Ductu Myrkul's Story

Becca nodded but the sandpaper voiced Ductu is the woman who responded with Becca's mouthful of black strands, "Good. We have brought compensation and resources for payment."

The cylinder was the first to be put down and the flow of the ley likely quivered as a sealed reservoir descended into its watershed. A small crackle emerged for a moment as brushed grey metal ferroplasm finally made contact. A bell against which power could ring but each stay on its own side the small cognizance vault resonated quietly from then on.

Her backpack was less energetic but rattled a bit as she dropped it at his feet. There were several tied-together credit chits that were empty and one loose where Becca had amassed the funds they contained to pay Titus. Becca had broken into them of course but nobody really cared about the equipment pile at the Wing City 'meat locker' the Jinhai creatures brought corpses to. Rather inspiring to the hacker as Becca really didn't want to end up really dead this time and used for repair parts like some old computer.

Most of the other volume in the pack was of a very old book bound in human leather. Power creeps from it like a fungus leaking from the cover of the pack. The title was in Loross a long-dead language of plane-wandering mages that in the end suffered the same fate. If one skimmed it would be obvious to a practitioner even without the language that it contained ritual for creation of a specific experimental piece of a larger construct not deeply mentioned. Rather than the pattern of rambling paragraphs of some dry theoretical treatise teaching this or that. If one could read the book the name of the artifact in question became apparent in the repeated mention of one 'Nephalem Locus' involving a positive aligned heart and a strong negatively aligned one.

Becca's eyes widened as Ductu removed the hoodie and her shirt in the process with a youthful yelp, "What? Hey, Ducky!"

Her face then turned a pragmatic blasé as the sandpaper voice replied, "Titus needs to see the injury. Your modesty will survive this."

Over the girl's heart was flesh that seemed to squirm sweating some white fluid in the process. Patterns along the skin to the runic eye as if a soul fighting against corruption only the patterns emerging from its pull to 'self' were something clearly alien to a pale waif of a hacker. The wound pattern having the distinct split crater common to a close-range shotgun blast.

The sandpaper voice explained, "Becca is undergoing aetheric rejection of the replacement heart we built. I appear to have spent too long triaging the damage and her soul now claims me as its own. I am not authorized to kill humankind so I cannot leave her. I have acquired a solution from the Necropolis library but we can neither create nor easily acquire the components without undue complications. We have provided a vault for manifestation resources. Becca has sourced local currency from waste objects."

Becca pouted and looked at the ground shifting and apparently unhappy about standing there with just a bra on just moused, "I, uh... the vault has an equivalent of 400 kilomoles of carbon in it. I think particle mass is conserved if you make something heavier? That's, um, about half a metric ton of carbon. I have about 23k in credits on the live chit for costs."

The face turned stony and the sandpaper voice returns, "The book returns with me upon completion. Celestials must not see or hear of that book. Will you take the job at the given compensation?"

Ada, after noting Titus glancing at the door, stamped a few temporary runes on the wall and door creating a sort of one way lock and barrier to keep anyone from entering for the time being. She also blacked the windows out with a one way darkness barrier after reasoning that the shady folks outside would likely have no qualms with gathering for a free show once they spotted the currently topless girl in the shop. Seeing no further tasks to perform for the current situation, and having an idea. She went into her area "If ye two need me for anything I'll be In the back." Pulling out some empty pouches she got to work turning them into bags of holding.

Setting the strange case down and igniting his cigarette Titus seemed almost entranced as he looked upon the handiwork of whatever it was that stood before him it was something other than the norm.

"So you offer me a bit of Eden only to try to avert my gaze with credits and what seems to be a near limitless supply of material?

Titus smirked as he brought a hand up to the wound only to take a drag off from his cigarette. Time was indeed of the essence and it didn't help that Adanat took the time to step away to work on whatever projects she needed to catch up on. Instead the alchemist popped the strange case open revealing several syringes of blue and gold mysterious liquid that seemed to pulse like that of a heartbeat. Without even considering to warn the girl or her companion Titus took up one of the syringes with the mysterious golden content only to jam the needle right into his charges heart. Within seconds Titus injected the strange content into the heart which sent the paralytic agent coursing throughout the young girls body which he took hold of and lowered gently upon the floor.
Within seconds of getting her on the floor Titus removed one syringe and injected yet another but this time of the strange blue liquid which would force the young girl to astral project above her own body.

"Adanat, I know your busy but I need your help, could you come over here and create a ward around this form of hers! Also in the back there is a container that is marked with curse seals."

Ada jumped up and looked to her dragon who gave a nod and took to the air flying towards the back to locate said container for her while she took brisk steps over there. She did a quick stretch with her hands and cracked her knuckles before splaying her fingers out and sending arcs of energy upwards and down. stamping both the ceiling and floor with numerous golden and green runes at a rapid pace before stopping and waving her hands through the air leaving floating blue symbols of power there and a translucent blue dome.

"Ward done, getting your container."She said, quickly turning on her heel and striding hurriedly towards the back. Returning seconds later with the container that was requested and Pagherra resting on her shoulder with a level of inquisitiveness in her eyes not normally seen outside of a cat. "Here ya go Titus. I hope it has whatever ye need." Ada said, setting the container down and stepping over to maintain the ward.

There was a short tip of sharp fingers that spread the fingertips of one hand even as the girl slipped into paralysis. Facial muscles contorted and seized as Ductu forced a critical squint at the man. It wasn't an organic creature but the astral tether tugged at Ductu's mind now as well. When the next vial came to flush the spirit into view the girl's diaphanous astral form rose out of her body wriggling and listless at first. As a fainter shadow pushed her 'upright' the soul could be seen where a shotgun had blown out her torso. Therein the soul now instead was a mire of threading and a very slowly thumping black heart. Two ragged holes for eyes but for green irises looked around only her mind's eyes present. Though both sides of the astral form clung firmly to each other to keep her alive Becca's soul suffered for it.

A set of oval gold eyes opened behind the girl with hands that clung tightly. It looked at the girl and squeezed eliciting a squeal with a thump of the black heart waking the weightless form, "Agh! hey! A little warning would be nice!"

Becca's astral form lurched and gagged, "What, I'm floating? This makes me really nauseous but I can't puke."

"I gave you a heart of my body so you would not die, humankind. You can now feel why your soul cannot keep it," replied mouthless eyes in a silken older tone from behind her.

The faint oval eyes spoke from their clung position behind the astral form the silver tether passing through the black mass, "The vault is not without limit but taken is deemed due compensation for the task. We are confident that if celestials know of you they dislike you. So we offer you a piece of the fallen emperor because instead if they find either of you with it they even Abyssalkind will mark you for death. They will not bargain and now it is yours until you give it back. Finish our task and fix the Humankind Becca and Myrkul will return with more duties it wishes tended and recharge the vault as tasks suit. Our kind in this city have only interest in our own betrayals not of you humankind to each other."

Becca hadn't spent much time on the streets rather than behind a rig didn't understand the implication so sick, "Hrg... what betrayal?"

"Ssshhhh, little humankind. Let the contractor decide.", came the quiet reply.

What Titus was about to do with the excess materials he was presented and that crafty little book they had decided to show off was something he had only done once. Swiftly the alchemist reached over to the box and revealed a dark and withered heart which he took up and replaced with the faulty thing that was presented within the young girls chest.

"This is the heart of a long dead sorcerer, a necromancer if I recall correctly....."

Titus smirked as he looked up at the astral projection of the girl only to then dive back down into his work. He quickly placed the eldritch organ in place and called upon his own skills to materialize the excess material within the vault they provided to create diamonds and sapphires which he quickly crushed using time and energy at his disposal. The transmutation he willed upon the materials turned to dust which he sprinkled onto the heart while his hands deftly worked on crafting the arcane signatures needed to force the heart to beat once more.

"Khepa khepa Ra Asperuk...."

His words seemed to slightly take upon a unearthly tone as his hands weaved the spellwork forcing the heart to take root and allowing the blood to flow. Titus smirked as the arcane weave forced the heart to pump rapidly and watched the open cavity slowly began to close. He would reach up to the astral form above him and call the girl down to rejoin her body.

"Forta Forta ushul I'venkar Torshal...."

The eldritch words continued to echo within the safety of the barrier that Adanat had placed for him and soon the newfound heart would fully rest within the young girl acting on its own accord and allowing life to flow properly.

Ada Just kept feeding her energy into the barrier, Silently observing the proceedings in front of her. Pagherra flitting around the room looking to find Waxy for a closer look at the strange creature.

Weak pillars of material existence crumble away from a human soul rejecting the human heart therein makes replacement quite easy for Titus. The young girl's chest leaking white ectoplasm moved away like clay as the energy gathering in Titus' fist made a fleshy wake. Within the black motes that were still of Ductu quietly reorganized blood vessels that the fleshy clay would not suffer too much from the process. Coherence at scalar action replumbing the girl with throbbing rivulets of black matte tears of fluid like cotton cords. Those that jerked hard and taut as the new black heart replaced one whose soul strings slowly unravel. The action of his speWeak pillars of material existence crumble away from a human soul. Each string rejecting a pretender heart therein makes replacement quite easy for Titus. White ectoplasm from the young girl's chest leak away like clay from his pressing fingers. Energy gathering in Titus' fist made a fleshy bloodless wake. Within the body black motes that were still of Ductu reorganized blood vessels. Fleshy clay would not suffer too much from the process. Coherence at scalar action to replumb the girl. Those throbbing rivulets of black matte tears flow like eager cotton cords. Those quick lines of psionic life along a red marionette jerked hard and taut at a new entrant. A new black heart replaced one whose soul strings otherwise unravel itself. Every pulsing rivulet in that instant chose a new rome to travel toward.

The vault ever dutiful supplies force demanded of it in small well-written wellspring. The flow from it not diminished at all by the drain of its contained power unlike natural ley wells. A designed vessel of etheric infrastructure it suffused stability. Injection of arcane energy into spells wherever and whenever a void made contact. Particular note went to creation of structural voids designed by the transmutation. Each vent opening in the vault heated a pale green. Though crystal easier for the mechanisms of metacreative entities. The vault made bare struggle to bear the load of gems. Manufacture of high order by the vault near to forced them out his wrist to get into existence. An eager deposition of power went into such patterns.

Though filling those voids also called forth a certain negative energy. The black storm a left an eagerness toward the agent of this black heart. Toward which end power to a chant to liven a necromancer's heart filled Titus's lungs with ease. Aligned power eager to assert within them and alter reality with that call. In his breath faint thunder and howl of a very old planar wrath. One that deities sought but in time failed to hew out of reality evermore.

Those words propel a hurricane of blackness to tear away dying flesh. Even false bone fell away from the broken foundation. Instead the eye of that willed storm built a new foundation upon which the black heart could beat once more. Thus the words spoken with intent. A foundation for unlife laid. A chorus joined to his words like a throng of adherents and acolytes. All named a common cause to the life beneath their new church.

Flesh manifested as the Titus demanded of the throng by words of power. The blood organized as the body required to support its life. The soul rewove to conduct through it a throng of worshippers chanting along to aid the larger cause. The heart a seat for the soul and now so too capable its worshippers that neither would consume the other. That echoes remain a moment too long was easy told from an ear to her heart. A concordance of worshippers still chanted those words.

The ductu herself now free to leave poured out of Becca. That new church started left a gigantic hole in her torso where adherents once were. Her concordance could survive the larger goal as a creature of pure black mass and will of the many. The silhouette of a woman had that hole for only a moment until she shrank a few inches to close the gap. Inside that hole a seen a struggling cruor heart and bits of flesh eroding into black dust.

Titus finished up the incantation as the final words flowed from his lips and reverberated upon the air within the shop. He worked deftly to even close up his own work as he nodded over to Adanat to lower the ward while the girl would descend back into her flesh with the now beating heart of a long dead necromancer fueling her like a battery.

"There will be some disorientation for a few days..."

The Alchemist sighed slightly as he reached over for the Vault and hefted it upon his right shoulder. It was indeed a payment worthy of his skills and would make a fine addition to the creation and process of valuable gems and metals. However what the man reached for next was something of even more value. Titus casually reached for the leather bound book nonchalantly as if it was a discarded item he was bound to claim as his own. After all a grimoire such as that would have been rare and filled with a variety of esoteric knowledge that could easily be transferred over to another medium, and even fetch a decent price if sold to the right buyer.

"Hell I imagine you might even forgo a meal or two........It will pass though..... Tell you what though sense we did a bang up job be sure and tell everyone you meet that this place is open to take orders and do some discreet business if needed. Trinkets, enchantments, and even potion work are all easily found within this little shop."

Becca's soul lit from inside as the heart took root an interdiction of energies insulating two antagonistic parts from each other. An armistice thus declared the adherents of one took up the goals of the other. The heart gave motes, what were once part of Ductu, a final resolution to the double-binding Becca's soul foist upon them. A peaceful resolution of loyalties that went their separate ways as the eyes behind Becca's soul closed by the separation. As the strangely copper-colored astral cord finally hauled its soul back home Becca took the strongest breath she'd taken since a shotgun blast removed her heart and most of her lungs. A thick sandy black dune slowly leaks out of Becca as the Ductu leaves her for the first time in quite a while.

As Becca lay on the floor recovering the pile coalesced across her as the dusty motes reorganize themselves into a female shape with long sharp fingers. A ragged hole where a chest should be. Tatters squirmed then simply poured closed as the concordance that was Ductu adjusted its own multitude of hymns by shrinking to fill the volume. Red irises eyes open to look to Titus then down astride Becca.

She eyed the book but a hollow sandy voice said little of it, "Keep the book at the cost of your funeral, Humankind. I see no reason not to permit it. You have done the task asked of you. Seek the place known as Genesis if you wish to trade to charge the cognizance vault when it is emptied."

Becca piped up gathering red-eyed attention while coughing a black dust that simply poured back inside her, "Ductu, is that you? I... why do I see dark? I can see a pulsing dark red place. And there's something inside my head."

The girl bent up to rub one hand at the ragged hole in hoodie torn by gunpowder. Now that Ductu did not replace it only black satin flesh now resided there. Flesh slightly churned and mists blew across it like dunes across a desert. Patina-eyes helping a finger trace one mist drifting across her stomach and it was clear she could see.

"That's your altar now, Becca, the foundation of your concordance. It is your beating heart. You can feel Myrkul's Vein curating your adherents." Said the lithe Ductu's mouthless whisper with a flourish of sharp claw.

"The first Mada created by humankind in many years," She eyed Titus and the book, "Crude, but serviceable, but not likely the last. Celestialkind will not be pleased."

Ductu eyed Adanat's little dragon flitting the room able to see it herself now, "Dragonkind have changed little since we created the Zhou. A small one yet, this, and curious too."

Another pair of eyes leaned in to look into the bar behind Alyssa a set of glowing patina irises drawn by curiosity for the nearly starving woman lumbering about. Clad in tattered blue hoodie if not for a well-tended red cloth woven into the end of both sleeves and on both sides of the torso. Then the other hand came into view and absently fed herself a donut. Since getting back upright for good curiosity was burning at her as much as her stomach.

Ducky knew where there was food and for some reason her and the robed guys had small paid up tabs in like half the stores of the city. Something to do with them repairing things constantly. Becca looked sidelong at the Ducky's lithe matte black form with long pointed fingers moving into view.

Though her sandy face had few features the silty voice still came as she sat Becca down near Alyssa, "Sit. I will get you food. No alcohol."

Becca put her box of donuts on the table and moped while gesturing midair at an interface, "Aw, Fine."

Becca nodded at Alyssa though the young girl was breathing a little heavy, "Hi. Ducky's not big on personal space, sorry."

The silty woman physically inverted with a thin shuff and placed a small white ceramic tablet on the bartop, "Cooked meat and fruit for Becca."

Ductu's silty voice replied monotone to the beastkind as a waitress delivered a bowl of mixed fruit from the kitchen, "An anomalous arctic area has evinced itself on Genesis in an area our overbeing cannot yet extend to directly. Food, housing, ammunition, and weaponry is provided for purposes of subordinates. Compensation is 200kilomoles of carbon bonded psimass. Completion is satisfied by extermination of any hostiles or aetherkind or satisfactory reconnaissance returned by a provided observer to areas reachable by our overbeing. You can get to Genesis from northern wing street."

At the table Becca's patina cybernetic eyes looked up some market references to figure out how much that was from the AR interface. Myrkul's Vein took to the idea of contractors well after Becca's own completed sooner than it expected. The thing crawling around in her head hadn't a good grasp on pricing however. Much less in credits as Becca's eyebrow raised at the notion after checking the market to see Myrkul was paying a bit under a gold bar worth of psimass a contractor. Around 600k credits if they made gold from it but a heck of a lot more if they found an alchemist like Titus to sell the vaults to. Or it didn't like a non-grassy area just outside its reach. Becca rubbed her temples as she felt an AR interface open across the neural chip somewhere she couldn't define or see. The things were starting to connect to the cybernetics chips. The worm must be trying to figure her visual cortical implants out from inside.

Becca winced while commenting to Ductu returning with fruit as the weird feeling went away, "Big daddy worm must not like someone freezing the endless lawn. I can feel it keep looking away while monkeying around with my implants."

One hand went to the arriving bowl to bite clean through an apple. Alarmed at the ease she instinctively gagged for a moment but nothing came out. Something stole the fruit out of her damn mouth and carried it down her throat. Ductu simply nodded and watched impassively being satisfied that Becca was still breathing.

A few cooked steaks arrived sizzling loudly and eyes widened at the giant steaks, plural, that Ducky ordered. How much did Ducky think humans ate! Between the bowl of fruit and two steaks that probably weighed as much most of her arm and the donuts if she ate all this she was going to get sick.

She pushed the half-eaten box of donuts over to Alyssa then looked at the impassive matte woman standing nearby, "Uh, have some fruit and donuts or something. You look tweaked. Ducky, how much do you think I eat?"

"Your concordance is still developing and it is likely in a feral hunger state," Came the yellow-eyed woman's mouthless reply.

With a huff Becca cut off a piece of steak and moved it closer to her mouth with care and some amount of hesitation. When it passed her teeth the same crammed her full of apple gripped the steak and fork pulling it inward. With alarm she tried to get the fork back before it went down her throat. After a moment of pulling the handle of the fork emerged.

Becca clutched at her throat but didn't feel anything hard going down, "Agh! Whatthehell! Ducky!"

Two long sharp digits just clacked with the Ductu's response, "I suggest using your fingers for now."

Becca sighed then used the fork handle to keep her steak in place while she cut it. She wasn't curious enough to see what happened if she tried to put the whole steak near her mouth.

Becca looked around at the commotion with a strip of steak vanishing post-haste into her mouth. Small discolorations appeared on her skin that cleaned even residue left behind. While not in the line of fire for now Becca did not want to repeat the experience that got her here. Ducky seemed to have the same opinion in a strangely literal sense as if she wasn't the only one using the idea.

The silty lithe woman walked around the table and stood still in the line of fire between the sergeant and Becca. Humankind was allowed to kill humankind and the flat yellow eyes didn't even engage with the red-haired woman to consider her.

Alyssa


The addict shrank back into her chair even more, her face turning an interesting color between off-white and ash-gray. There were too many people and very little chance of her getting the drugs that she wanted---no, needed.

Another shudder made it's way down the woman's body, and she clenched onto the table for a moment, teeth gritted against the pain as need tore through her. She turned back to the male, making a move to grab his arm, her voice hardly a whisper.

"Hey, do you still got that number because I---I think we should leave."

Her dark eyes danced back and forth between the scene in the middle (was it enough to hide what they had just been talking about) and the -creatures?!- that had made the table their spot.

As sudden as she grabbed his arm she would drop it and, instead, reach for a doughnut that had been placed on the table. She bit into it, spilling crumbs of sugar onto her shirt as she hastily crammed it between her lips. Sugar would help until she could get some of what she really needed...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"Princess" Loli

Thankfully her impeding death was interrupted by someone else flinging the door open. She could hardly get that sound out of her head - the sound of a bullet being loaded just for her, all because she couldn't keep her stupid mouth shut -- though she had just been about to say even more damning words. If she was to die at least she would do her best to insult the one about to send her to her grave...

But she hadn't wanted to die and she was so, so thankful for the woman and man who demanded it to stop. Would one of them be her saviors?

The small woman looked like a child, tears having started to flow down her face, clad in that ludicrous onsie, pressed against a table as if it could save her from the angered Emperor. One of these two would surly.. Would help, right?

Irritation filled every inch of her lithe frame as she strode out of the backroom to see what the commotion was all about. She had come to the bar to see if her younger sibling was there and while she could tell that Gabby had been there earlier, the fact that she had disappeared was not a good thing. The only thing the barkeep told her was that she left with another woman, but wasn’t under distress, so left on her on. Shutting the door behind her and locking it, Renee pocketed the key in her black pants and slid her fingers through her long black strands, pushing them out of her face. Piercing red eyes took in the scene and she swept the red duster she was wearing out of her way in order to get to one of her weapons, if necessary. Sure, she had been gone for a while, but she didn’t expect things to get like this again. Then again, that was how Gambit’s had always been. Still, she didn’t want to have to clean up blood and a dead body.

“HEY! If you’re going to kill anyone, go outside! The floor was JUST redone, yenno!” Her voice was loud enough to be heard over the ruckus and if anyone took a look, they would see that bits and pieces of her looked just like Gambit, though she rarely spoke with the accent he had. “I mean it, get out or I will have you thrown out.” She added for good measure.

Flat yellow eyes of the faceless Ductu looked over at the red eyed woman for a moment then returned to the focused mission of occupying the weapons fire lane toward Becca. The female humankind implied that she was the owner of some stripe however and the Almanac was duly updated.

Two Jinhai in the locality noticed whom both immediately turn away from repairing the city to dispatch to genesis. An empty psistone vault could be provided to ease manifestation and resource transfer. Two robed humanoid creatures pour from a sewer drain making their way across the city to Genesis.

Becca, whom was busy trying to avoid the rest of her utensil being eaten with the steak, just side-eyed the commotion going on and hunkered over her plate. The hunger just started to hit her and she was starting to jones for more like the junkie lady at the table. Though maybe her and the big guy had the right idea. Hastily stuffing a third of the remainder of one she realized she was totally carrying the other steak with her if she left. The stuff inside her really was starving.

She looked at Ben and nodded, "They seem to be going. I kind of want to eat the other steak though. So hungry."

Ductu turned around to ask the three bluntly, "What social organization do those humankind represent?"

On her fourth steak Becca felt Ductu's hackles rise where Becca could almost see concordance inheriting concern. The parts of her mind that were less concerned with food now expanding away from what she thought was the limits of her mind. Then the lumps in space became horrible monsters instinctively retreating beneath the table kicking it up for cover. Hails of gunfire rock Ductu's standing frame as the monsters opened bullets from everywhere. Under the craters of dust juddering her body Ducky just turned about pale yellow eyes showing no vestige of pain. As Ducky poured over the heavy table taking pounding in her place a black face and yellow eyes reformed her right side up. Patina-colored cybernetic eyes looked at Ducky as something in her head interacted with new hollows to count destruction among the millions. Motes?

The discordance connected to Becca whom hesitated talking from the shared pain, "What the hell! How are we getting out of this, ducky!"

The Ductu eyed Becca absently stuffing her face with the remnants of her steak with both hands, "I am going to cohabitate with your Concordance since you are still very fragile. I will focus on defensive matters. Cross the gap to the Beastkind bouncer. Try not to eat the tainted along the way."

No time for questions Ductu poured sideways into Becca's body weighting everything as Becca grew slightly larger. Though stronger her insides felt so hungry... so hungry so hungry sohungry. When a Vampire crossed in view of the heavy table the patina eyes flared with a scarified pattern expanding psychokinetic armor. Despite the Ductu's hopes Becca wasn't nearly strong enough to hold back a starving concordance. Neither was the Vampire a tendril flailing hole for a mouth ground trough his chest and tore out a thumping cursed heart. Hard into the bar back glass flew everywhere. Becca collapsed down to the floor as the combined being decompiled a portion of the vampire's raw existence. Patina eyes blink in and out as her humanity recovered just staring at the others there.

While an individual bullet may not worry most Vampires, weapons such as shotguns that could remove the head entirely with a well-placed blast, or automatic large caliber weapons that can remove limbs with a stream of lead, were rightfully feared. The youngest Sabbat were dropping like flies due to the police onslaught, while the older ones were forced to rely on their Vampiric powers and durability.

Several of the Sabbat turned into large black wolves, some wreathed themselves in shadowy armor, growing black tentacles, others still, more horribly, began to assume their war-forms. Their flesh quickly warped, making them taller, broader, covered in chitin and bone-spurs, with long knife-like claws, as well as some other things unique to themselves. Akshasha frowned, "Oh Dear... They probably need to die before they finish shifting."

Certainly Gambit's Bar was a gathering spot for many different creatures, however an all-out bar-fight between police, Vampires, Mutants, Minotaurs, Drow and Hairworms simply HAD to be a record. Tung's brother leaped towards Gabby, claws outstretched, and screaming at the top of his lungs.

"Noo survivahs," The dread-locked man spat out, watching a man heading for the employee's only door into the basement. He raised a hand, directing two burly Vampires wielding fire-axes to him, before continuing his onslaught on the assembled police. The two hulked menacingly forward to the scientist, while the dread-locked man with a shotgun kept unloading at the police, screaming out "You'll make some tast-E treats, pathetic Kine!"

The new hire had a plan, "That is truly Bull-headed, Mr. Minotaur. The bar has ten levels of a hotel above it. You're going to kill us in the collapse, and everyone above us minding their own business!" Akshasha stated, ignoring the fact that she was peculiarly photo-sensitive, there was no need to mention why.

The Drow addressed the peculiar smelling girl with patina eyes, "You there, a spot of help? The Sabbat will retreat if we display enough dominance." Something about the girl just screamed duality. Akshasha shrugged, throwing a handful of fire at the Vampires assuming war-form. The small handful exploded upon impact, immolating more than a few Sabbat. "Kill the big ones, the rest will flee in terror"

Patina eyes stabilized as Becca's face reformed correctly sans the black heart since crammed into it. Mind stabilizing with the concordance taking up her optical implants and chips. While the chips were things of the mind the motes found them alien but adapted to a concordance forming around necromancer's heart to cyberware and cortical chips. Ductu for her part lent enough isolated mental acuity it needed to stabilize. That came as Becca fixated on the dark-faced woman the glazed expression replaced with conscious understanding.

A hand of moving scars reaches over to a dripping bar back toward a shattered whiskey bottle neck. Shards and liquid shift then rejoin as she pulls an intact sloshing whiskey bottle from the wreckage. An aftertaste of Myrkul's cloying wellspring on the air from someone shaping with brute unconscious force. Likely far harder to do on purpose.

Patina eyes looked at it once then put it down before responding in her youthful voice, "Ah, no, maybe later. Yeah, ok, Ducky knows how to fight so I do now. Myrkul's Vein is like an internet... I can tell I'm the first one that thinks the vamps taste like anise."

Edge of the bar gets grey-laced fingers to stand up as pieces of shattered bottle fling free from her back to rejoin, " I like licorice and I'm still hungry."

The concordance was not prone to outbursts of emotion like much of the human mind and Becca rather enjoyed the placid feeling hurling herself over the counter at the two burly creatures chasing the man in the back. Ducky didn't make noise or threaten, she advanced. Becca remembered being trapped in Ducky as she fought in bloody silence. In her head the hunger quelled her human urge to scream at them. Wells of mixed psychokinetic repulsion and her own blood flaring as bullets struck her midair a warm rain of pain explosions flairing throughout her body. A necromancer's squirming heart taking a good liking to its new home an army of small adherents working toward its needs.

Flesh took a beating but she Landed on one hands full of black thorny protrusions set to tearing at whatever purchase she could find. Small chainsaws of limbs tear from the vampire handful by handful to stuff the flesh into her mouth. A suprised improvised axe flung over his head but the shoulder soon destroyed and consumed landed it sideways and patina eyes stared crossly. A response of tearing a jaw free, then moving on to rib and bone with loud cracking noises. In between mouthfuls the too-toothy matte black maw bit chunks out of a skull until the withering vampiric M&M lost its taste. Dregs of quintessence no further interest to the burning hunger in her chest once the remainder started to fall apart.

She looked toward the second as bullets ricochet off her skull leaving a small bruised geyser to burn off and staring cockeyed at him. It left a fracture and Becca could feel the hurt but after living in Ducky for so long... the feeling was infectious and she wanted to ram her hands into the other licorice flavored beefcake then eat him.

Her body boiled in gunfire hits, an insatiable heart of death, and her own flesh re-knitting to burn off the energy. The hungry stare silent but for a faint tinkle of bottlecaps escaping from under her hoodie. Excess tass boiling off as she'd become very much well over her ability to retain what she'd eaten. Ductu, for her part, handled the bullets but worried about the rate of damage Becca was taking. The armor still kept the bullets out of important areas and the strange heart in her edge case humankind mada put her back together. A thumping heart didn't make it entirely clear to the Ductu how much it could reknit though transient energy abounded.