Coming Back(Knives)

OoC: Yay, in medias res.

The room had been abuzz with the constant whirring of generators before. The silence throughout it now was a stark contrast. There was no one to be found inside or outside of this room. Nothing was moving or had been moving for at least a week in here. This room seemed like a twenty foot tall cylinder with dozens of wires all running to the very center.

At the very center of all of the wires, hung ten feet high in the air was a lifeless body of an old man. Cables running to generators were all attached to the body's hands and feet. The cables held him in the air by his arms, and his head slumped over with bushy white hair going down over the top of his face. The body was wearing just a black sleeveless shirt and denim pants.

Suddenly, a beat from his body. The man's body seemed to be convulsing suddenly. As his body stopped moving and the cables stopped after, the man opened his eyes. He steadily regained consciousness and looked around him to take in the pitch black of the room.

"The hell?"

He looked down towards the door he had come through, and he saw it was open but there was no light coming through there either.

"Great, stop my heart for a while and instead of pulling me down they abandon the place. Perfectly logical. ANYONE OUT THERE?!"

With so little noise he could even hear his voice echoing outside the room.

"Son, of, a, *****. Well maybe they'll notice this."

The old man concentrated as hard as he could to muster up the electrical power he had been suspended here for in the first place. Barely a flicker started in the nearest lights in the room and in the hallways. He could only keep this up with a strained face for half a minute before giving up.

"Too ****ing tired...Well, this sucks."

Knives had been contacted on a lazy Sunday afternoon. She was lounging at a tea-shop by the seaside, and lifted her arm from over her eye when the shadow of a figure cross over her closed eyelids. The demoness took a few whiffs of the air and twitched her nose in disapproval of the scent. The scent of filth: Humans. No matter how much you bathed and scrubbed a human, they would always have the stench of filth.

Her unnaturally crimson irises came to rest upon the shoddy figure of a scruffy young man dressed in black studded armor. A rogue. Lazily, she stretched and slid a hand down to her hip, fingers brushing up against the hilt of her sword. The human's eyes became fixed on the sword, and he put his hands up in a passive defense.

"I'm just here to deliver information to you, and to bring back an answer to the boss, that's all!" The darkly clad human spoke quickly, backing away a good few feet, still keeping his hands out in front of him to show he was harmless.

"Speak, then...Quickly." The lounging woman spoke, still not taking her hand away from her hilt of her sword.

"Sylaster, my boss, has heard of your murderous prowess, and wants to commission you as a personally hired mercenary to go out and kill all the military personnel in a chain of mountain bases about a week's journey to the East. He will pay you graciously, and all your food and lodging and any medical that may need to be performed will be all expenses paid for." He cringed for a moment in anticipation of her answer being the slice of a blade to his pale, fleshy neck.

Knives relaxed her arm and allowed her body to slide up the chair into a more alert and ready position. She furrowed her brow for a moment before gazing up at the young man.

"And how much compensation for my time will I be endowed?" She quirked an eyebrow and poured herself more tea into a small, black, shiny, and perfectly cylindrical cup.

"Half of the current fortune that has been saved for this very purpose before, and half after."

"...No numbers...?" She inquired, one eyebrow pulling up even further at him.

"I do not know, but you can take that up with th'boss upon arriving."

He proceeded to hand her a rolled stack of finely drawn maps and several letters addressed to her, The 'Lady Knives Eclipses.' She studied them after dismissing him with a sack of gold coin as a tip for bringing the message and for a quicker and safer journey home.

What would take a week for a human to travel this distance, it would only take her three and a half days to get to the first of many towers that would soon be slaughterhouses.

White-out conditions in these mountains was the perfect happenstance, as she had been told to plan for cold weather, and possibly snow. She took that as a "There's going to be snow," and in preparation had a reversible cloak made: black on the inside, white on the outside.

The towers became the tomb for many, and a nightmare for all. Claws would rip through innards, dismantle body parts and mutilate countless faces. It did not matter if they were innocent, or the filthiest scum of the military, they'd bleed the same blood and die the same puddles in the end.

Not a single life in any of the guarded towers was spared, but as she went further back she noticed that the amount of men in each tower was weaning. Then she came to the ghost triangle of towers that littered a large but open quad-like area.

She inspected the first two, and both were dilapidated and unused, as if an emergency or panic had happened and everyone, absolutely everyone had evacuated. The normally dark woman was cloaked in white, matching the almost silver-white metal of the walls inside of the two towers she had already been into.

This third tower seemed a bit different, as if it was meant for harboring patients and doing experiments, whether it was on humans or non-humans she could not really tell, but at this point it didn't matter because there was no one here at all. Her eyes scanned over the debris filled hallways and she walked as near-quietly as possible, eyes constantly searching the walls for shadows or any changes in light.

None came, and not a single sound could be heard in the mind-shattering silence. Not even the sound of any air blowing through the main air conditioning system could be heard. The building didn't even dare to breathe a breath.

However, there was a specific room at the end of the hallway of the only section of this place had no power, and it caught her attention.

At one point, a huge amount of sparks seemed to flood from the walls around her, which put her on extreme edge. She was definitely not expecting this place to just simultaneously burst with an electrical surge.

While it jolted the demoness, it only took its time to surge through her body, not to cause any damage.

She headed silently down the hallway, and kept even more silent upon entering the room. Once her eyes adjusted to the complete darkness of the room, she could see a figure strung up in the middle of the room. Wires flooded from what seemed to be surgical implants peeking out from under his skin.

Knives gazed at the figure of the man, and analyzed his scent further. He was an older fellow--and he had been here for a while, also, abandoned for a while. Recently he was conscious, but she couldn't tell how conscious he was, or just how much of a delirium he could have possibly been in. He definitely was not dead, but he was quite close to it, she could smell it clearly.

As she held out one of her hands, violet bolts of electricity began to crackle around the obsidian ball of energy that had appeared. She grabbed a nearby plug and ripped it out, then placed her hand over the outlet and allowed the power to crackle and flow into the wires behind, travelling the mazes of the walls and sparking unnatural life into the depleted generators spread throughout the complex.

The lights were a dramatic change for her eyes, and she hissed and put an arm across her face to shelter her sensitive eyes from the bright white light that surged into the room. The whizzing, buzzing sound of electronics working all around her filled her ears, and all at once a new experience threatened to overwhelm her sense for but only a moment.

She waited for her vision to clear to see if the hanging body would have any sort of reaction to the immense amount of light that now surrounded its sickly, pale, frame.

Suddenly Dybia felt an intense pain along with a large rush of energy running into him. He was able to move again, but the pain from the sudden surge left him thrashing trying to get it to stop. He was able to painfully rip his left arm free from the wires that were buried into his forearm. The skin ripped in lines as it came loose. With a free arm he was able to more smoothly pull the wires from his right arm.

When he pulled the last wires were pulled from his arms his upper body was no longer held up, and as he flipped forward his weight yanked the buried wires from his calves. He hit the floor hard and face first. He stayed still on the floor for just a few moments breathing heavily from the pain in his arm. After calming down he began running his hand up and down his left arm sealing the skin shut with his electricity. After a couple of seconds of this he noticed the feeling of his hand actually on his arm. His gauntlets were gone.

"That...isn't good."

He had been in the dark for some time and could barely see anything around him now. As his vision cleared he scooted his way to the nearest wall and slumped against it, still pulsing power into his arm to stop the bleeding and numb the pain. He looked up and saw a tall woman in the room with him now who was wearing a white winter outfit.

"Who the hell are you?"

Knives' vision was excellent as always in the darkness, so she enjoyed with only the lack of color, the mutilation of his arms from the deep buried wires. The smell of his blood was only a tad different from the blood that she was covered in. The human wouldn't have been able to see it in the dark, so she flipped a nearby switch, the violet orb of energy still sparking at the outlet. The bright, fluorescent lights came on without delay, but Knives had foreseen this and closed her eyes tightly, then slowly opened them so they'd be able to adjust.

The man seemed scrawny, and now that he was bleeding and she was curious, she thought she could ask questions and then heal him in return for any useful answers. Her lips parted to speak, but before she made another sound he ripped the wires out of his legs too and face-planted at her feet. He was silent and still for a few moments before moving his hands over his arms, and she could hear sparks of electricity, and the sealing of flesh.

At this she raised an eyebrow. It seemed as though this man was being used as a source of electricity--but perhaps it didn't last very long at all--due to the fact that this place in particular was abandoned.

"Who the hell am I?" She inquired in a husky, curious, sarcastic tone, "Well it seems as though I am your savior, now aren't I?" She laughed softly and watched him slump up against the wall.

"Well hey, if you happen to try and save me again, how about a warning?"

Dybia's legs still had a strong prickling feeling running through them. He couldn't remember how long he'd been strung up. He stared down as he rubbed his legs trying to wake them up. The person in front of him wasn't after him. The only people who knew he was here had left. Probably thinking he was dead.

"So, better question. Why are you here? Not many ways to know about this place," feeling just a bit rude he continued "My name is Dybia by the way. And thanks."

He kept rubbing his legs, trying to use his electricity to get them back into walking shape. The whole time he was still worried over his missing gauntlets.

Knives let out a small chuckle at the man's comment.

"You did not smell dead, so I had to be cautious. I do not know anything about these metal and wire contraptions, so it is not like I would be prepared if you were to attack me."

But she shrugged it off. She didn't feel the need to explain herself any further than she already had. Way back when, she wouldn't bother explaining anything at all, and would simply ignore the comment and move on.

Dealing with so many humans and inhumans, and having to be social changed her mind a bit. She didn't mind talking so much, it was just unnecessary small-talk and arguing that irked her sometimes.

"Humans and inhumans both pay me large sums of money to kill for them. It just so happens all the people I needed to kill were in these mountains." Her eyes wandered curiously across his body, focusing mostly on his hands which she could see small sparks of electricity emanating from.

"You may call me Knives. Now why were you here?"