Chronicles of The Omniverse Archived The Onyx Galaxy

Orphic’s search on John Bishop would turn up little on the John Paragon was looking for; aside from a few newspaper clippings and bounty reports.

It was part of his rule; cash only, no records.

“John Bishop” Also wasnt his true name, a fabricated identity, and a recent one at that, however there was an individual sporting similar powers throughout history, as old as time itself, there were even entries in the Kobol’s holy books about a man with great power, but it was all scripture, hearsay, and conjecture.
 
"I really do not recommend that," a voice ushered from the darkness, low and serpentine, choked in sand. From the black came a face - no, a mask. It was white as snow, glowing with an almost ethereal light. The rest was obscured in a shroud, a cloak of pestilential night ensconsing the caps of his shoulders, dragging along the floor near his feet.

The eyes. The eyes burned in the vacancies of the mask like singularities - dark and depthless. There was no pity in those eyes. No light.

"Tesla fields are a bit less forgiving on teeth than aluminum screws." He extended a finger - black and taloned - touching the edge of the barrier to prove his point. A sharp crack followed, a thrush of voltage shooting through the stranger's frame down to his boots. He appeared unphased.

"If you have questions, ask them," he stated.
 
Freja froze when the voice broke through her determined destruction. But still, she glowered on, and then continued to move forwards slowly; those were the eyes she remembered. The form that spoke had her head whirring again, the sensory input overwhelming. She looked down at her now outstretched hand instead. The crack and sizzle that the field emitted when touched did little to deter her. Freja’s fingertips threatened to brush the electromotive wall.

Questions. She had a lot of them. There were some pressing ones that needed answering first. But it wasn’t the others she was most concerned for, nor herself, for that matter. She was momentarily intrigued, whilst her expression still maintained its official angry stance.

“Who are you?
Where are you taking me?
And how do you know?”
 
One talon came up. "Your captor. Call me whatever you like." A second. "Van Leugen, Therrier-Paix, Valore." The third, the final. "Because that's who I am. It's why I exist."

He stepped closer. The light from the tesla field cast his gaunt figure in a sickly blue glow. Freja might have seen a ceramite breastplate hiding beneath the curtains of his cloak, a crescent moon emblazoned between the pectorals.

"My turn." The mask turned at an inquisitive angle. "Do you know why you are here?"
 
Well. She wouldn’t be calling him that. She’d have to come up with something extra special. A nickname. Probably something derogatory that related to how he dressed.

Freja had never been one for theatrics, her glaring started to have an underlying spark of wild amusement to it with his words that were half-shadowed in mystery.

“I don’t know why I’m here. But I’m guessing it’s because you didn’t get ahold of the other guys. Because they would’ve been much more useful to you, no matter what you are about to ask of me, I can assure you. Or did you kill them? On accident? It wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t think I expected to wake up in that last second. I don’t care, either way. They were both irritating.”

Freja shifted and let her eyes wander some, stopping in a mimic of his own position. Only with a smirk plastered across her lips. She may have been stripped of all her physical offensiveness, but taunting had always been her first talent.

She’d heard rumours of a being that dressed, acted and most importantly fought as he did. She wouldn’t call it a legend; she didn’t plan on flattering him. Even subconsciously.

“Van Leugen?”
 
"They lived," he replied, "and are serving purposes of their own. Yours is to lead me to Kale. I know she's in Van Leugen, but I don't know where."

His hand came up to his gauntlet. He pushed two buttons and the tesla field flickered, faded, died, leaving nothing between the stranger and his captive. The static hum echoed into nothingness, leaving only a cold silence between them.

"So let's talk." The demon rumbled. "You came from Van Leugen to Windcrest, then took a car into the wilds. Where were you going?"
 
There was more of a silence this time as Freja dropped her hand and was suddenly examining the space beyond which she could now step into with a quiet frenzy to her pupils. Her feet, however, remained planted.

“I didn’t know she was still in Van Leugen” she said bluntly, returning to staring him down. It wasn’t a lie. Ariadne would have had plenty of time to move, especially if somehow warned: but Freja wouldn’t put it past her captor to think of another way to lure her out if Freja couldn’t directly give him what he wanted. Though, she thought, it was most likely he would overvalue her if the case was that she was the bait.

“I’m not sure where we were going, we weren’t far away, though. Do you know what I do?” she asked.

It was early times and she was by far not exhausted enough yet to play nicely.

“I’m a body guard. All I do is protect people with forcefields. I don’t know where we were going, or what to do. I was just told to keep someone safe. So you’re questioning the wrong person, if you have the others. And if you don’t, then it looks like you’re out of luck.”

With that, she went to take a stride to his left. Just to wander around the new territory. Otherwise known as checking for breaches.
 
He made no movement to stop her advance, turning only to face her as she explored the room. It was a dark space, dimly lit by an overhead incandescent lightbulb. The walls were a strange, burnished metal that she wouldn't be able to name. The door out was sealed tight. Two other cells occupied the room, similar to Freja's own but lacking any aluminum lining. Evidently her captor didn't plan on entertaining more allomancers. One of them contained a writing desk.

"That's a dangerous business - a bodyguard who doesn't know who she works for." He didn't follow her. "The man you were assigned to protect, then. What was his name?"
 
“Jacob Haley” she said without hesitation as she swanned around, further frustrated now at the sight of metal and lack of power to do anything about it. The way she saw it, if Jacob wasn’t already dead, then he would be soon anyway. By her own hands or not. “Don’t know much about him other than he’s pretty and rich and likes misbehaving” she spoke, more carefully now, as she came to a stop in front of the door.

“You know who I work for.”

The door was most definitely expertly sealed, but still, she inhaled and hammered it with a side-kick that did nothing but fracture something in her ankle.
 
"I do." He watched her kick the door, making no effort to restrain her. A loud thum reverberated throughout the room as her foot connected with the metal.

"Final question." Something small and metal clattered to the floor at Freja's feet. It was her coin.

"The face and inscription on that coin - it's not a currency used by the TNG," he stated, "where is it from?"
 
Freja spun to look at what had been deposited at her feet. Everything else seemed to temporarily fade away. The first feeling to come back after a few seconds was fury. The idea of someone handling the coin besides her or her sister made her see red.

There was no thought in the viciousness that followed.

“Somewhere that barely exists. Somewhere far away. Where I would bury it between your eyes. Sink it into your brain. Where it’d slowly spin and jerk until it turned the inside of your skull into something more viscous, which would seep out of the holes in that mask you hide behind. And I’d hope and pray that on whatever plane of existence your consciousness subsists, that you could still taste it as you drowned in it.”
 
Silence. The stranger stepped closer. "That," he rasped, "is the only honest thing you've said all day." Then he lunged.

He moved as a shadow, as smoke, closing the distance between them in an eyeblink. His hand was around her throat, long talons encircling her neck and locking above her spine. She would feel him lift her, slamming her against the prison wall, holding her there. She weighed an ounce to him. He was looking down on her, the darkness in his eyes burning with unnatural hatred.

"You knew where you were going. Your convoy was on its way to deliver Jacob to the Aschen," he snarled, tearing her first lie to pieces, "you were assigned to kill him, 'endear' yourself to the Imperials, not protect him." His mask came closer to her eyeline. If he could have spit in her face, he would have. "And you were not ignorant to the 'grand scheme'. You knew. You stood by, silent, as your employers murdered a city, murdered millions-" his grip tightened, "-of innocent people. You took a job with terrorists and turned a blind eye to genocide because the gold was good."

He lifted her off the ground, fingers compressing her throat in a grip of iron, before throwing her across the room, back into her cell.

"You don't keep people safe, Freja. You kill them." He loomed above her, tendrils of shadow writhing out of his cloak like licks of flame. "That is why you are here."
 
Freja would continue to struggle, there was no such thing as rolling over to her, not until she passed out. Not that it did her any good in this situation. It was infuriating to be so helpless. Her senses were lurching again, peaking as she was thrown across the room, managing to twist and steady herself into an unsteady crouch as she slid before overbalancing and hitting the floor with a softer thud.

“Is that why you’re here? To keep people safe? I’ve saved thousands more lives than I’ve killed. But none of them matter. All insignificant. And Jacob Haley. He deserves to die as much as the rest of them” she said, her panting slowing.

“But this is what you do, isn’t it?”

Her snarl held all the savagery of before, but in a more desperate, clumsy way. The crazy shine of her eyes glittered through the smoke.

“So ignorant to think that your crusade - your idea of how the world works - is the right way. I’ll endear myself to my own personal gain, whilst you endear yourself to some bizarre moral standard. But don’t try to make my actions sound insane. I’d rather die than listen to it, but you’re too bound…”
 
The tesla field cut her off, an electrified wall blinking back into existence and trapping Freja in her cell. Her captor glowered behind the blue, fists clenched at his side.

"Then die. I won't save you."

He turned his back on her, kneeling to collect the discarded coin on the floor. "We will arrive in Van Leugen in one sol. You will help me find Kale and then I will deliver you to the authorities." He seemed ready to pocket the coin, but paused. The glint of metal hovered above his belt.

For a brief second, the tesla wall came down. The coin flew across the room and landed beside Freja. The barrier re-energized in the next instant.

"You have no incentive to help me aside from the knowledge that you will be bringing a mass murderer to justice," he stated, "and the hope that you will never see me again after all this is over."
 
Freja said nothing. Her chest rose and fell heavily as she tried to calm down. She needed time to think. But at the moment, she felt like it really would be over her dead body.

She waited for him to leave before snatching the coin up off the floor.
 
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