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oh very cool, you are making me feel guilty for not posting more clank-fix. This feels like high qualty dark chocolate: dark, a little bitter, and a small
taste is never enough.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Hmmm.

You know, I'm not sure I like this "Ghost Widow is remaking Arachnos here" thing. There ought to have been *someone* smart enough to cook us up
an entirely new menace, instead of rehashing the one the game already has.

-Morgan. Alexis is not terribly impressed by ghosts who supposedly can't be destroyed...
just because she is trying doesn't mean she will succeed, or that she will get what she is hoping for.

I easily see some of the villians making a power grab from withinas soon as things look like it might work out
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

Render

Thanks, sweno, glad you liked.

Ghost Widow never actually confirms or denies anything. She may NOT be trying to rebuild Arachnos, get back to her home dimension, or planing to take the
Golden Gate Bridge hostage. I don't know what she's doing and Badb jumps to conclusions the way she jumps into combat.

While I agree with Morgan that someone should present a more original or at least more real-world threat, Ghost Widow--a GM overwhelmed by a stereotypical
villain persona--may not be the best person to do it. The most dangerous villain in VIIOR might be a PC. Just a thought.

I'm also not thrilled by the whole "can't be truly destroyed while Arachnos exists" thing. It's circular. GW is part of Arachnos. But
that's what people seem to believe in the game/comics, and I wanted to address it briefly. Plus it foreshadows the 'Portal Corp is coming' thing.
(You know, GW could be lying... She is a villain.)

I held off on writing this until Badb fought Ghost Widow solo in-game: as an EB in the Mender Silos TF, she was tough. As an AV... Soul Storm seems to blow
right through Integration, and the dark 'cage' power is almost as bad. Still haven't run the STF, but it's pretty clear that AV Ghost Widow
will hand Badb her ass in a solo fight.

In comics, GW seems to be intangible most (all?) of the time. In the game, Badb can kick her and do damage. (Magic boots?) I tried to blend the two concepts
and lean toward her being mostly intangible, but vulnerable when she's 'phasing in' to use her powers, because it seems more dramatic than being
just another AV with a million hit points, but not impossible to beat without kryptonite.

I have no idea what I'm going to do for part 5.
There was some other stuff that made it really look like she was trying to rebuild Arachnos though. At least, it sounds like the people joining up with her think she's doing that. '.'

Quote:The most dangerous villain in VIIOR might be a PC. Just a thought.

Pretty much what I was driving at really. I'll be happier if the most dangerous villain is a PC, and not associated with GW or Arachnos at all. But if she's gathering significant forces already, that could be hard to do without things becoming ridiculous. (Unless of course the new villain crushes them and assimilates the leftovers, which wouldn't be that unusual an idea.)

One could argue that one person isn't enough to make up an organization. (And I'd certainly argue that if the rest of the organization is in a dimension you can't access, it doesn't count.) (This could be seen as why, to the limited extent that I have inspiration for Fenspace, Morgan is very careful never to refer to himself as part of "Morgan & Antares" - he takes the name much more seriously than RW-me does. ^_- )

The game rules transition thing is all kinds of tricky. There's things I've spent a lot of time thinking about because Alexis' background because it's based on such a different set of ideas than the CoH system. I kind of worry that the form-switching thing could be too powerful, but without it I'm not being true to the original idea.

-Morgan.

CrimsonKMR

Well, thats just showing off Firv! [Image: wink.gif] Good job tho!
There is no coincidence, only necessity....
- Clow Reed
I'm amused, a rather different medium than the standard storytelling format here. But one I approve of wholeheartedly.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Finally finished putting this together, though it'll probably need some revision at a time when I don't need to go to bed.

The theme of this piece is "Morgan has more personality contamination than she thought."



Well. It'd been fun, but I was running up agains the limit of how long I could not go to work without having consequnces. I needed to decide what I was
going to do with the rest of my life.

Unlike a lot of the other people from The Legendary, my bridges weren't burned behind me. I still had access to my birth form and identity. Even if someone
got the server logs and tracked down everyone who had been logged in, there'd be no way from looking at me to tell that I'd been at the computer at the
time. Not without being relatively familiar with Alexis Morgan's RP background, and very little of that was online.

But could I really go back to how things were?

Logic said I could, but emotionally, I couldn't quite believe it. After all, one of the going theories on the event said that what I was now was shaped by
my stories. And one key principle that I had kept reusing on one level or another in my writing was "Those who have power will use it, or else."

I had no particular desire to meet Or Else.

So I can't go back. But on the other hand, I can't stay here. Being in the same area as Bob's house seemed like it would be a good idea. But it
wasn't big enough for all of us. And I needed my stuff. Especially my computer. If I was right about things, it'd be one of my best tools in getting
powerful enough to deal with all the lunatics. Oh, and I'm an incurable packrat who never totally gets rid of anything if I can avoid it.

This left me with a set of housing, logistics, and transport problems, all of which could be solved quite simply by throwing a great deal of money at them.

I did not have a great deal of money.

However, I know how to get money.

Which is how I ended up making a rather long side trip on my way home...

* * *

Lifeforce scanners are fascinating things, in part because when I'd written about them, I'd left things so vague. I suppose I'd gotten some
inspiration from Shadowrun's astral perception, but in a lot of ways they weren't very similar at all.

One thing I'd definitely got down was that the world seen through them was quite colorful.

But I'd been playing with them a little here and there, and as I did so it brought up memories of the different things they could tell me. I could
recognize anything living as being so, and identify sentient beings. (Though no one had ever figured out the mechanics behind AIs being visible this way.) An
overall evaluation of health was possible, and a few (but by no means all) health conditions were discernable with analysis. And in some cases, the absence of
life was itself significant. There were things that I, with the help of the software running on my henshin device, knew how to recognize.

Among those things were active meth labs.

Normally, such things would be considered beyond the agency's scope. Bigger fish to fry, and such. Still, they spread misery for fun and profit, which fit
the usual criteria. And, possibly most importantly for practical purposes, I could find them. Without empathic abilities, I wouldn't be able to find
anything higher priority except as a target of opportunity. It wouldn't be a good idea to wait on that before establishing a proper financial base.

I took a moment to check myself over. I didn't have the effective invulnerability to forensic tracking that I was used to, so it wouldn't do to be
careless. I was wearing a long black dress that was slit almost insanely high, black high heels (which somehow I could walk in as long as I didn't think
about it), and thin black gloves. I smelled like alcohol. All as it should be.

As I walked up to the small house, I noticed the abrupt lack of any smell in the air. If I'd needed any confirmation that my scanners were right, this was
it. Only one thing ever caused such a complete lack of scent in the air - my defense fields were reacting to the presence of poison gas.

I knocked on the front door. It only took a few moments before someone answered. "Excuse me," I said, trying to slur my speech a bit, "My car
broke down a couple blocks from here, could I use your phone?"

I could see the risk/reward calculations going through his head. Had I seen anything that could lead the cops to him? Could he just shut the door and ignore
me? But it didn't take him long to notice my 'inebriated' state, and then he must have considered, what could he get from me? Was there anyone who
had seen me come here, or who would look for me?

He made the decision I wanted him to, grabbing my arm and pulling me inside.

I didn't protest. Why should I? He was taking me in the direction I wanted to go. If I'd been feeling that helpful, I would have told him he should
have grabbed my right arm. It would have given him a few more seconds.

The moment he closed the door, I willed my gun to appear in my hand. Before he'd had a chance to notice that I was now armed, I had pushed it against his
chest and pulled the trigger. It was a low power shot for silence's sake, but that didn't make a bullet through the heart any less fatal.

I was now had a (potentially very short) time limit. I ran forward and into the kitchen. The man sitting at the table actually had time to notice me before
I'd hit him with a quick volley.

However, I'd given the third man in the house ample warning by now. I had yet to actually see him, but he obviously knew someone dangerous was at work
here, and didn't intend to take any chances. Perhaps he'd acquired a shotgun, and was lying in wait to ambush me as I came through the door.

Unfortunately, while I couldn't be certain how he was armed, I knew exactly where he was waiting. I could see his life through the wall. A mid-power shot
went right through the wall and still had plenty of energy left to go through his head.

Now that all the enemies were down, I could ransack the place. I only really wanted two things, money and ammunition. No point in spending money on bullets if
I don't have to, right? (Technically, they shouldn't work, since my gun is chambered for 10mm GP - which has never even been manufactured in this
world. But thanks to the game mechanics this form was based on, I was effectivly wielding an omnigun. It could fire anything that would fit in the chamber. It
was a nice arrangement, I could save my small stock of GP ammo for things that were actually dangerous. And I suspected finding bullets that had been fired,
but whose propellent had never been ignited, would be very disruptive to any ballistics investigation.)

When I was finished, I had acquired a moderate amount of cash - certainly not enough to be set for decades, but enough to handle my near-term expenses - and
enough ammo that for the limited use I would be making of this form, I wouldn't have to worry about it for a while. Together, it was enough that I'd be
able to focus on more important issues for a while, which was enough to consider this operation a success.

Before leaving, I methodically shot each body in the head, heart, and spine. It was kind of a pain, but it was important to follow the procedures in cases like
this. It'd be quite troublesome if one of these bozos were to suddenly come back to life.

Once I got out of town, I did a quick mode shift. The gloves were, as intended, completely destroyed, while any blood that had gotten on me was scoured away as
my clothes tore themselves apart and reconstructed themselves in a new form. I'd left nothing of myself behind, and with some care nothing I'd taken
could be linked back to it's source.

As I superjumped my way towards home, I contemplated my plans for the next few days. It'd take a while for certain transactions to complete, so I'd
probably spend some time watching new anime. I remembered someone saying on the forums that Alexis' technomagic background reminded them of Nanoha, and
I'd downloaded the series, but not watched it. And given the circumstances, now would probably be a good time to sit down and do it.



Morgan & Antares method of acquring money - kill evil people, take their stuff.

Morgan's dress is based on the one worn by Aya Brea at the beginning of the game Parasite Eve. It looks approximately like this.

-Morgan.
New!Morgan frightens me, in a good literary way.

But Firv? Is made of win and awesome. O.O
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
Of course the first time I look at the pages after getting some replies I find a, now fixed, spelling mistake that had been staring me in the face for months.
This is, of course, par for the course [Image: tongue.gif]

Nice piece Morgan. We're going to have some interesting times when the actions of some of the Legendary/Infamous finally come to light.

--

41. Ancient, slumbering evils are cranky when you wake them up early.

- 50 Things Hexane has learned since joining the Infamous
Quote: Valles wrote:

New!Morgan frightens me, in a good literary way.

Sounds like I got things pretty close to right though. Still, there's some things I'm not quite satisfied with, which I'll probably try to fix
sometime when I don't either feel like hell or work weird hours. '.'

In the meantime, since there's stuff I'd like to get out but I'm not sure I can get put in the fic (and because I like reading things like this for
stories, so I emulate the practice), here's some "director's commentary" for that bit...

-Don't expect to see Morgan like this very often. It requires fairly special circumstances for her to consider someone to have abandoned their humanity,
and only then will she kill without hesitation. (However, there will be more of Alexis's ruthless side seen whenever I finish writing Operation Beartrap.)

-Meth manufacturers are, in fact, rather a borderline case. Thus the "partially incapacitated girl" act. If the one at the door had acted like a
human, she would have left peacefully. (Albeit moderately frustrated - while justifiable under her organization's rules, this operation was neither
enjoyable nor glorious, so she really just wanted to get it over with. Thus "the decision I wanted him to".)

-The alcohol Morgan splashed on herself comes from her (referenced in one random bit involving Space Mage) tendency to take alcoholic drinks and use magic to
drink only the non-alcohol molecules. She saves the alcohol and occaisionally pours it on any burning zombies she happens to run into.

-Morgan intends to only use the Aya form for this sort of "deniable operation". Partially for security's sake, and partly because without a
stable supply of 10mm GP, it doesn't have enough raw power to take on supers.

-GP stands for "General Purpose". Despite the name, this label actually encompasses a number of specialized ammunition types. It's a long story
how that happened.

-The destruction of the gloves is something that was done intentionally. Normally any additional clothing worn during any transformation will get shunted into
storage space. However, between Morgan's regular viewing of CSI, and Alexis' experience at various operations, Morgan isn't stupid enough to not
destroy that kind of evidence immediately and thoroughly.

-I really need to decide if VIIOR Morgan goes by the name Alexis. I kept getting confused as to what to use when I was writing this, and I'm not sure my
previous parts have been entirely consistent either. Though in any case she'll probably still answer to it from others just from reflex.

And... that's all I can think of right now. '.'

-Morgan.
This one stepped into the coffee-shop-cum-cybercafe next door to the curio shop. Only the grace and unruffability the fictional version of Nogi provided prevented an embarassing stumble as the mana washed over every living thing inside. Misao stood outside, her own senses apparently telling her there was a lot of "Chakra" in the air.

The patrons this one could see did not seem to notice the surge of magical energy emanating from the terminals before them. Being the opportunist that merging with Nogi-chan had made who this one was into... this one strode to an unobtrusive corner and began to gather the "free mana" with gestures that might have seemed silly to those who did not believe in the mystical arts. The itch at the base of this one's spine was becoming unbearable, so, once this one made her way into the unisex bathroom, the henge hiding this one's foxy features was dropped.

The sudden shift to quadruped was completely unexpected. Though, it was pleasant to have my tails swaying freely...

"Ara," this one said. "This could be troublesome."
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

CrimsonKMR

((Apparently, this idea has ground to a halt, but my muse poked my brain again. Curse you
Muse! Also had meant to post this on Friday, but I misplaced my flash drive))

The former game master turned supervillain Ghost Widow watched the broadcast of Larry
King talking about the robbery of Fort Knox. She had a smirk on her face as she watched.

"I always knew the world had something greater planned for her. Anyone who can take
down both Sirocco and Lord Recluse in combat is up for something great. However…" she drummed her fingers on the arm of the office chair she was seated
in. "Corrupted Flame seems to be lacking direction, would you not say?"

"Yes, my lady." The minions in the office said. Ghost Widow didn't really
expect any other answer from them. The minds she hadn't warped to be yes men were that of their own choosing.

As the TV looped the security camera footage for the umpteenth time, Ghost Widow
commented. "She was never very subtle, was she? Probably be best for a distraction force at the moment, rather than anything important. What was her last
known location?"

---------------------------

I don't know why, but Flame liked cities. We sat in an apartment in a downtown
Houston building that hadn't been rented for a while says the coat of dust over the countertops. There was only one piece of furniture in the place, which
was a large makeshift chair made of multiple melted gold bars. Flame hadn't attempted to sell her bounty from Fort Knox. I wasn't sure if it was
because she still didn't know what to do with the money once she had it, or if she was unsure of where to sell it. Not having her villain contacts was
really shaking her up. Hell, most of the situation was confusing her.

We had been in the apartment for two days, listening to radio signals via Flame's
internal circuitry without any movement on her part. My choice in the matter was not acknowledged. {How long do you plan on sitting here? It's been three
days since you found this place, and you've barely moved since.}

"I…. I don't know what I should be doing. No one has any need for a supervillain
in this world." She sighed. She was starting to sound emo to me. I would have felt sorry for her, if I wasn't being "held" against my will.
A good portion of me wanted to make a grab for control, but I didn't know enough about how Flame's memory worked. I wasn't sure if I could hold her
back if needed.

There was a knock at the door. Flame snapped her head around and watched the portal.
There was another string of knocks, more urgent. Flame turned up her volume on her hearing equipment, and both of us heard the sounds of submachine guns
cocking. Flame stood and grinned. She had something to do.

The door was bashed in by an entry ram, and SWAT forces stormed into the apartment,
surrounding us. Flame simply stood there as they moved in. Each member had their firearm trained on us, while Flame had her hands down by her side. I could see
she had her fire defensive programs ready to run, but not on yet. She seemed more curious as to what they would do rather than worry about the SWAT
team.

"You're under arrest for assault with a deadly weapon, manslaughter, grand
theft…" the squad leader continued to read the charges for a good thirty seconds. "Stand down and come with us ma'am. We can do this the easy way
or the hard way."

"No."

"The hard way then." He lifted his hand, preparing to order his forces to
fire.

Before he could drop his arm, the leader and his other teammates began to float in the
air, bands of white ectoplasmic light writhing over them. I knew that power, and I really hoped it wasn't who I thought it would be.

Ghost Widow sauntered into the room. That's the only way I can describe it. She may
be an undead being, but damn if she didn't translate well into the real world.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself, Corrupted Flame." She smirked as she walked
around us, looking us over.

Flame watched as Ghost Widow moved. For once, she was… nervous? I don't think scared
was the emotion, too strong, but nervous worked. Ghost Widow wasn't one of Lord Recluse's lieutenants for her looks alone. I kept my "mouth"
shut. I didn't want to bring any attention to myself.

"And yet…" Ghost Widow said, sitting on the "chair" of gold bars,
"You seem to be lacking drive. The group of us, the Virtues as they're calling us, are in a very unique position. We are, for the most part, unopposed
to do as we wish. We have the power, ability, and most importantly, the will to shape this world to our desire. We can change this world into the ideals given to us by Lord Recluse, and eventually, find a way
to bring him here."

"I don't believe the reports that we're just a freak accident that
hasn't been explained yet. I believe the idea that we did from the world with Paragon City, even if we are only copies. We CAN find a way back, and I'd like to have this world under our control when we do.
Will you help me, Corrupted Flame? Will you help bring about a true world ruled by Lord Recluse?"

Flame was speechless, and I was quite impressed. Widow obviously learned her oratory
skills from Recluse. She was even swaying me until I realized what side she played on.

"You don't need to answer." Ghost Widow waved with her hand towards someone
behind us. A folder slid across the floor to the front of our feet. "Find her, and recruit her if you can. If not, dispose of her. We have no need for
those not on our side." She stood up and walked out of the room, the SWAT team floating along behind her.

Flame looked at the folder for a good thirty seconds before she bent over and picked it
up. She opened the portfolio and grinned. I groaned. Along with the dossier, there was a color photo attached. It was Lady Nogitsune.

((OH SNAP!))
There is no coincidence, only necessity....
- Clow Reed
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