Murder in Rukan

Bounty information: local women, age varying from late teens to early twenties have been mysteriously vanishing. Several have been seen in the company of a hooded person or persons unknown. Last sight of the girls in the Rukan District, where one witness saw one girl entering an apartment complex with a person matching the description. Take dead or alive, preferably alive for identification. Bring any evidence obtained. Price- 20,000 pieces.

As the details of the crime swirled in his head, the Dark Eye did not bother to turn towards the closet in the corner; he could see the piles of bodies stuffed within when he simply adjusted his cowl. Instead, he tiptoed in the direction of a cracked mirror on the other side of the room. The bounty he had taken on from the office downtown had led him to this house, although it had taken some persuasion tactics upon the populace to gain even basic information about the murder case.

Killer is most likely male, he thought. An easy guess, as most serial killers were, but he also reserved the idea it could be a woman. He glanced around the bedroom, and gathered further clues. On the mirror’s table’s edge were several coloring agents for hair, all held in tonic bottles. Killer dyes their hair blond, he decided, as the bottle for the blond tonic was the most used, with only half the bottle remaining. The man leaned closer to the mirror’s jagged surface, and bent down to inspect it. It must have been broken in one of the struggles, and the fact that the murderer had not replaced it indicated that the damage had been recent. Spotting blood on one of the broken edges, the Dark Eye added to his theory. Killer has an injury, sustained to the back of the head, judged the dark ronin from the circular smash in the center. The Dark Eye shifted up and, having given the mirror adequate attention, moved his focus to the group of women stuffed in the closet.

The smell was profound, he had been trying to ignore it since he had arrived. Corpses, regardless of the care and attention of some funeral preparations, always smelt of decomposition. These eight, it seemed, had had the least possible care administered after death, and reeked of decay and dried internal fluids. The closet was small and rectangular, with very damp walls, probably from the effects of the rotting flesh inside. The women themselves varied in appearance, depending on the amount of time that had passed since their death. One looked decent, only about a day or two dead, while others were barely passable as human. This one must have been the one that fought... It was likely because, even in death, the Dark Eye could still see the muscles that she had trained with. The man noted for further reference that their clothes were gone, and that all of them had dull bruises along their necks and wrists, before moving on. Death by strangulation.

The bed was untouched, and the only clean thing about the messy apartment, its crimson covers very neatly laid out and made. He dismissed it, finding nothing that could help him, and was about to begin searching the rest of the room when he heard the unmistakable sound of something smashing in the nearby hallway. He froze, unsure if the sound had come from something naturally, or if the murderer had returned to their lair.

The Dark Eye, making less sound than the tiniest mouse, dropped his arm to his side. He was not worried about the intruder seeing him for two reasons: he had not turned on the lights when he arrived and, more importantly, he had natural camouflage when it came to his attire. His reddish-brown hair was well hidden in the shadows, with a few hair just grazing the surface of the ceiling. His clothes, all black, concealed his massive body, so he drew his enormous coat about his body with his good right arm, hiding the green Eye in the center of his belt, the only thing that could be seen in the darkness. Never make yourself known to a potential threat. All but invisible, he allowed the smallest droplet of grey metal to form on his forearm, and drip down the unexposed palm of his right glove. He willed it to generate more density, so he could attach a line of his metal skin to the nearby wall. The silver coil stretched through the air, latching against the shadowed wall. The Dark Eye’s vision changed completely, moving from the tough fabric of his faceless mask to the walls of the house. He watched the intruder, a woman, move from room to room, armed with some sort of technology on her arms. He waited, maintaining absolute control over even the smallest motions of his body, in silence, as the woman now moved from the hallway at the beginning of the house towards the bedroom.

He would incapacitate her when she dropped her guard. This bounty is mine. As the door of the bedroom opened, tendrils of metal began to emerge from the man’s neck and back, stretching through the darkness along the ceiling to their prey. The only sound was the open window, which the Dark Eye had used to enter the house, and the breeze that fluttered in from the quiet night.

“I’m... J... What’s your name?” he asked with a slight, uneasy smile. Roery considered his hand for a second, and finally took it.

“Roery.” The word came out sweetly. J leaned back and pulled his arm up, hoisting the girl up to her feet. He seemed to expect a little more help from the blond in this process, as he nearly lost his balance half way up, but then righted himself again and pulled his arm up higher. Roery was far to deep in thought to acknowledge this as she found herself standing upright.

She absentmindedly started to peal the hart monitoring patches off of her skin while she continued to stair around the room, not really taking in much as she was in somewhat of a daze. She then found J’s hand on her arm and looked down to see why he had put his hand there, and in the process found that she had lost her balance, and had been about to fall over. Her eyebrows raised slightly at realizing just how out of it she really was. despite her best efforts, her mind would not keep a solid thought flowing for more then a second.

“...You alright?” J asked concernedly.

“Yeah... I’m...” she said softy as she attempted to focus her vision on anything. Finally, her eyes settled on J. “I’ll be fine.” She said with a somewhat weak smile. J returned it with a concerned smile of his own.

“So...” J turned his attention back to the small, blocked off corridor that they were in. It was obvious that there where now doors, or hidden passage ways on his side of the room, which left only one place to search; the runes of the collapsed ceiling that blocked them off from the rest of the hallway. The mountain of concrete boulders and wood and metal beams were packed tight together, stretching all the way up to the non-broken part of the ceiling.

Roery came to the conclusion that she was suffering the affects of a concussion. She had had one before, during a soccer game, and the feeling she had now was much the same as that experience. She didn’t know what day it was, she didn’t know how she got to where she was now, she didn’t remember putting on those strange clothes... or lack there of.

No... A concussion was much too minor of an action to produce this outcome. It had to be something far more. It might have been that she was drugged... or perhaps kidnapped...

The blond girl felt nauseous at the thought of this. She put a hand to her head and rubbed her temple, still trying to figure out just what had happened to her. Maybe there was a memory she had not come across yet. Something that would help this all make sense...

“Hey...” J kept his mouth open, trying to find the right words to say, but nothing came to mind. He closed his mouth again, and turned his body away from the rubble that he had been inspecting. Frowning slightly, he turned his head back to the barricade. He raised his eyebrows as he remembering what he had been about to say to her before her troubled posture had distracted him.

Looking back at her with a small smile, he said: “I... I think I might have found a way out.”

Roery drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness. She opened her eyes wider at realizing what J had just said. She looked ahead of her.

No, that doesn’t make sense... she was looking at a tree. What was a tree doing there? Where was J...? And why was she looking up at a tree... from the ground? Her eyes widened and she sat up abruptly. She was in a grassy nook in a small gathering of trees, and she was wearing her tan capri’s and a cyan top with a quicksilver logo on the front.

It was just a dream… that dream again...

It felt as if her hart had just dropped into her stomach, an incredible weight pulled her shoulders down and bowed her head. Her throat was dry and choked, her eyes worthless. Slowly at first, and then so fast it almost hurt, she fall back down into her makeshift bed. The young woman closed her emerald eyes tightly and curled up on her side, a tear welling up under her closed eyelids. She couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand being able to see J right in front of her, only to snap back to reality and realize she that she had not seen him in months... and would never see him again...

The blond haired girl sniffled and closed her eyes tighter. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, almost shivering, despite the fact that it was a perfectly comfortable tempter outside. The grief stricken young woman laid there for a few hours. She did not sleep, and as much as she hated it, her mind never wandered to far away from the dream she had just had.

Slowly. Very slowly. She found the motivation to sit up. Roery took a deep breath and opened her eyes, focusing on the lush landscape in an attempted to clear her mind. It hurt too much to keep dwelling on her current thoughts. There was no point in grieving herself with them. She had to get up and move on with her day.

<~~~~~~~~~>

Roery had spent most of the day ridding to Rukan, and arrived in the afternoon. After she reached the town, it didn’t take her too long to scout out the house that the killer was supposedly occupying.

She had read a sign about this bounty in the last town. The main reasons she had decided to pursue the murderer were simple: She had staid at this town before. (Not for very long, but at least she knew her way around.) She simply hated they idea of a rapist with every fiber of her being. (She had done away with a few of them back on her home planet.) She was completely capable at handling anyone that came against her. And last but not least, she needed money, as she had almost none, and had spent the last night sleeping under a tree. It had been a relatively comfortable sleeping spot, plus she was used to it by now, but it was a tree nonetheless.

The female soldier approached the house. Her head still wasn’t all that clear from that morning. Otherwise she might have chosen a better option then to enter the house from the front door, and maybe she wouldn’t have knocked over a lamp and table the second she entered the residence. The blond shut her eyes tightly, instinctively activating her armor as the lamp shattered on the ground. She cursed herself for being so clumsy and out of it. Of all times to daze off and stumble about, this was one of the worst times.

She stood there, stiff, for several second, a constant wince plastered to her face. After several seconds passed, and there was not one sound in to be head within the entire household, Roery relaxed a little. Only two conditions stood before her now. Either there was actually no one in the house, or in the vicinity of the house, or someone had heard the loud crash, and maybe noticed the brief glow that her armor let off as it was activated, and they were now staying silent, hidden somewhere inside the house. The second option unnerved her slightly, but there was no turning back now.

The green eyed female made her way cautiously though the house. Subconsciously, her sunglasses activated, extending from her ear covers to slide over her eyebrows, and the lenses sliding over her emerald eyes. It was already quiet dark in the house, as the sun was creeping behind the horizon. Good thing her glasses provided an assortment of viewing filters. Without thinking it, her vision changed to pick up every single ray of light, affectivity giving her perfect night vision.

She had made her way to the rear of the house by now, nothing she had seen so far was out of the ordinary much, except of course the potent smell of dead bodies. Her acute sense of smell lead her exactly to the source. Nausea crept over her mind as the smell got worse, but she couldn’t let that distract her now. She kept a keen eye out for anything and everything, making sure she was at least ready, should she be ambushed. Her vision changed once more, picking up every heat signature in her sight, and immediately she noticed the source of the smell. Through the wall, into the rear most bedroom, and in the closet, were a gruesome pile of dead bodies. They gave off a very faint distinction in color, but it was a distinction enough. Thankfully, the bodies were severely blurred by several layers of wall that stood between her and the dead victims.

And of course, it was hard for her not to notice the giant that was in the same room. His heat signature wasn’t human and he was standing utterly still. So someone had head the crash. Roery continued to move forward. She had had much practice with exactly what she was doing right now. Her head looked from side, her stride barely fluctuating this hole time, yet her eyes, unseen through her tinted glasses, focused only on the man in the room. This made sure that even if he could somehow see her, there was almost no chance that he knew that she could see him.

The female soldier turned to walk into the bedroom, dropping her guns into her hands at the same instant, and raised them to what she thought was the rapist before her. Two load explosions went off as the plasma disks erupted from the barrel of each gun, spinning and ripping their way to the dark man before her. Her expression was stern and unrelenting. Her green eyes solely focused on the large figure before her, oblivious to the tendrils of metal that lurked overhead. If this really was the rapist, the one that had assaulted and killed the woman that now laid dead in the closet—which she had almost no doubt in her mind that he was—she just might kill him here and now.

OoC: Just so everyone knows, the dream part is what happens right after the dream part in my first tourney post, only its continued from Roery's prospective.

OoC: Even if he is tricked, Chronos never goes down without fighting!

BiC:

Chronos was surprised when he discovered she could see him. He realized darkness had failed to conceal him when he noticed the glowing lights blazing towards him from the apparatus on her arms. He ducked, which was only natural, given that plasma was warm enough to vaporize his metal skin, and brought his good right arm up to grasp a simply massive staff that was attached to the spine of his trench coat. His green Eye blazed through the darkness, free from beneath his clothes, as the disks connected with the drywall behind the dark ronin, exploding on impact and leaving a gaping hole. Chronos, unaffected by the blast, decided it would best to go on the offensive.

Her suit is crafted from technology… The Arm Striker isn’t reacting to any magical presence. And it wasn’t. The strange, intricate purple lines that adorned its surface were not glowing as they often did when Chronos fought anyone. Her weapons are designed for outdoors. Corner her. The Dark Eye, never a coward in combat, unleashed his own weapons against the girl. Tendrils that trailed the ceiling spiked down and wrapped themselves around the woman, forcibly binding her shoulders in a position that Chronos could better ‘handle’ her in. Even with one hand swinging it, the Arm Striker still packed a punch. Aim for the fleshy parts. A dull thwack echoed through the bedroom as Chronos delivered a blow to her face that could have downed an elephant, and only the MetaSkin that anchored her prevented the girl from ricocheting through the apartment’s frail walls.

Normally, that would have been it. Few fighters could go toe-to-toe with the Dark Eye, but that exclusive club that used to house so few grew each day. The girl not only looked back up, though Chronos could see that it was with slight effort, as her left eye was stained black along with much of her face. He had not anchored her arms to her shoulders, so she lifted her arms up, aiming her arm-blasters at his tendrils. The plasma blasts shot out again, and the ebon knight withdrew his tendrils, not wanting his precious skin vaporized. Collateral damage again took its toll on the small apartment, but this time the ceiling began to cave in, and debris littered the atmosphere of the battlefield. Inwardly, he cursed the girl’s foolishness in attacking him. Now it’s going to be even harder to bring in any evidence, he grumbled, and twirled the metal staff above his head to protect his clothes from any heavy debris that rained down on him. She was widening the playing ground, he realized, to play to her strengths. A sink fell from the apartment above, which Chronos could only assume was empty, and shattered to pieces against the sleek silver surface of the Arm Striker. A slight mist from a broken pipe above them signaled trouble, so Chronos decided to leave the bedroom before he rusted. The girl had done the same, fleeing to the living area of the apartment, so he followed her example.

His footsteps were heavy now, confident and terrifying. In other fights, he had relied on the concept that, if his opponents feared him, he would be able to fight them while they wrestled with their fear. She was not afraid, he could see the determination in her eyes. Chronos stepped into the living room, where she waited on the other side, in front of a portrait of a probably-deceased member of the murderer’s family, judging from the style of the painting. He had ruled out the girl as the murderess, simply because of her actions. She is here in the same capacity as I am, he thought. And she is ruining my investigation.

The murderer had taken very specific care of his decorum, probably to relax their victims before the women were killed. Two sofas, colored crimson like the bed, stood between Chronos and the bounty huntress. What appeared to be numerous cushions and pillows littered the majority of the floor, which was covered in a fine shag carpet. To the side of the room stood a small bar, presumably installed to further intoxicate victims. A violin sat in a chair to the side of the room, as did some rotten food. The murderer does not live here. They only brings victims here, and leave for their real place of residence when the deed is done. The food was some stale cheese, which was also caught in the air amidst the dust of plaster and the smell of death that hung around the house.

With the new information, he noticed that the girl was waiting, sizing up what a threat he would be. He could see she had already forgotten about the bounty, her stance giving away her sole focus on fighting him. Chronos, already prepared with metal generated onto his right arm’s wrist and along his back, brought up the Arm Striker with his one arm. She fired at him with her disks, her strategy had not changed. This time his did.

Using the Arm Striker as a bat, the Dark Eye smashed through one disk of energy after the next in his haste to close the gap between them. He no longer cared about preserving the stability of the building, figuring that, if the killer did not live here, it was only a matter of time until they could be tracked to a new location, and increase the odds of confirming an identity. He approached her rapidly, and she kept backing up, eventually trapped against the wall. Burst of energy exploded around both, and the seductive décor of the room was laid to waste as Chronos batted the exploding disks away from himself with the unbreakable metal staff.

He threw the Arm Striker, something he had never tried before, connected to it only by a lithe, but dense, strand of MetaSkin that slipped off his forefinger. It buried itself into the wall just where the bounty huntress’ head had been only a moment before. She had dodged, and Chronos spotted some sort of jet propulsion activate in her boots, giving her the boost of speed necessary to best the Dark Eye. The moment she was airborne, Chronos set his trap into play. The tendrils from his back struck at the ceiling right above her, and a second strand of metal from his hand smashed through a chink in the armor’s right boot. The metal pierced skin this time, digging into the tendon of her foot and damaging the fragile bones. She cried out in pain, one of the first sounds he had heard from her besides breathing. He watched as she collided with the ground, her rockets deactivating instantly.

Then Chronos, who saw the crack he had created from digging the Arm Striker through the already unstable building foundation, retrieved his weapon, and allowed the tendrils on his back to rain down the ceiling atop his foe, who was soon lost in an avalanche of broken mortar and pieces of shattered tile.