Cain Merrano's Story

While all this was going on a, a brown haired man entered the arena, strode to the center, looked up at the sky, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. "HEY REND! MIND TELLING ME WHAT THE HELL YOU DID TO MY POWERS?! THEY AREN'T WORKING RIGHT AND I DON'T HAVE TO PATIENCE TO FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT!"

He then lowered his hands and head, brushed his hands off on the t-shirt he was wearing, and spun around 360 degrees, waving. "Hello everyone!" he called out. "Sorry about that. Rend decided my powers made stuff too easy so I don't have them anymore!" he announced, looked around once more, and trotted to the group arguing about location. "Missed the first part of the argument, so explain to me why making camp out in a desert -and yes, I checked- is better than in a place with walls and a roof defense? But loudly okay? You're all really unobservant, because a guy fell from the sky over there, and with the yelling going on, you'd think it would draw heads. Aaaaand there's kinda a girl drowning over there, I'm going to go help out, so yell your explanation." he then moved over to the girl in the mask, where another was already lifting her out of the water and onto a drier piece of land.

"Does she have water in her lungs?" he asked with concern. "Or do you want to lie her down?" He asked Dawn, his powers clearly not working right, or future sight would have already given him the answer, instead of him waiting for the answer like a normal person.

An argument- a polite one, as one would expect from the vampire, but an argument nonetheless- was on Madison’s lips in response to Rasteva’s. He had been ready to point out the position of the sun in the sky, note that he only thought that the arena would make a better camp for the night instead of the outside- after all, as he had mentioned earlier, there was far more defense in the construct than going out in the open. Someone, he would have said, could have stood watch, and awoken the others if necessary. It could serve as a base until they had come up with a proper course of action, instead of merely charging out into the wilds completely unprepared.

However, he had no chance to say any of this, for as soon as the first syllable had sounded into the air, Madison had found himself abruptly carrying the weight of another out of nowhere. He stumbled, hands moving to secure his hat to his head before he collided with the ground. Hopefully, he thought, the dog wouldn’t end up injured in his fall- she was quite the sweet thing, after all, and it would be a shame if she getting hurt.

Luckily, from what he could see, she had managed to get away before he had fully hit the tile- while she was obviously startled by the suddenness of what had happened. Smiling at the creature, Madison moved to lift himself from the ground, finding it a much easier task when the weight rolled from his back. Curious as to see what had fallen onto him, he rose, brushing himself off as he looked down at the being.

It was another humanoid, by the looks of it. Not human, that was for sure- his scent gave him away as something...else, although Madison could not tell- but humanoid enough, especially when in comparison to some of their other company. The man had no wings, however, making it a bit of a puzzle as to how he had ended up so far in the air anyway. The researcher looked up, peering at the clouds above for a moment before lowering himself a little and extending a hand to help the fellow up.

“Well, that was quite the entrance you made!” He said chipperly, apparently not fazed at all by having someone fall onto him. “Are you alright, there? It seemed you landed a bit hard, there.” Seeing as he had not had the chance to answer his other companion before the little surprise, Madison briefly turned his head, flashing a smile at Verge yet again.

“At any rate, my name’s Madison. She may have known about what our host had intended, although she had left too soon for me to really tell-”

It was this moment that Madison had laid eyes upon the odd shadow that had begun to dance about Verge, causing another flare of goodnatured curiosity in his features. He didn’t get the chance to ask what it was (a shame this kept happening, really, he needed to sit some of these people down and properly interview them) before the sound of shouting rose into the air. Blinking, he looked over, took sight of the person- a human, most likely-, and regarded them for a few moments before turning back to the one on the ground. Didn’t want to leave him hanging, after all.

Nevertheless, it was still rude to ignore someone, so Madison once again raised his voice in order to properly reply. “Our company has a feeling that we’ll end up in more danger here than outside, because they believe that this world is made up of parts of ours.” An odd logic, really, given that there was no evidence of such an idea, but there was no point trying to figure out a puzzle that didn’t need to be solved so shortly. “They also think we should all split up for the time being- and, oh, I'm fine, Kora, thank you for asking."

A bit of a summary for both him, as well as any who had missed a majority of the argument. It wasn' t the most complete, really, but as long as they were there, they would have to learn how to work together on short notice.

Khojin extended her arms to her sides and looked very deliberately at Rasteva. Taken together, her stance positively screamed 'what did i fucking say'. She dropped her arms, making some noise of irritation deep in her throat.

"Me an' Adira can scout the area, maybe try 'n' find Metal Man Shark Slayer. It'll be faster with jus' the two of us." She gave Rasteva another look, this one less irritated. "Sorry, big guy. You'd prob'ly be more hindrance than help. Do try to get this," she gestured vaguely at the whole group. "Sorted before we get back, please."

She stepped past the large armor and the girl with the lizard, flicking her lightly on the arm in a 'let's get going' kind of way. She made for the gate quickly, eager to be doing something that did not involve circular arguments. She gave a brief "yo" to the winged boy as she passed him, utterly disinterested in whatever drama he'd gotten himself into in the past ten minutes. She hopped over the remains of the unfortunate shark and was out the gate with nary a passing glance to see if Adira had followed along, only expecting she'd opted for the path of least boring conversation the way Khojin had.

Boy howdy it sure was a desert outside. The strange way the heat inside the arena had felt was instantly replaced with the standard beating heat she expected of this sort of arid environment. She also noticed the arena was not quite as flat as she'd expected; once outside the walls, she saw it sat on a narrow plateau, with the desert floor falling away hundreds of feet below. The plateau was connected to various others by a system of narrow stone platforms and wooden bridges, likely left by Rend to provide them with a route down to terra firma. Barren sand and scrub stretched out for what seemed to be malms around, but given the nature of this world Khojin doubted they would truly have to travel that far to reach the edge.

She supposed the view was nice, she had to give Rend credit for that.

---

Azai's narrowed eyes scanned the rather numerous members of this arena at a bit of a loss. Most had ignored his appearance which suited him just fine in this situation. At this point, being ignored or missed was a good thing. That meant he could find his way out of this situation as quickly as possible without being attacked or something. Then he could sit in a corner and watch what was happening and try and piece together the events. Right now, absolutely nothing was making sense. There was a tin can speaking about powers and talking in the third person maybe? She was odd. There were a wide range of humans and non-human looking things around and some had wings to. He couldn't tell who was friend and who was foe in this situation. He couldn't be back at the manor that was for sure. Kenner would not approve of this and though the man had threatened to put him in the arena if he didn't shape up, this wasn't the arena he spoke of.

The spider began to calm and shift out of his defensive position. Without everyone distracted he could slip away. Unfortunately a couple did spot him and spoke to him. The one he fell on even extended a hand towards him. He instantly crouched and hissed, baring his fangs again in panicked defense. He glanced to the side when he heard a commotion and saw a couple of people saving a stranger from drowning but quickly put that out of mind. That didn't concern him. He turned his gaze back to creature that extended a hand towards him and sniffed the air. Huh. Strange. He smelled male. Why did he wear female attire? It did look good on him but he was sure a male's outfit or perhaps something more revealing would suit him just as well. Azai's own clothing was airy and exposed to show off the elegant markings on his body. Kenner had refused to allow him the gems that normally adorned his body to accent them, but whatever.

He glanced at the two that had spoken to him. One had asked about his name and baggage? Was he talking about that thing that had fallen on him? Why did he want his baggage? He didn't know what was in it, but still. He said he didn't want to harm him but he did call up that... thing. Whatever it was. It was shadowed but it didn't look very friendly. Its motions confused the shit out of him though. What did he want? Verge... that was an interesting name to. He wasn't sure how he wanted to respond.

"Who are you people?" he asked the strangers then. "What is happening? Desert outside?" He glanced around at everyone again and backed away a bit to keep people in his line of sight. He didn't trust any of these people. That voice had said they were from different worlds. That meant he wouldn't know anything about these creatures. But if there was a desert outside, he preferred being in here. there were darker corners that he could tuck himself away in. It was safer than the open. He didn't care if these people died. If they died, more food for him. He didn't exactly want to go back to his world either. This place meant he was free from slavery. He glanced down at the black ribbon on his arm marking him as a black-tier slave. He grinned. He didn't need that anymore. He quickly ripped it off and let it fall to the floor.

Perhaps he wouldn't be attacked. No one here seemed to be attacking each other. He straightened himself slowly. He could easily spring and run away if he needed to. "Madison was it? Interesting...And Verge..." he mused. "You may call me Azai. Why are you wearing female clothing, Madison?" He glanced at Verge again. "And what is that shadow thing? Is that part of you?"

Even with Stride’s face still completely hidden, it didn’t exactly take rocket science to tell she wasn’t pleased at Khojin’s choice in team-building. Another snort had broken free from the hybrid- this one more of indignation than anything- and, uncrossing her arms, took a step forward before voicing her opinion on the matter.

“Look, Kho-gin, you’re kinda fucked up, but you’re still pretty cool. But she,” a jerk of a thumb in the direction of Adira, “actin’ like she’s, uh, havin’ her ‘time ‘a the month’, and Alphonse over there reminds me too much of a patronizing dick I work with. Gotta pass on that, sorry.” As the dragon rider of the two went on to speak of her various list of abilities, Stride couldn’t help but wish in the back of her head that the girl was a guy; if she had been, Stride could have whipped out several “overcompensation” jokes by now.

Nevertheless, she didn’t get to lament the wasted opportunities for long, as another, more interesting event, had suddenly sprouted up- some random asshole suddenly falling from the sky, and crashing right into Madison. At once, her hand planted itself upon the butt of her gun, but upon seeing her coworker get up not much worse for wear- even going so far as to try and help the guy up- she relaxed, only to be taken aback yet again by another person walking into the arena and starting to yell his head off.

“Jesus H. Christ,” she muttered, although the fighter was very much pleased at the man’s affirmation that not much was really out there. Depending on how far the apparent desert went, it would only make sense for them to stick around a while longer to figure things out. His comment on someone drowning, however, brought more surprise from Stride, and she began to look around in search of this someone- only to spot some girl getting dragged out of a puddle by the same guy, as well as another, smaller girl.

Looks like the problem had been taken care of, then.

At Rasteva’s impromptu concert session, Stride bit back yet another curse and turned to look over at the being, squinting as it began to rant about how it wanted them all to pay attention. At first, she was tempted to go back to talking to Kora or someone else (after all, it seemed that all Rasteva wanted was to say that they were now totally cool with changing their mind), but at the mention of “sparring”, she visibly perked up. Of course, while it was hard to say what the others had in store combat-wise, Stride had a personality fit for her occupation, and her blood quickly began to pound at the chance of getting a good brawl.

“Hell yeah, I wanna see some action ‘round here! We goin’ hand-to-hand, or what?” Grinning broadly, the half-breed cracked her knuckles and glanced around to look for any volunteers. True, she was no pro wrestler, but she had some amount of pride after facing off against some of the more brawnier members of the supernatural world.

Skip III took Drake's failure to respond to his verbal jabs with pursed lips but unusual patience. There was so much going on to occupy his attention that he figured his unwilling foil could wait.

He listened to the exchanges, the tantrums, catching himself up on the situation, valiantly resisting the urge to run and pet Dog or Fell. Or Eze. Or anyone else with scales, feathers, fur, or tails. His patience held, for now.

Rasteva was saying something about showcasing skills.

First order of procedure when he was to be spending extended amounts of time with a new team... Skip checked his pocket. Still there. Probably not enough for everyone, but, he fished out the small plastic container and popped it open as he spoke.

"All right, I can spar," he volunteered, smiling at Stride broadly. He held up one of the small pills from the container and danced over to the masked woman to give her the gift. "I'll try not to produce any gamma rads, because ya know, nonlethal, but uh-- You should probably still have one of these. Actually--" He looked around, pouring the lot into his hand and beaming like nothing was at all alarming, "You should probably all have one." He passed one to Madison and the rest of the huddle by the puddle, smilingly giving Cain an extra for when their drowning victim recovered. To the man who had fallen from the sky, "Hi, I'm Skip the Third, you missed it. Welcome to not-the -afterlife. This'll keep you from getting thyroid cancer." One for Dawn. One for Amos. Not one for Drake. Drake came back to life. One for Makorai, with an apologetic edge to his smile because Skip knew Makorai was among the majority of Erubescans who avoided him like the apocalyptic plague he was. "Um no guarantees about other kinds of cancer. Except there's uh--not enough, but..." He counted the remaining iodide blockers. Three remaining. Everyone in the arena except Drake, Eze and Rasteva had now been handed a pill, and then there were the three scouts when they returned...

Skip looked at Rasteva. "Do you need one, Legion?" he asked, unsure about the suit of armor's mortality status.

He handed one of the remaining three to Ezenvare.
...And now he was so close. Whether or not it was offensive did not even cross his mind. He couldn't resist giving the reptilian man's scaley neck a pet.

Kora, assuming her help was not immediately required, watched the bossy girl and her dragon leave with the one with the face-gap. Ostensibly for scouting, but she did not entirely trust them to return.

There were other options, but that would involve having to negotiate with the filthy terrorist about flying up and getting an aerial view and she was not sure she was really a good person to do so... even if they could trust what he'd got to relay.

She idly listened in some capacity to what Rasteva had to say. She was not exactly feeling terribly amicable considering that thing had just tried to kill her not a few minutes previous, but its suggestion seemed solid enough. Better people knew how much they'd been nerfed now than end up getting screwed later on.

Though she didn't think she really wanted to try her own to their limits.
Kora didn't really feel dramatically different. Indeed on the yard stick of magic and immortality, her abilities were pretty much one trick ponies. But they were ponies that did the one trick pretty effectively, and it was a trick that once started, wasn't really something you could stop. Powering up berserkergang wasn't like a switch on and off. Once you invoked it things tended to get pretty intense.

Ripping an enemy combatant in half at the waist with your bare hands was very useful in a battle situation, but was frowned upon in a friendly scenario.
"I'd be happy to do it, y'know, assuming this homicidal tin man doesn't try and chop me in half again, but no powers here. Don't want things to go sour."


Just then, she received one of the iodide pills, and rested it in her palm for a moment, watching the young man rushing to hand them out..and he appeared to be coming up a bit short. Her expression grew a little more sober for a moment.

"Hey, uh, Skips, you might as well save mine for somebody else." she stated, rather awkwardly holding it back out to the radioactive gifted.
"Cuz uh....y'know..."

Mostly because thyroid cancer had a five year survival rate of about 90% and Kora had a five year survival rate of about 0%.


----

The oddly dressed figure, now pulled out of the puddle, pushed herself onto her front, curling her knees underneath her and coughing up some water fro her lungs onto the stone floor.

From there, she went quiet for a moment, resting her forehead against the floor, eyes shut. Silent. Water seeping out of the ragged layers of clothing.

Then, the young woman spoke, quite clearly...if rather cryptically.

"There are wolves in the sand. Blood sinks and bones rise. A step you take can't be taken back. Even if you cover your tracks the sand will always know that you walked there."

Cain, seeing that the girl was fine enough for now, called back instead to Madison. "Does anyone recognize this landscape, then? Because it looks sorted like the ashland, but less ash and destroyed buildings!" He was then addressed by Drake, and he looked evenly at the younger boy. "Yeah, so did she." he said, indicating Dawn, making it sound like he was speaking of the mind manipulator's belief that he himself had died, instead of the fact that he had long ago predicted Drake's fall in battle but had been gone from the group before he could do anything to change that future. "I wonder why, it's not like you left me alone in unknown condition in an irradiated mansion with not even a note to say "We're heading south west to Helton" or a pack of supplies to get me through the separation." there was no bitterness in his voice, though, only an odd pensive quality. "Say, can you still do your revival thingy? Coming back form the dead and all? Or did you already lose that?" rather blunt, but honestly, the boy would learn soon enough that his immortality was temporary.
In the meantime, the suit of armour declared a tournament, and Cain stood up. "My abilities are stabbing people, luring people into dark alleys to stab, seducing women into dark alleys to stab, haven't used that one in a good many years, interpreting prophecies, indestructible shields, seeing the future and no promises on those last two, because Rend decided that it's no fun if I can predict the plot. I won't be participating, thanks." he then settled back down as Hel began to speak, and nodded along, understanding perfectly. "But it is a rare thief that shares jam made of stolen fruit, much rather would he hoard it all for himself." he replied. "Wolves hate fruit anyway, and sand might remember, but if drowned it can't speak." he patted her on the back. "My name is Cain, miss. What's yours? One of you get her bag." he then instructed the two gifted he had travelled with once upon a time.

Verge resolved to speak to Madison in private and ask again, maybe the other didn't want to share the fairy's secrets in such a public place.

However, at the moment, he was preoccupied with being told that Madison, the lovely woman he was chatting up, was in fact, a man. He looked at "her" again, blushing just a bit, then decided to stall, speaking to the newcomer that had fallen upon Madison.

"I'm an ordinary human." he said, calmly so that he wound't agitate the scared being. "The only thing not ordinary is that I can summon that shadow thing over there. It's part of me, in a way. I've been told it represents my mind" he shrugged.

Hopefully, that would lead the others to underestimate him. The shadow they saw, now dancing and playing around, gave off a much different impression than the twisted true form hidden under all the illusions. "That guy over there," he waved towards the group by the puddle, "the one without wings, he came in yelling that it was a desert. If he's telling the truth, then yeah. It's a desert. I haven't left yet myself. And yeah, we don't really know what happened, but there is a powerful being keeping us here until we complete some kind of tasks it's set. Are those tattoos?" he then asked curiously, referring to the webs on the black haired boy's pale skin.

And then, having exhausted his list of things to answer, Verge had to face Madison.

"I'm not going to apologize." he said slowly, "because I don't think you're insulted, or else you'd have corrected me when I first called you ma'am. You do look very good though, and clearly." he laughed with just a touch of awkward, "you had me fooled. Nice to meet you, sir." he greeted, and the moment of not knowing what to say next was broken by a glowing man offering him a pill to prevent radiation poisoning. "Um, thanks?" he said, then looked around at his two human companions as if asking what they made of this.