15236/Log 15236

Log 15236
Date of Scene:	20 June 2023
Location:	Lowtown, Madripoor
Synopsis:	Zealot.
Cast of Characters:	Magik, Zealot

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Magik has posed:
Beneath St. Christopher's Cathedral, in a concrete room with bare lighting and steel chairs, there lie a simple wooden podium and lectern, empty save for the purple velvet draping over the top and front of the lectern. Several times a week, it's a place for Bibles, Big Books, and any other wisdom the locals who gather here seek guidance to ruminate on-- one of many welcoming spaces riddled through the Cathedral that serves as a clashing taste of something clean in the hardscrabble world of Lowtown.

Tonight, it is an auction hall hosting men and women in dress ranging from dazzlingly formal to 'bee-keeper'; cathedrals need money too, and the kinds of people who need privacy now are typically the kinds of people willing to pay for it-- handsomely.

As guests filter in, find seats, and scoff at the lack of even one hors d'oeuvre on the bare fold out table running along one of the walls, a figure concealed in a hooded black robe moves along the east edge of the room, approaching the podium at a measured pace. Their right hand peeks past overflowing sleeves, wound in cloth wrappings; dangling from it is a chain with -- something box-shaped, hidden beneath a midnight blue velvet shroud, attached to its other end.

Thanks to intel bought, carved, shaken, or otherwise won, Zannah knows exactly who's beneath the shroud: Jyndl, the roughly faithful right-hand of Ka'naa, an elusive Daemonite arms dealer who is primarily responsible for supplying the other side - and anyone else who can afford her - with terrible bioweapons.

Among the attendees is a blonde woman in an off the shoulder dress so deeply red that it approaches black, its neckline trimmed with metallic silver and right side slit to mid thigh. Where others mingle - whether to complain about the venue, probe each other for weaknesses, fish for alliances, or simply boast at one another - she takes a seat near the back of the room and folds her hands primly over the matching red clutch in her lap, waiting patiently as Jyndl climbs the podium.

"Ladies," Jyndl begins in a gritty voice that almost seems to double, and redouble, and fold back in on itself, "and gentlemen, and everyone in between: if you could take your SEATS..."

The resounding *THNK!* of Jyndl's shrouded offering hitting the lectern fills the room.

"We can BEGIN--!" is punctuated by the shroud being ripped away and cast aside, revealing -- a metal box with a metal hoop to hold the chain.

And fresh black biohazard symbols stenciled onto every side.

And a pair of keyholes on the lid, framing the unlit red button running a few inches along the center of the lid's edge.

Zealot has posed:
Getting close hadn't been easy. Zealot has a distinctive appearance and anyone under a Daemonite's umbrella would likely be told to watch for her. She got inside in an ulikely way, amongst the servants of a large man of Middle Eastern extraction, attended by seven veiled women who attend to his every need. One of them is currently unconscious and stowed carefully but safely somewhere she won't get in the way. Zealot sees no need to kill servants, after all, unless they try to kill her first. She has been enslaved herself, after all.

She keeps herself knelt on the floor at the foot of her 'master', the veils hiding her appearance and the weapons she's smuggled in along with her. No one even bothered to search her.

Zealot takes note of the blonde, who carries herself with a certain amount of aplomb and self-control, shoulders back, the mark of someone who's received training. Zealot feels the thin dagger between her fingers, a throwing knife she must needs aim true.

When she kills the son of a bitch, she needs to make it count so she can keep moving and get out of there.

Magik has posed:
"Inside," Jyndl says, tenderly stroking the box, "lies a weapon capable of making wishes come true."

The Middle Eastern man and his harem draw the same cursory attention as -- almost -- everyone else gathered in the room from the blonde. The main object of her interest has what is by far the cheapest suit of any other man here. Somewhere in his upper 40s, he's got a good head of short, well-trimmed brown hair, bright blue eyes, and a friendly smile for the cornucopia of baronesses, terrorists, and science fascists who have thus far sought to mingle with him. The little paunch just about hidden beneath his white dress shirt says he does his best, but with kids, work, adult responsibilities-- his 'best' means being out of place in a roomful of artfully sculpted and dramatically crafted souls. If there's any part of him uneasy with this, it's hidden well.

"A weapon that learns. A weapon that grows. A weapon that hates, exactly as you teach it to," accompanies linen-wrapped fingers brushing pointedly over the unlit release button on the lid.

The nice, clean middle-aged man sits up just a little bit straighter.

"Who among you wishes to own Earth's ONLY living sample of the Reaper Virus, ready and willing to be grown, programmed, and unleashed at your whim?! The bidding will begin at one hundred thousand--"

A cheap brown suit sleeve shoots straight up, prompting low amusement from Jyndl and more than a couple glares from the rest of the room.

"I have one HUNdred thousand from the man in brown--!" Jyndl exclaims. "Do I have two?!"

Zealot has posed:
Zealot keeps herself down, closing her eyes as she allows her Coda training to run its course. She positions everyone in the room, memorized, attuning herself to the space itself. She knows the position of everyone, if not their capabilities. Odds are, no one there can even come close to posing a threat to her. But that doesn't mean she should slack off or take less time. Thorough is the proper way. Follow through. Discipline.

She lets the bids go a couple of rounds, mostly to give her a sense of who the real players are - leads to follow, possibilities to hunt. The girl remains an anomaly, curious and intriguing, but not necessarily a factor.

Zealot braces herself and, at the apex of a another cry for a bid, she rises sand, with a fluid motion, flings her blade for the throat of the Daemonite.

Magik has posed:
"Two hundred!"
    "Two fifty!"
        "Three fifty!"
            "Five hun--"

The room erupts in screams.

Fills with terror bouncing between concrete walls until the whole room's a cacophony of accusations, confusion, and energy weapons whining their way to life.

Before Jyndl dropped to their knees with a blade embedded in their throat, the man in the cheap suit and an AIM representative had begun a bidding war, the former clearly better prepared for such a conflict than his attire suggests. Now, the man in the suit's doing his best to get low and crawl beneath the chaos that's about to come; the AIM rep's winding the crank on what looks like a plastic spark gun, but emits increasingly large, hot buds of blue plasma from its tip as he eyes the room.

Zannah has more pressing concerns, though. In a room full of thieves, it's easy for an act of definitive treachery to get lost among the potential deceit bubbling among them-- at least for a little while; Zannah, however, picked a cover that placed her squarely beneath the gazes of fourteen other eyes.

"You-- you DARE--?!" the heavy set man who thought himself her master sputters, flying to his feet and reaching for the Kherubim warrior queen with both hands ready to choke the life from her body. He's faster and stronger than he looks by an order of magnitude that's nowhere near enough to equal the potency of the Coda, but threatening enough to merit immediate attention all the same.

The blonde is still seated, throughout all this.

Still seated and looking squarely at Zealot, encroaching hands and all.

Still seated until she isn't. Until she's standing before the door with a white backing flare while eldritch fire races along her forearms and fills her hands-- just in time to present the handful of would-be buyers who thought this their best chance to escape before things got really, truly dangerous with another obstacle between them and freedom. As eldritch fire seethes, swells, and hardens into a glowing blade paneled with swaths of pulsing arcane energy, the blonde woman turns her attention back to Zealot and lets the sheer, arresting sight of her do the work of keeping expensively dressed attendees from leaving for the moment.

Zealot has posed:
Zealot catches the hands of her would be captor, her superhuman strength twisting one of his wrists around and backwards until bone snaps through the skin. She follows through with a hard kick to his sternum, cracking off a few ribs at the base and likely leaving breathing something he'll struggle to do ever again without medical intervention.

She draws her swords and the micron-thin blade of the thing slices her garmetn in twain, leaving her in a compact, stealth version of her Coda armor, bright crimson and plated to be flexible. Her white hair is cropped short in a pixie cut, her blue eyes intense as she returns her attention to the gurgling Daemonite.

"Did you think I'd forgotten you?" she asks as she wield her blade, only to find her attention momentarily diverted to the eldritch flames, emerging as something unexpected in her own right.

"I have no quarrel with you stranger. I'm here for the Daemonite," Zealot says with a sharp snap of her teeth.

Magik has posed:
"The what?"

Magik's attention snaps to the small group forming in front of her that's marshalling more of its courage with each new member. She charges before they can find it in themselves to do so, slashing through each and every one of them in a wide, shimmering arc. Still whole, the well-dressed knot of crooks all seize up for a beat before collapsing in screaming, writhing agony.

"-- hrrgghl--..." burbles at Zealot's feet.

"... ghhngl--... hhgnnnnnnnnnnnope--"

Fabric rips and tears beneath the sound of gurgling melting into a forcefully drawn out syllable. Flesh ripples and runs along the length of the grey, spindly arm reaching up from Jyndl's back. Spines burst through in waves, only to sink back in, then poke haphazardly outwards once more. The rest of the Daemonite's body hunches and trembles, rising on grey, spindly limbs ending in clawed feet. The dagger's still sticking out of Jyndl's neck; the broker's soft, androgynous face lolls from the hood, eyes rolled back, mouth slightly agape, and blood staining pouty lips.

It's just that now, Jyndl has another neck, several feet higher than the last; another head, sleek and bubbling with metamorphic potential as it rapidly sets into a doll-like mien with slit eyes and a jagged line across the bottom half. That first, wounded neck-head assembly's dangling limp from what is now the Daemonite's left hip, along with both legs, one arm, and a few distinct torso lines.

"Oh," Magik exhales. The next words out of her mouth are ancient and deeply foreign; they summon plumes of fire leaping from her fingertips to envelop the beekeeper who's lining up a shot on Zealot, and his flailing allows it to spread to another panicking attendee.

"That?"

The blonde's attention roves between the looming terror and her crawling quarry, currently tucked between rows in the hopes of making himself a less obtrusive target.

"Are you...?"

She lets the 'good?' go unspoken, implied.

Zealot has posed:
Zealot isn't sure she'd qualify as good or bad. She's lethal. Ususally for the wicked, for the monsters, but she's not going to be mistaken for kind anytime soon.

"I am Zealot," she says in response, as if that explains it. She mostly has eyes for Jyndl now, charging the Daemonite and deflecting a few bullets with her alien blade, sending them sliced in half and skittering in a sizzling line on the floor.

"Leave the women go. They're just slaves," she says, nodding towards her fellow 'wives'. "Burn the rest as you see fit," she says.

Shen she's on the Daemonite, slashing, attacking with a singular and potent ferocity, swatting aside any obstacle to get to her prey, "You've had this coming a long time, monster."