Snippet #1214187

(Melody Wiesse, 1st District, Melody's Residence)

Melody shook her head, staring down the defiantly confident woman in front of her. She wouldn't blink; neither of them would. "If you've nothing more to say, I suggest you leave," Melody ventured. Silence. In a tone riding the border between boredom and annoyance, she purred, "Well, then; you've found my door. I trust you can find it again?"

Lilliana didn't budge. Melody stared as an angry, dangerous sort of distaste crept over her ivory face. Then, slowly she did a strange thing; breaking her stare with a "hmph," she licked her finger; quickly twirling her wine glass, she traced its rim with a rather apathetic though concentrated air. The glass began to sing; low and sweet, a long pure note bounced about the room.

The room shuddered slightly, a light breeze picked up. Golden glowing circles formed; around the wine glass, along the edge of the circular room, and in particular in the tiles around Lilliana. More music began to join the note; whether it was Melody humming or singing or something else entirely, it was too hard to tell in the rush. In a few refrains, the music and circles were gone--along with Lilliana.

In the new silence, Melody smiled to herself; though seeing the others' expressions, she said, "What? Don't look at me like that; I haven't killed her, just... relocated her, is all." She sounded out of breath. Topping off Crawford's glass again, she then filled her own and downed it eagerly.

(Zack Reynolds, 2nd District, Abandoned Building)

Wherever the follower was, he apparently hadn't reached the elevator shaft yet. Zack found it odd, considering that he'd been making so much noise as his metal limbs stabbed and pried at the bottom of the elevator cab; though he didn't dwell on it--it was hard to concentrate on anything for long right now, anyway. The floor had been torn out of the cab in a few seconds regardless, and it fell, ringing and clanging, down the many floors below. That should surprise whoever was following.

Moving fluidly through the hole and on to the floor, he proceeded to work on sending the rest of the surprise--the rest of the elevator--when something caught him by surprise from behind. It only took a single touch, because whatever had touched him was generating electricity somehow. In a rush, all the buzzing noises and images, prompts and strange feelings left Zack's head; the spidery metal legs even retracted. "Wait! What..." a metal conduit still extended from Zack's chest to what at first looked like thin air; though now as electricity rippled through him and back, he could see the shimmering outline of a human form. "Oh... Kay..."