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Of Gods and Men; [Shroud, Fallout]
Topic Started: Dec 12 2008, 08:17 PM (487 Views)
Max_Coleridge
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Darkforce Manipulation, Teleportation
Time: afternoon
Date: December 1st



Four months had passed since the day that Max Coleridge had disappeared from his life and awoke to find himself trapped as a helpless prisoner inside his body, cursedly aware of every passing moment - every moment of passion and every indulgence his body was used for and he had no control over. Four months that felt like years trapped in Hell.

He felt the slight prick as the needle pierced the flesh of his arm and a moment later, he couldn’t help but feel the euphoric rush of the drug. Max gripped the wire of the mental cage he was being kept in, relishing the pain as the barbs bit into his mental-self. He was suspended, naked and contorted into small wire cage. The final torment was the ever-present spotlight that shone down on him from above, keeping a master of shadows in constant light and on display.

Is that any way to show your gratitude? a mocking voice chided from the shadows, slightly slurred from his latest indulgence. Months ago, Max had responded to the barbed comments. He thought that if he could anger his warden, it might shake his focus and allow Max the momentary lapse he could make use of – it hadn’t worked.

You know… that it could always be worse, the voice said with a syrupy sing-song quality that drove home the sadist’s pleasure. The wires of his cage started to constrict, driving their barbs deeper into flesh of the mindscape representation of Max’s consciousness.

Agony ripped through him as the Shadow King’s anger tore into his mind, shredding it into pieces as he had done before. Max glared into the shadows, obstinately not screaming, denying the Shadow King the pleasure of his efforts. He clamped his jaws shut, his teeth gritted in pain, and thought of vengeance; it was a white-hot chain that would pull him through to the other side.

He would endure, out of spite.




Max Coleridge’s handsome face grinned as he flexed his hand inside the dark metal gauntlet. The purple gem set into the back of his hand gave him a rush of power that no drug or hedonistic indulgence ever could. As another voice spoke and the smile twisted into a grimace of annoyance, which was gone almost immediately.

“Of course, my Lord, the gem will have its mate immediately,” Max gave a deferential bow of his head and disappeared in a cloak of impenetrable darkness.

The Shadow King reached out with Max’s Darkforce powers, exalting in the feel of godhood imparted by the gem. He smirked again as traitorous thoughts bloomed in the darkness of his mind, but that was for later; first things first. The desert around Fallout filled with a blinding darkness; it was a huge portal that the nuclear man would not be able to escape. Rawson, along with those around him, appeared in the roiling magma of an active volcano on one of the Hawaiian Islands.

That was your first mistake, Max informed Shadow King with cold delight.
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Rawson
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Nuclear / Atomic Energy Manipulation
The great palace of glass towered above Rawson in the vast Sahara. There was nothing else in the world that looked like it all. Nothing was as impossibly intricate, nothing was as elaborate and nothing was anywhere near as grand. There was no central style, no overarching theme. Instead the estate was a mad combination of every style from Gothic to Moorish, all equally represented in the glass. No architect could have planned the building in a life time, much less create it. It would have taken the hands of master artisans working around the clock generations to construct, and one small fracture would have shattered the whole thing. No, such a creation was far above the potential of man. Only a truly divine being could be responsible for its erection from the sands of the vast desert.

Rawson imagined, planned and built it in less than the time it took for a heart to beat. He had hand placed every piece of sand carefully with painstaking care, making sure every grain was just right. Before gravity could begin to notice something was amiss the sand was already glass, frozen in place and time. This was how Rawson spent his days now, alone doing great works of no importance to anyone. Especially him. The gem that hung around his neck gave him the power to do anything, but with that power he chose to do nothing. Truth be told it wasn't very fun, being the only god. There were no more challenges, no more rivals to kill or hurdles to incinerate. Remarkably even instant gratification didn't hold any appeal to Rawson anymore.

The throne in the large hall of the glass palace wasn't very comfortable, but Rawson sat in it none the less. In his uncomfortable glass chair in his opulent palace Rawson sat and thought. Ever since he had received the gem he had done a lot of thinking. His mind seemed to have expanded a hundred fold as soon as he had touched the red stone, but all he did with his new mental power was think. He'd think about things of no importance, or things of great importance. It didn't matter. When he could turn do anything he wanted in seconds he didn't see the point in doing, just in thinking. Slowly but surely even that was beginning to bore him.

But the sullen god was disturbed from his thoughts by an approaching sound. He raised his head from the hand it was leaning on and listened for another few seconds. Although the source of the sound was still several hundred miles away he could identify it easily, it was the familiar whir of the blades of a helicopter. Refocusing his eyes Rawson could see several large specimen of the vehicle making their way towards him over the shifting sands. Focusing a little more he could even make out the SHIELD logo on the sides of the helicopters. So Fury had come looking for his lost toy apparently. Rawson could hardly wait.

But wait he did. For several minutes he waited, not moving a muscle in his body as the SHIELD helicopters got closer. His eyes closed, the sounds of a missile firing were his first indicator that the helicopters had arrived. The large vaguely Indian dome he had carefully created that now rested over his head shattered into a million pieces as two large rocket propelled explosives burst into his palace. The resulting explosion was enough to trigger a chain reaction of fracturing and shattering in the rest of the palace. As the glass creation crashed to the floor of the desert, men with the distinctive SHIELD logo on their armor slid down to ground on ropes. They looked around for any sign of their intended target. They found none. As they continued to look around the rubble no one noticed an incorporeal head begin to float up form the sands. One of the soldiers turned around in time to let out a curse and empty his weapon at Rawson's torso, which was now exposed from the sand. In a few seconds Rawson was once again on solid ground and a good deal of lead was flying through his body. The newly christened god was beginning to get annoyed. The men had attacked him brutally and without mercy and Rawson had every intention of responding in kind.

He was just in the middle of throwing one of the soldiers into a still standing glass pillar half a mile away when his world became darkness. Then his world became very bright. Rawson, the SHIELD agents and the remains of his glass palace were standing on a mountain, well a volcano probably judging by all the lava, in somewhere that was definitely not the Sahara. What ever Erebus was thinking teleporting him there Rawson didn't know, but he was very upset with her. Before Rawson could find her though a wave a magma spewed over a rock and engulfed him in a river of Lava. Now he was very very upset with Erebus.

A silver hand emerged from the lava, exploratorily groping around until it made contact with solid rock, then it pulled up the silver body attached to it as Rawson climbed out of the lava, the melted rock dripping off his body. The metal skinned nuclear man looked around for the dark force manipulator, bellowing her name impossibly loudly as he did. Rawson made for a very vengeful god.
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Max_Coleridge
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Darkforce Manipulation, Teleportation
A metal form burst from the lava, flying into the sky, leading a comet trail of ash. The air around Rawson… no, this was Fallout – no longer truly the man he was before, shimmered with the heat that radiated from his glowing metal body. “Erebus!” He bellowed.

Max shifted in the cage, his old life and his freedom so tantalizingly close that he could almost reach out and touch it. With a growing grim smile, Max watched Shadow King abandon his grandiose plans of thrashing Fallout with brute force and how satisfying that would’ve been for the twisted sadist; instead, he settled back into his old habits and torture methods that had broken better men than Rawson in the past, such as the great Charles Xavier.

Shrouded in darkness, the Shadow King focused his will and reached out with his thoughts. Out of the gloom, lashing thoughts, like mental knives that would have torn into psyches, even those of powerful telepaths, sparked uselessly on Fallout’s mental shields.

You should’ve done that first, Max coldly commented from his cage. Now he’s ready for you. Shadow King turned his hate filled internal gaze on Max, wanting to rip the cocky smirk off Max’s face, but the raging god that Fallout had become made that indulgence impossible, at the moment.

You know how to destroy him, Shadow King glared at his prisoner, circling in the darkness around Max’s cone of light.

No, Max spat, already working his way to what Shadow King wanted. His black eyes peered out through the barbed wire, Letting him kill you would be worth dying to see, he said through gritted teeth.

No – is not one of your options, Black King, Shadow King replied, sneering Max’s title.

Max felt the harsh mental fingers of the Shadow King invade his mind and he thrashed uselessly in his cage, causing it to swing back and forth. In seconds, he was glad to hear the puzzlement in Shadow King’s scratchy mental voice.

Doomstadt?

Von Doom has held off SHIELD and every mutant and metahuman for decades. If there is a way on this planet to contain and defeat Fallout, Doom will have it, Max spoke through gritted teeth, trying to stop himself but unable to resist answering his captor.

Thousands of miles away, in the forbidding icy mountains of Latveria, guards patrolled the cold hallways and rooms Castle Doom, an incongruous mish mash of medieval stone and modern technology.

Hans walked the same path he had done every day since he was of age to join Emperor Doom’s army. His eyes scanned the rooms, this way and that, falling on what had been the strange and miraculous when he first joined but was now familiar: the complex machines, the robots being constructed and refined, the Vault and its alien-looking curios. He gave his usual congenial nod of greeting to the frozen person in the cryogenic pod before walking continuing his patrol.

Suddenly, the blaring sounds of Intruder alarms shattered the calm and rang throughout the castle. Hans gripped the laser rifle slung over his shoulder and ran into strange knee-high black fog. With his heart pounding in his chest, he ran into The Dungeon, where Emperor Doom conducted interrogations and experiments on the most dangerous enemies of Latveria. Inside the containment chamber was an angry man with gleaming metal skin and near the controls was… something. The creature towered over the control panel and looked like it was created by the same black fog that covered the floor. It stared at Fallout; its enormous but vague face stretched into three feet wide grin displaying dagger-like teeth the size of a man’s hand.

“Halt!” Hans yelled and trained his rifle high up at the monstrous figure’s head.

Inside the Darkforce created façade, the face of Max Coleridge calmly looked out and switched on the machine he had teleported Fallout into. As an afterthought, Darkforce billowed up and flowed into the inconvenient guard’s nose and throat. Hans’ gun clattered to the floor as he clawed at his neck. The mist expanded and turned solid, bulging out his throat as it slowed strangled the guard.
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Rawson
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Nuclear / Atomic Energy Manipulation
Rawson's patience was running out. Again he shouted Erebus's name into the empty volcanic mountainside. Still she remained hidden. Rawson couldn't say he blamed her. If he was still his old self he wouldn't have dreamed of fighting someone as powerful as he was now, someone who was for all intense and purposes omnipotent. Erebus was either being incredibly brave or incredibly foolish challenging him in the first place. Either way she was being remarkably short sighted. There was nothing out there that could harm him, much less kill him, even considering the many horrible secret weapons of destruction that the Hellfire club had hidden away for their own private use. Whatever contingency plans they had for killing their black bishop wouldn't work now, their wasn't enough money in the world much less in the club to kill a god.

He was just thinking about how slowly he was going to rip the club apart when a world class telepathic barrage slammed into what was left of his psyche. Perhaps once this would have distressed Fallout, but now it simply filled him with rage. The combination of stirred memories of his past period of mental captivity and knowing that Erebus had used his former weakness maliciously against him was enough to push him to brink. Light poured out of him as whatever control he had over the immense powers within him began to slip and more and more of the horrible power of the gem began to free itself from its bonds and burst into the world. Rawson didn't even notice his loss of control, between screaming for Erebus and looking all over the Hawaiian islands for her he was far to occupied to feel the control slipping away from him.

That is until for the second time in only a few minutes his world went dark. The momentary absence of light was like falling into cold water and his senses and emotions snapped back into his command. Reeling in his power wasn't a foreign experience for Fallout and although the power gem's level of power was incomparable to anything Rawson could normally muster their was little difference in how to tame it. By the time the darkness receded Fallout's metallic body hovered a few feet above the ground, his chest heaving as his body once again became completly under his control. With his faculties restored Fallout now tried to completly take in his new surroundings.

A quick scan of the immediate area revealed their wasn't much to take in. He was in a relatively small chamber, although perhaps cell was better way to describe it, shaped roughly like a squashed eight sided pillar with walls bulging out perhaps five feet above the floor. The whole interior was a sickening white, except for the large band of windows that circled the cell around the bulge, perfect for people to look down on him. Rawson couldn't believe that the club had created a prison cell specifically for him in such a short amount of time without him even hearing about it. Maybe he'd congratulate Erebus on her guile before peeling her skin off layer by layer.

But first came escape. Of course he planned to blow the entire compound to kingdom come, but first he wanted to be sure he wasn't in the New York building. The decadence, the corruption,the wild hedonism: New York was a tough city to replace. Fallout propelled himself off the ground until he was level with the windows. He expected to find a couple hundred armed men pointing their weapons at his face and Erebus standing triumphantly on some platform. What he actually found however was much more puzzling. The first thing he noticed was the giant billowing cloud of perpetual darkness. It was most likely Erebus, but he'd never seen her pull of anything that....menacing. Not to mention impersonal. Maria seemed like the kind of gal who enjoyed a good taunting of her captured adversary, not one who hid behind a horrible shield of darkness. Maybe the club wasn't behind this.

Dragging his eyes away from patch of midnight he made a note of the rest of room outside his chamber. The strange combination of ancient European castle and state of the art technology didn't remind him of anything he'd seen in New York. Excellent. Just in case though the Black bishop tried to look beyond his immediate surroundings, through them actually. This was meet with failure. The first failure he'd suffered since he'd found the gem. Now Rawson was rather interested by the cage he was in, and growing more frightened by the minute.

The first thing he tried was his most peaceful method of escape, teleportation. He was stopped dead cold directly before the glass. Rawson wasn't surprised that method of escape didn't work, in fact he was rather pleased. That meant he had a good excuse to try and escape as violently as possible. Nuclear energy burst through his now fleshy body and violently collided with the walls of his confines. But after a few seconds the walls still remained, just in a much worse state of repair. Then next blast would have tired him had been without his gem. On the various computers outside the cell the energy level spiked drastically, but still stayed with acceptable levels. Rawson grinned a sick smile that didn't reach his eyes as he prepared to see how much abuse this new cell of his could take. The answer: Not enough.

The unparalleled energy crashed into the walls of his cell, and for a few seconds they held. Then the computers flashed red and warnings began being recited by a chorus of mechanical voices. Then the walls shattered and were caught up in the nuclear maelstrom, as were several immediate areas of Castle Doom and the people within them. As large chunks of stone rubble fell around him Rawson's again armored flying form hung in the air, his eyes cutting through the smoke and debris, looking for whatever was left of whoever was hidden behind that veil of Darkforce.
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Max_Coleridge
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Darkforce Manipulation, Teleportation
The failed first attempt, seeing the chamber adjust to the added power brought against, was all the forewarning that Shadow King needed. The chamber had held, but the smirk on Fallout’s scarred face told the rest of the story; that had been a mere shrug.

When the wave of energy crashed through the reinforced dungeon, shaking the castle to its foundation, Shadow King had already slipped away into a pocket dimension created by the purple gem that glowed on his glove. Unseen and unfelt, he was still there but taken out of sync with normal space. Cocooned in threads of purple energy that trailed after him, Shadow King stalked through the twisted ruins of the lab, longing to wipe the smirk from Fallout’s face. His teeth clenched in fury at the realization that he could do nothing to Fallout, his fellow god walking the Earth, just as Fallout could do nothing to him.

Noticed but unheeded, there was a groan and ripping of metal as, off in the distance, a machine that had obviously not survived Fallout’s blast, was hurled through a cell door. Rocks and fallen debris crunched under the heavy tread of the man who emerged. His angry blue eyes pinned Fallout then turned away; he didn’t know the mug with the fancy pants shiny metal hide and he had his own fish to fry anyhow. “This place is turnin’ into Grand Central station,” he muttered in a low gravely voice. “Hey! You!” He called to Fallout. “Thanks for tha assist, pal. I gotta little business ta take care of, freeing some pals and turnin’ Doom into a can o’ dictator, then we’ll be back ta help ya out.” Making his way to the stairs, the big man stretched out a misshapen arm that looked like it was made of orange rock and casually ripped out a stone pillar from the ceiling, tapping it against his palm like a baseball bat he was getting the feel of. His progression up the up stairs to Doom’s throne room was accompanied by the crash metal and clunks of broken robot pieces flying down the stairs.

However, not all the robots that arrived at the epicenter of the blast were in pieces. The air buzzed with the sounds of their jetpacks and halls echoed with the metallic clanks of their tread as dozens of robots descended upon Fallout, the only intruder they could see. Countless blasts of lightning arced across his metal skin in a blindly blue glow.

“Just die already… pompous ass,” Shadow King hissed and in a sudden flash of devious cruelty that comes naturally to some minds, he opened a portal in front of his hand. In a sudden strike, Max’s hand darted inside and came out dripping with blood and Rawson’s pulsing heart in his clenched fist.
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Rawson
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Nuclear / Atomic Energy Manipulation
It didn't take long for Fallout's all seeing eyes to figure out that he was alone in the ruins of the cell. Whoever had followed him out to the middle of the world's largest desert, had teleported him halfway around the globe and had imprisoned him in a cell (poorly) designed to contain a god was gone. Or at least that's how it appeared, but someone with the nerve to try and kill the most powerful metahuman on earth, with the resources to track him and imprison him, didn't seem like the type of person to give up very easily. So Rawson checked the room again, looking for thermal traces of whatever might have teleported into the smoking crater that was once a cage. He looked through the walls of the dungeon and through the series of seemingly never ending hallways. He was prepared to look through the entire depressing grey country that he was trapped in when his vision snapped back to his immediate surroundings as something began to rumble within the chamber.

Rawson's metal body, still suspended a dozen feet off the ground, rotated slowly towards the sound of the disturbance. He doubted that whatever force that had been antagonizing him would be so clumsy as to unintentional attract his attention so he didn't see the need to eradicate the disturbance. No, he was much more interested in just what could possibly survive such an explosion. Depending on what it was he would respond accordingly, although hopefully not before he could learn where exactly he was.

Emerging from what must have once been a door frame before it was ripped to pieces came the one thing that seemed to still be alive in the ruins of the large room that housed Rawson's cell. Fallout knew he should have recognized what ever it was that emerged form the debris, he remembered seeing that face on a file before. He used to look at so many files before he had stolen the gem. He needed to in order to stay alive. Sure he could pack a punch but when push came to shove he couldn't take very much abuse. He couldn't just fight dirty, he had to fight smart.

But not anymore. He didn't need to pay attention to the superpowered community anymore. He didn't need to make plans. He didn't need to read the endless stream of files the club had on anyone worth mentioning on the planet. He didn't even remember most of them anymore. None of the little people on their little planet were important anymore. None of them were a threat. But the fact that Rawson just floated there deep in thought didn't faze the brick man and with a thank you he promised to return, after dealing with a certain mad scientist. So he was in Doom's castle eh? Fallout wasn't surprised.

What did surprise him though was the lazer that burnt into his chest. Rawson looked down at the slightly red area of his chest where he was struck, the wound already cooling before his eyes. Then he looked up at the layers of ruined castle from which several large mechanical constructs began to emerge. He knew there was some sort of name for them, but he couldn't remember it. Not that it mattered in the long run anyways. With a wave of his hand another nuclear blast slammed into the interior of the castle, reducing the ill fated robots to a pile of ash and slag. Fallout smiled with a job well done. Then, he died.

For a split second the black bishop's eyes widened in terror and then his large metal frame fell heavily into the ground, kicking up a tremendous cloud of debris. For a few seconds the only movement in the minicrater where Rawson lay was of the dust resettling on the ground. Then from the ground Fall out shoot back up into the air, an angry sneer on his face and his hands glowing with blind nuclear light. It took far more than a few missing organs to kill a god.
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Max_Coleridge
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Darkforce Manipulation, Teleportation
But Fallout didn’t have the good grace to just die.

Shadow King clenched his fist, warm blood and gore squirted between his fingers as Fallout arose and glared around the twisted remains of Doctor Doom’s chamber.

:: I know how to kill him :: said the smug yet cold voice of his captive.

Shadow King rounded on Max, :: You said bringing here would work :: Shadow King snapped. :: Your advice is worthless. ::

:: I said, :: replied Max through clenched teeth, :: If he could be stopped anywhere on Earth, it would be here. ::

For a moment, the Shadow King’s attention flickered inwardly and regarded Max Coleridge, naked and suspended in his mental cage, with suspicion. :: I don’t believe you. ::

The Shadow King had been without his own true body for so long that, unlike other psychics who unconsciously still project an image of themselves in their mental landscapes, his avatar was a formless thought. The thought shimmered and morphed, growing until the only thing Max could see was the enormous face with eyes glowing like twin moons and wide mouth of fangs, each shiny tooth taller than him. After four months of torture, the knowledge that this monolithic horror was just a mental creation, like everything else here, was cold comfort.

:: You’re trying a trick :: His sneering voice boomed down at Max like a god.

Max’s fingers worked through the cage and lifted his black-eyed gaze to the smoky face; for the first time in months feeling the intoxicating thrill of danger and not knowing if, this time, he was going too far… all the way to the point of no return. :: Perhaps, :: Max replied, certain that he hadn’t heard the quaver of fear in his voice, at least to his own ears. :: But the angry look on Fallout’s face says that he’s going on the offensive… and you can’t win that. The only thing you could do is run, but I imagine your Lord Apocalypse is not forgiving to people who fail him; I know, I wouldn’t be. :: Silence stretched between the two. Max shifted in his cage, nearly pressing his face against the barbed wires. :: I am going to be rid of you but I have to make sure we survive long enough for that to happen. ::

The Shadow King’s laugh echoed in the vast, empty mindscape.

The mental discussion between the two took less than a moment in the physical world and once again, Fallout, the pissed-off self-proclaimed god, was whisked away; finding himself this time in the black void of space.

:: The Event Horizon of a black hole :: Max mused, watching Rawson through the safety of a Darkforce portal. :: With its effect on time, he’s like an insect caught in amber. ::

The Shadow King smirked, exalting in his victory. “All the power in the universe,” he crowed, “worthless without the time to use it.” They saw it at the same time, the yellow glow of power from Rawson’s chest as the gem kept him alive. It was slightly worked into his flesh but as the crushed heart had demonstrated, opening a portal and then closing it again with a chunk of flesh on the other side, wasn’t much of a problem. Knowing that true victory was only moments away, a greedy smile graced and then marred Max’s otherwise handsome features.

Inside his cage, the real Max felt the Shadow King’s attention turn away, pulled by the irresistible draw of power. He felt the release of power as Shadow King opened a small portal on Fallout’s metal chest and then closed it; a gash of skin and meat that used to be metal fell from the exit portal. Max thrust his arm out of his cage up to his shoulder, the barbs gouging his mental-flesh but the momentum of his sudden burst of movement swung the cage toward the edge of darkness. Too focused on the falling hunk of meat with the Power Gem, Shadow King didn’t see what was happening until it was too late – Max’s outstretched fingers reached the inviting darkness and for a brief moment, Max could act.

Another portal opened behind Rawson as the gem was severed from his chest and he fell backward, into the reinforced bunker beneath the Hellfire Club’s Pleasure Palace; the only place that could contain him… and the only place that would treat his wounds. Sirens blared and blinding lights flashed as the blood-soaked form of Max Coleridge's Black Bishop arrived out of a darkness portal.
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Rawson
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Nuclear / Atomic Energy Manipulation
Fallout was getting very agitated with this little game of cat and invisible mouse. His silver fingers dug into his palms and if it was at all possible for him to bleed his palms would have been red ribbons, but instead sparks fell to ground, their own light overpowered by the uneven patches of radiation leaving Rawson's body, further twisting and melting what was left of Doom's machines. This fight wasn't even remotely fair, and that was driving the black bishop absolutely mad. Of course normally there was nothing fair about how Rawson fought, but when he was on the receiving end of such an annoyingly devious ambush he was quick to realize the injustice of the situation. At least he could understand why this was happening to him, why someone went through all the trouble to tear his heart out. If Erebus wasn't behind all this, which was a distinct possibility, the list of powerful groups, nations, and individuals uncomfortable with an omnipotent sociopath running around was a very long one. But in the end it didn't really matter, Rawson was still fuming either way.

As Rawson continued to frantically search the area around him with his extraordinary vision for whatever was antagonizing him his hold on the power of the gem was starting to slip, again. He needed something to take his anger out on, some focal point for all his pent up rage. What divine providence then when three doombots snaked their way out of the ruble and lunged at the distracted bishop, barely making a sound in the entire process. Barely being the key word. To Rawson the the hum of their circuitry encased behind inches of steel was deafening when he listened closely for it. Their attempts at stealthily dislodging themselves from rocks was like a herd of elephants to Rawson. But he allowed them to get closer and closer, until finally in unison they lept for him.

As Rawson spun around and caught the fist of the closest robot inches from his face he thought how much less satisfying it was to kill a machine. There was no expression of surprise on its face, no terror in its eyes. Rawson hardly got any satisfaction as he crushed the metal hand, bits of steel bulging out between his fingers and sparks pouring out from the machine's arm. When he drove his fist through the doombot's chest that was slightly more satisfying. Unfortunately the self destruct prevented him from having any further fun with construct, but Rawson got over it as the other two robots lept at him for the second time. He was more in control now, he didn't need to toy with them as he had the first. They were dispatched quickly enough when Rawson dodged the first's blow, snapped him in two and impaled his partner with the broken torso. The low body still kicking in his legs abruptly stopped as what was left of the automatons crashed against a wall.

That brief exertion of force was like a cool shower for Fallout, and before the robots were done twitching he was planning. First he needed to leave the castle, he already had too much attention as it was. Secondly he needed to make the sure the club wasn't behind this after all, even if he was to burn it to the ground to find out. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet after all. Then he would find someone who could explain what was going on, or else the world would pay for his harassment until it stopped.

But his visions of a burning earth were violently torn from him and instead replaced with another black portal. Rawson couldn't help but get a feeling of deja vu. But the darkness never ended. It was a few seconds before he realized he wasn't in a portal anymore. He wasn't anywhere. There was nothing, and it went on forever. Rawson was beginning to think that he should have spent far more time in church and far less time murdering in his life when the darkness was gone and there was only light, the brightest light he'd even seen in his life. He was beginning to suspect some sort of cosmic joke when he felt pain. Pain in his chest.

He was gripped by sheer absolute terror and never minding the pain he dug his fingers into his exposed chest, sifting them through the blood and gore for the gem. His gem. His divinity. Then hands were all over him, holding his arms down and yelling so loudly. Rawson moved to toss them off, to break them against the walls, but his feeble attempts at pushing them off came to no end. That's when he knew it for sure. He wasn't a god, he never had been. He just as pathetic and mortal as the people holding him down and trying to administer to his wound. He laughed. There was nothing else he could do. Absolute power stolen from him before he even did anything worthwhile with it. Hilarious. The laugh was a chuckle at first, but then it became louder, more desperate and deranged. Soon his whole body was writhing with his laughter.

Then came the sedation.

The End?
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Longshot
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Probability, Psychometry, Cloned Origin, Empathic Charisma
Epilogue

Three days had passed, and Allister Rawson, once a god, and now merely a badly battered man, lay in the most secret of places in the Pleasure Palace of the HFC, where more than one had been brought here over the years. The Pleasure Palace was no mere night club, and people often were injured in ways that should not be made public. The Hellfire Club were no mere hedonists and sometimes, most times, they did not want people to know what nasty sort of things they had gotten into. This place took care of them when it was necessary with skill, with expediency and most importantly, with utmost secrecy.

The Black Bishop had not been abandoned in his recovery from godhood, not at all. From the first moment he was allowed, Longshot had come down to sit beside Rawson and take care of him. He didn't know how to tend to someone who was hurt, as he so rarely was, and was usually the one doing hurting, but the pawns who tended to the Bishop let him wipe Rawson's sweaty forehead with a cloth, and were patient enough to let him sit there for hours and talk to the injured man, about nothing. He could have easily had read Rawson's clothing and learned what happened to him, but out of respect for the man who had found him half mad, catatonic in the shadow of his dead master, he did not. If the Bishop wanted him to know of his adventure, he could tell him when he woke up.

So, Longshot, with the earnest hopefulness of a child, brought him presents as he slept. A feather plucked from the wings of an angel, a bit of molten glass that had come from a place that had exploded once, and the stories that went along with them. He rested his chin on his three fingered hand, and showing patience that he was unknown for, he waited for Rawson to wake up, waited without a doubt that he would indeed wait up... he'd lost his King, lost his first queen, he would not lose his bishop.

He would not lose his friend.
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