between two unspeakable desires as I looked down on Tyrone. On the one hand I wanted to kill him, or else torture him as punishment for what he had just done. On the other hand I wanted to fuck him. To let him attend the fire that he had started in me and give my body back to him, to apologise and ask him to take me back under his spell.

I knew both were equally wrong just as I had known the acts Tyrone had been tempting me towards were wrong – and I kept myself in check, exercising the self-discipline that Lenny had nearly made me abandon. Through force of will I reined in my lust and outrage, opting to deal with Tyrone the appropriate way.

I broke him.

I pummelled his body with my telekinesis right up to point that he would need months to be anything like the man he was before. Nothing permanent - unless you count the memories of the pain - but enough to make it an awful long road back to recovery. My treatment of him had multiple purposes. He was the group leader at the depot and so his treatment sent the most pointed message. More importantly than that, he was the one who would have the most information to use against Underhaven and so I interrogated him. Men like Tyrone are hardly loyal types; they are cowardly parasites who follow the path that most suits them. As such, breaking him and making him spill all that he knew had been pathetically quick work.

Every now and then I would be interrupted by the stirring of one of the men I had knocked out earlier and I would leave Tyrone’s shattered form to briefly guide each man back to unconsciousness. Each passing moment brought me back from the torrid place I had slipped to and I felt increasingly empowered by the venting of my frustrations.

By the time I was done with Tyrone, I felt like I had mostly regained my composure and somewhat purged the last effects of my exposure to the aria.

I stared down at Tyrone’s bloody form as he wheezed and shook on the ground.

Perhaps I went too far. Would I have gone this far had he not violated me? Probably not… But I was still careful to avoid doing anything that would inflict lasting harm or put his life at risk, as I always am. Had I not been careful to avoid lasting damage to his henchmen, I knew I would have likely reached Tyrone before he managed to switch on the aria. I resented the need to hold back in both instances but I understood it would be crossing a line.

Tyrone had not known as much as I might have hoped. He had been the second in charge of this site and only knew what was needed for him to know. On top of that I wasn’t in a position to take my time and methodically draw out all of Tyrone’s knowledge like I would have liked to – instead having to settle for extracting key pieces of information.

It wasn’t much, but it would suffice.

I left Tyrone in a heap and retrieved my cloak, wrapping it tightly about myself and pulling up the hood. I took comfort from the feel of concealing myself and adding another layer to shroud my body - feeling more like a hunter again.

Satisfied that Tyrone and his crew were going to be out for a while, I headed up the stairs to finish my sweep of the depot.

I knew what I would find in the old managerial offices; Tyrone had made it clear to me. The offices had been converted into a holding cell for the girls that they brought back. Cheap mattresses littered the floor and as many as a dozen young women lay drugged on them. They were at varying states of sedation, with some of them even hooked up to a drip or being fed some kind of gas through oxygen masks. Many were naked, the rest were dressed down to their underwear, and all showed signs that they had been abused. They mewled and groaned in their stupor, clearly having been well worked on by Tyrone and his people. In their state, some of the girls lay pleasuring themselves while others had found each other and were engaging in lascivious communes, pawing at each other and sating their mutual lust.

About all the room, the aria played continuously through similar lights and speakers as were in the loading bay. It looked like it had been playing in here the whole time, looping continuously, and these girls had been exposed to it for as long as they had been held here.

A control panel at the doorway acted as a master switch for the aria much as the one I had already seen and I rested my hand on it as I took in the sight of the office, letting my eyes drift across the writhing bodies.

These poor girls.

I had nearly lost my mind after minutes of being exposed to the aria – these girls had been up here for days while they were continuously worked on by the men downstairs. Was it any wonder the girls that went through this process came out as slaves? It would be a long road back for these girls, if there even was a way to come back from this.

My heart skipped a beat as I considered that Lenny and Tyrone would have brought me up here. They would have taken my indoctrination to the next level, having their way with me over and over while I lay drugged and helpless. With the aria playing around me and the girls moaning on the office floor, my thoughts of what would have happened to me up here swept around my mind in a lurid fantasy.

Some of the closest girls beckoned to me, reaching out their hands and plaintively calling for me to join them. They looked to me with subservient, lust-filled eyes; offering themselves to me as much as wishing for me to offer myself to them.

I had never in my life considered being with a woman but after all that had happened, and was currently happening, I found myself curious what it might be like - just like I was morbidly curious what would have become of me had I not broken free of the aria’s thrall.

I let my mind wander for a moment longer before I heaved down on the switch and ended the aria’s tune. Simple white lights flickered to life in its place, seeming harsh in the room as they showed it all in stark reality. It was met with cries of discomfort as many of the girls called for the sweet embrace of the aria to be returned to them, not wanting their sensual dream to end.

The kind of aid these girls were going to need next was not the kind I could render, but I could at least bring this nightmare to an end. I stepped about the office looking for a girl who might still have some strength. I came to a beautiful brunette who couldn’t have been any older than twenty – probably a student at Azure University – and I knelt down at her side. I guessed she had probably been in this place for the least time, perhaps only brought in today, and she wasn’t hooked up to a drip or oxygen mask like some of the other girls.

She stirred as she noticed my presence, reaching out a hand to try and protect herself, ‘No… please…’

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ I said, trying my best to sound reassuring and warm, ‘I’m not with them, understand? They’re gone; they’re never going to touch you again,’ I pulled down my hood and looked her in the eye, ‘I’m here to help you. You’re going to be okay now, do you understand?’

She looked back at me; her confusion slowly receding as understanding crept across her face. Tears welled in her eyes and her lips started to tremble.

‘Hey now, I need you to be brave, alright? What’s your name?’

Her eyes searched mine as she continued to struggle with her emotions, ‘…Tracy.’

‘Tracy, that’s a nice name. Okay Tracy, my name is Pariah, and I’m going to help you out of this. But I need your help, okay?’

She gave a slight nod, still holding herself together.

‘Alright, you’re going to be the hero, Tracy,’ I said as I pressed Tyrone’s smartphone into her hands, ‘I need you to phone the police. Tell them we are at the old Harrington Depot in Gallowgate. Tell them what happened to you and that they need to come get you all. You’ll save everyone – and then you’ll all go home. Can you do that for me, Tracy?’

She nodded her head again, this time with more conviction, ‘I can do that.’

I smiled at her, ‘Okay then,’ I stood to leave and she shot a hand out to grab my own.

‘You’re leaving?’ she asked, an edge of panic in her voice.

I put my hand over hers and gave it a firm squeeze, ‘I’m only going to be out of sight, Tracy. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here; I’ll still be watching over you all.’

She gave a small smile of her own and released me, ‘Okay…’

I turned away from her and walked back to the exit, pulling my hood back up as I prepared to return to the loading bay.

‘Pariah,’ Tracy called after me, causing me to stop and turn my head back to her. ‘Thank you.’

I gave the girl one last smile before I left her to dial the police. She was thanking me and I felt like I owed her an apology. If I had found this place sooner, if I had gotten to Underhaven before now, or if I had spent more time on this case; none of this would have happened to her. As it was, I had very nearly failed to save her – I had almost joined her.

I made a silent promise to Tracy and all the girls in that place that I would do better.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Barely ten minutes later I was sat on top of the same rooftop I had launched my assault from, looking out over the depot. I had used my telekinesis to carry me up in what was a very slow and difficult form of flight, leaping into the air and then drifting upwards in an envelope of blue force. I Lay concealed as I had been the last time I was up here and I watched as the first police cruisers pulled up at the entrance to the depot.

I had been sure to drag all of Tyrone’s men to the centre of the loading area and leave them suitably incapacitated so as not to be a danger to the police when they appeared. I also made sure that the contents of the crates in the loading bay were clearly visible so as to leave no doubt as to what the police officers were walking in to.

It didn’t take long for them to radio it in, and then came a small convoy of ambulances and police vans. More and more started to arrive, securing the area and cordoning it off while the girls were guided outside and led to the back of the ambulances. Statements were taken, aid was given, and the girls were gradually sent off in the ambulances, probably headed to the Western Saint’s Hospital.

I watched as Tracy was led to the back of a police van to speak with a young, handsome detective, and she seemed to give a good account of herself as she answered his questions. For his part, the detective seemed respectful and sympathetic. He looked genuinely shaken by what he was learning had transpired and I could relate to that.

It reminded me that as bad as Azure can be, it is still filled with good folk. The response from the emergency services had been quality and it encouraged me that Azure could still be wrestled back from the hold of evil men – even places like the Gallowgate.

It was a telling blow on Underhaven. They had lost all of the product that they had been holding at the depot as well as the girls, not to mention the loss of fifteen of their men. Even worse for them, the ACPD would be on to them now in a way they never had before. They had people for questioning, girls to testify, and copious amounts of contraband to impound. There was enough in the depot to prosecute Tyrone and his people as well as to crack open the investigation into Underhaven.

I had left it all to the police on a silver platter and they didn’t disappoint me. Life was about to get much harder for Underhaven - the fire I saw in the eyes of the young detective assured me of that.

It pleased me to see such human decency and care from the people who were now seeing to the girls, and for the first time since I came to Azure I felt a heartening sense of kinship with the ACPD.

They would still struggle to find Underhaven and pin the ringleaders down, and if Crow was right about the kinds of people working for the sleazy organisation then they would have a hard time managing that threat - but they had me for all of that. It was enough to know they would be ready and waiting to do their bit when I made my move.

I was far from finished with Underhaven. Tonight was just the beginning; a hopefully crippling blow to let them know that I was coming for them. Tonight let them know that their time was now limited – that they were no longer untouchable. Let them run scared in the knowledge that they were being stalked in the very same darkness they once used to hunt innocents.

Tyrone had given me all I needed to escalate things. I now knew where to find their other safe house in Gallowgate and I knew where I would find the boss of their Gallowgate operations. On top of that I knew where a large amount of their drug supplies were coming from and Tyrone confirmed that Underhaven was, unsurprisingly, based in the Honeypot district. The meetings for the different branches of Underhaven convened at Club Surrender, and it seemed that the red mistress chaired the meetings as the representative of their true leader.

I had many leads, many ways to begin destroying Underhaven – even if they now knew I was coming for them – and I was committed to seeing this through.

But for tonight, I was done. My previous encounters had taken it out of me and the sun would soon be coming up. I needed to head home and get some much needed rest – hopefully not thinking about the perverse fantasies that Lenny had awoken me to.

I stood vigil over the crime scene until the last of the girls was taken away safely before finally creeping away into the remains of the night.

My journey home took me nearly an hour as I navigated my way around the Azure rooftops. I left Gallowgate behind me and entered the marginally nicer district of Old Town. Once the beating heart at the centre of the emergent city, it was now a forgotten obscurity of cheap residential areas and markets. The place had undeniable character which attracted me to it – but more than that, it was central to the parts of the city that most needed attention like mine. As well as that, the warren-like nature of the Old Town made it perfect for me to quickly and invisibly make my way to and from my home.

I made a final jump between rooftops, using my telekinesis to help me leap that little bit further, and landed on the top of my building. I was situated in a studio apartment – with skylight access – sat just above an old café.

Casting one last look about me, I disengaged the locks of the skylight and dropped into my apartment. It was nice to be back in a familiar space. My clothes were littered about my bedroom, with the rest of the apartment dominated by the painting apparatus I used in my day job. Canvas paintings lay strewn about my living area, with a half-finished painting of a cat still awaiting my return in its easel sat facing my double windows, which looked out onto the Azure skyline.

I reached up with my mind and closed my skylight behind me with a flick of force before I stumbled up to my bedroom. I opened up the built in closet by my bed to reveal a surprisingly expansive walk-in wardrobe that was filled with the heavy black cases I used to transport my serious equipment. Two replacement outfits hung either side of the wardrobe, nearly hidden among the regular clothing they hung besides.

Hardly the elaborate, awe inspiring headquarters that Kamura often joked about getting - but it got me through it.

I didn’t bother turning on the lights; I just started lazily climbing out of my cloths. Letting my cloak pool around my feet, I pulled down the zip on my bodysuit and peeled the tight material off my body, finally getting the chance to let the skin of my legs and arms breathe. Dressed down to my underwear I turned out of the wardrobe and strolled over to my bed, pulling the restrictive fabric of the sports bra over my head as I walked and let it drop haphazardly to the floor before I collapsed into my bed topless.

The feeling of my soft pillows on my face reminded me that I still wore my adhesive mask. I reached up to gingerly peel it off my face before flinging it into my open wardrobe and closing the doors after it with a wave of my hand.

The sun was starting to rise and my apartment was lit in the dull hues of morning twilight as I prepared to drift off to sleep. I toyed with the idea of taking a shower and brushing my teeth to cleanse myself of my earlier experiences, but found that I was too tired and instead resolved to do it when I awoke. I swore I could still taste Lenny’s cock on my tongue and the cloying taste of his cum at the back of my throat.

It was an unpleasant thought, serving to remind of me where tonight had gone – and where it nearly went. As bad as the memory was, I found it still sent a tingling down to my crotch as my body remembered the experience right along with my mind. I squirmed slightly in the bed, having to resist the urge to touch myself, and I guided my mind away from the past – setting it instead on the future.

Letting out a loud sigh, I wrapped myself in my covers and allowed myself to think of all the ways that I would punish Underhaven if I could. I held the thought for a moment before letting the notion go and trying to content myself that simply stopping them and protecting the girls was enough.

As I drifted off to sleep, I found myself wondering about the fiery eyed detective who had seen to Tracy. It was a nice thought to end my day on.

Compassion.

----------------------------------------

Elsewhere…

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes, Shade confirmed it for me twenty minutes ago.’

‘Ah… Did anyone get out?’

‘Malone wasn’t there at the time, so he wasn’t taken in, and it seems like one of the men got away: Lenny Finch, I believe.’

‘I see, and Shade is speaking to Finch now?

‘Yes, Mr. Drake.’

‘Good… I’ll be interested to hear what comes of that. How bad is it?’

‘…’

‘Ms. Weaver? How bad is it?’

‘It is nothing we cannot recover from. We will miss the use of the site more than the loss of what was currently there – but there are plenty other sites we could use.’

‘I’m well aware of that, Ms. Weaver, but I still don’t know how bad our loss is at the depot. Tell me, please.’

‘It is hard to give a precise answer at this time…’

Try.’

‘…Perhaps ninety-five in lost product… a further eleven in lost equipment… the value on the girls is debatable; there were thirteen in all… and of course we lost fifteen men. Added to that, I don’t know what the knock-on effects will be with the police involvement… it will probably effect future sales.’

‘I see… I’ll be honest, Ms. Weaver, I’m not delighted about this. Lohman and Thane will both be displeased – to say nothing of all the small fish that will need appeasing.’

‘Of course, Mr. Drake.’

‘Then again… I suppose they are all more beholden to us than we are to them, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I would.’

‘We did expect this, I suppose. There was always going to be growing pains… Actually… it’s quite exciting, isn’t it?’

‘Sir?’

‘A serious game is afoot here, Ms Weaver; we might be in the fight for our lives. It has been quite some time since we had to get up off our thrones and lock horns with a worthy opponent. There is the chance here to forge ourselves into something stronger… A battle that will end us or see us ascend even higher… A battle with an angel, no less.’

‘You’re being dramatic, sir. The damage done here is entirely short term. We are in no danger and the Pariah is no angel – merely a foolish girl playing games in the night.’

‘I like games in the night… Come to that, so do you; you love games in the night, Ms. Weaver. You can’t fool me, I know you’re excited too.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Hah! You minx! Regardless, I’m intrigued by where this is headed. We have been challenged, and there is a threat here that we need to respond to before it gets any worse. The Pariah scares the people on the street and she has proven herself against others… She seems quite tenacious, don’t you think?’

‘I know nothing about her, sir. I thought she was a rumour in the paper until twenty minutes ago.’

‘Just so… Mysterious, huh? You know, I do believe we could turn the attention of this vigilante to our benefit. Her attack demands a response, don’t you think?’

‘I agree. What would you have me do?’

‘Tell everyone to be on their guard and to ramp up their security – I want her to work for her wins if she wants to keep hitting us. I want you and Shade to make sure the Club and the Sanctum are both safe.’

‘It will be done.’

‘One final thing, Ms. Weaver.’

‘Yes?’

‘Assemble a team, will you? I think it would be poetic if we sent out a hunt to capture our hunter.’

‘As you wish, Mr. Drake.’


******END*******

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*Fireworks and blaring trumpets* I finished a story! It has been many, many moons since I actually started a story and then proceded to complete it. Huzzah!

Ahem.

Anyways... I really hope you guys enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed writing it. Its a weird kind of story to reignite my interest in knuckling down and writing again, but I'll certainly take it. The fifth part was in danger of being quite unwieldy (it may still be) but I just wanted to round off the story in a way that finishes establishing the world here - which is why we, perhaps needlessly, followed Pariah home to see how she is set up.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with how it went. I learned a lot about how I like to tell a story as well as just generally sharpening my craft up a little bit, and I found out that I much prefer writing onto a dark background - who knew? On the note of it being a good learning experience, big thanks goes out to everyone who gave any feedback - getting an idea of how it reads for you guys is massively enlightening to me.

But yeah, I'm quite happy with it... I had a vague idea in mind for what I wanted to contribute when I started this, and I'm pleased to say the story I got at the end pretty much lines up with what I was trying to do. My main regret? Having a key character called 'Pariah', and a key plot mechanic call the 'aria'... man was I trying not to put those two words together in the same sentence!

Moving on...

Okay, so this story is largely an exercise in establishing a longer running story. World building, I guess. With all of that hard work done to create and then introduce Evelyn and Azure as well as some decent baddies - there is now lots of ability for this to be an on going thing. I won't need to do the leg work to establish things in future so anything I do from here would be much more to the point (more like parts 2, 3 and 4 of this story and less like parts 1 and 5) and as such I imagine they will be much more action-packed than this was, with far more opportunity for peril - sexual and nonsexual.

I'm keen as well. I ended this with the clear intention of it leading into another story as Pariah continues to duel with Underhaven, and I'm very much up for that. I've got the wind in my sails at any rate so I think I will crack the whip one more time and then see how we're doing.

Now that I'm at the asking questions bit: I'm keen to hear if anyone has any requests or suggestions for what they'd like to see in the next story. I've got a vague idea of what kind of people will appear in this team being assembled, but I'm totally open to input. I'm also still curious where people like to draw the line with their peril: how much further or less far they'd like to see things go in future. Finally, any and all feedback is most welcome.

If you managed to read the whole thing from the very start to this line right here, then I think you probably deserve a medal for being a total champ, so here it is:

*Awards medal of pure awesomeness*

See? Totally worth it now! But seriously... thanks for your time.

Carry on to the second chapter here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22272
Last edited by Void 7 years ago, edited 5 times in total.
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valugi
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Your story was really very good, I've given you some of my ideas, feel free to use it, I'll be reading the beginning of the next story of pariah
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tallyho
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Only just got around to finishing this. Really good work, well structured, well described, well written.
Liked the build ups to her almost breaking free before she succumbed again, very well described. Nice work all round.
How strange are the ways of the gods ...........and how cruel.

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