Out of the frying pan and into the fire (Doctor Necrodium)

Astrid had been tossing and turning for most of the night, so with a sigh she just gave up. She sat up and threw the covers off stretching as goosebumps covered her flesh. She stood and crossed the room to her dresser, pulling on her jogging shorts and tank top. It may be late at night, but Astrid couldn't sleep so she might as well try to tire herself out. She walked out into the living room, walking past the sleeping form of her new charge, and quielty slipped her sneakers on. She grabbed her keys and headed out the door.

As she hopped down the steps and started jogging, the full moon reflected upon her silver hair, almost giving her the appearance of a fairy. She kept her thoughts blank as she ran, it was quiet for once, not something that happend very often in New York. All she concentrated on were the rise and fall of her footsteps, her breathing regular and healthy. She got a couple blocks and turned a corner, only to accidently run into some common thugs.

She stopped dead in her tracks and tried to back away quietly before she was noticed. Unfourtunatly she caught the attention of the nearest one, and he alerted the rest of the guys. There were five in total, probably doing some sort of crime or another. Astrid turned to run, but a sixth had materialized behind her. He grabbed her arm hard and she yelped in pain as they jeered at her. The smell of alcohol was evident on the breath of the one who had grabbed her. He was covered in piercings and pimples, but still a lot stronger than she was.

They were quickly joined by the five, and she was effectivly surrounded. Her heart beat a mile a minute but she said not a word. New Yorkers weren't the type to come when you yelled for help, especially at night. The jeered and made lewd comments at the poor girl. With a flash of anger, she headbutted the guy holding her and was rewarded with a curse. She attepmted to escape while she had the chance, but the others had already acted to grab her as she attacked whom she assumed was the leader. She let out a shout of frustration, and tried to free herself from the two men who now held onto her.

Her legs were kicked out from under her, and herknees hit the ground hard. She looked difiantly at the leader as he slapped her across the face and called her a bitch. She knew by now she had lost and they were going to do what they pleased, she just wasn't going to make it easy for them.

Necrodium walked down the alleyway in a slow gait, his feet thumping against the ground making a loud clank as he walked. His staff made a sort of 'shunk' sound as it dug into the concrete every time he took a movement with it. As he walked, Necrodium remained cool and calm in both mind and body, his movements continuing to make the hollow clank with each step, the sound of the ripped cape on his shoulders rustling against gravel and various other sorts of debris. The metallic man walked only a short distance before he saw his destination. The person he was looking for, the one known as Astrid, was being abused and assaulted by a rowdy group of drunks, most likely looking to satiate their sexual frustration. However, Necrodium would have none of this, he continued his slow pace until he was within earshot, finally stopping with a loud 'thunk!' when his staff made contact with the concrete one last time. Necrodium's appearance and noise were enough to attract their attention, all eyes looking on him, who appeared in the darkness to be nothing more than a hunched over old man with a walking stick.

"It would be advisable for you to stop what you are doing" Necrodium said simply, his synthesizer projecting a harsh, almost robotic voice. But it was either because of adrenaline or the alcohol, but the men were not thrown off by the voice, and merely turned to send insults and derogatory speech his way. Necrodium had faced many ruffians such as this before, it was not abnormal, as such he didn't flinch when one came so close as to look at him face to face, his hood covering his face with shadow.

"Da fuck you want geezer?!" The ringleader screamed at Necrodium's face, small bits of spit spraying onto his metallic face. "You wanna fuck her too? Or do you wanna try and stop us?"

"Well, I honestly can't do the former, so I guess I will be doing the latter" Necrodium said simply, his voice displaying tones of mockery and sarcasm "But I doubt you addle brained idiots would even be worth explaining my vocabulary to"

At this point, Necrodium had riled up the crowd of men enough to start physical violence, all of them began to swarm around him, thinking that he would be easy pickings, a simple old man on the street. There was nothing difficult with removing a useless senior off the street, it had been done before, and that is how the city worked. Like a wild beast, the ringleader launched his arm forward in a classic haymaker, getting ready to knock the old man of his feet. Suddenly there was a sound like a gong, the sound of something hard hitting an even harder metal, the sounds of cracking bones and the sounds of a man's screams when he realized that his knuckles had just broken. Gasps and oohs of disbelief were overheard as they looked at the damage, it was then that Necrodium decided that he was finished messing around with simple humans. He stood up, allowing himself to tower above all of them, yet still remained hunched over, albeit less than before. His eyes and body began to seep out the eerie green neon mist, shining the light through the darkness and revealing the horrible image that John presented. The lights became less visible as John narrowed his eyes.

"It is time I stop wasting my time with neanderthals, let the girl go or I shall be compelled to make my argument through the use of force" Necrodium stated simply, his cold metallic voice being more prominent than before. John watched as each of them picked up a makeshift weapon of any sort, letting them prepare themselves for their last few moments. They had grabbed pipes, can lids, bottles, anything they thought would give them distance against the metallic monster that stood before them. When they finally attacked, they were made quick work of, those with pipes were suddenly hit on the head with their own pipes, shattering their skulls, those with cans lids were suddenly crushed by the lids they used to protect them, constricting them tight as they lost the last of the air from their lungs. The one with the bottle unfortunately tripped and impaled his own eyes with broken bottles, shooting far enough to the shock to set in quickly, before he was finished off by a garbage dumpster being tossed upon him, leaving him as a large puddle on the ground.

"Don't move or I'll shoot her!!"

Necrodium looked to see that the ringleader had a gun on him, holding it to the girls head as she remained helpless to resist, more or less. Necrodium narrowed his eyes at the stupid human, he actually expected to get anywhere with such a useless tactic. While Necrodium listened to the man blather on and on about how he was gonna take the girl and get away with what he wanted to do and various things like that, he slowly began to pick up small bits of metal all over the small alleyway. In order to taunt the man, Necrodium took a step forward, which led the man to point the gun towards him, who in return caused a rusty nail to puncture the man's hand, and continue on until every pressure point in his body was skewered by the various metal, it was a slow way to die, the man would be help less as he bled to death. Necrodium walked over to Astrid, the one he was originally there for, and offered her a hand.

"Good evening Ms.Astrid Fay Badriyya, I have been looking for you, I am Doctor Necrodium, and I have a proposition for you..."

Astrid looked up as someone in the appearance of a savior approached the group, her face falling as it appeared to be an old man in the shadows. She sighed, knowing that these men would surley enjoy taking out and attractive woman like herself, along with a poor old man who was just trying to help. She tried to break free of her captors, not gaining much out of it. His robotic like voice did make for an eerie sound, and she shivered with a hint of fear as he faced down these lowlifes.

Astrid listened to his words, he sounded as if he wasn't worried about the actions the thugs would make. Was he stupid? Or did he have something up his sleeve? She kept silent, watching and waiting to see what this old man could possibly do to help her.

Astrid flinched as the leader of the gang drew back and punched the man, only to hear the screams of pain as his fist connected with her supposed savior. Her eyes widened in shock and fear as the old man stood to a greater height, green light penetrated the night and Astrid felt a true fear make her tremble.

She was unable to watch as he made quick work of the gang members, her captor had drug her further away from the metallic man, and pressed the cold metal of a gun to her head. She looked up at the guy and smirked. "You really think that's going to help you?" She felt another flash of pain as he hit her with the butt of the gun and she cried out in pain as lights flashed before her eyes for a minute.

Before she could even comprehend it, the man was on the ground and bleeding. Astrid sat there for a minute and stared at the scene before her. She looked up at the metallic man, eyes wide and nostrils flaring in fear. She took a couple deep breaths and calmed herself before taking the hand he offered her. She stood and looked at him as calmly as she could. "Thank you for your help..."She fell silent as he addressed her by her full name. "Wait, how do you know my name? Why were you looking for me?" She removed her hand from his and looked at him with a confused look on her face, all fear of him gone. "I'm not sure I even want to know. What is your proposition Doctor Necrodium. We will go from there."

She was all business now, her eyes holding no fear, and her posture confident. He was here for business, she could handle that.

Necrodium helped the woman on her feet, marveling how she adapted to the situation, it was clear that she was a respectable woman, not some sort of damsel in distress, constantly being at the bad end of people's actions, a trait he found commendable. From what he knew about her, she was a powerful healer, a key addition to a battle strategy in almost every situation. He wanted her to act as his own personal healer, should he require her services at any point in time. He made sure in his planning that he would be able to instigate a fight if he failed to convince her, but he was confident that she would see things his way. The fact that she chose to listen to his proposition was enough to give him clarification that he could do his next course of action.

"Well my dear, I represent a group known as Project Perfection, we specialize in dealing with superhumans in order to strive towards human perfection. I deal in taking care of experiments that run the risk of being a danger to society and themselves as well. I came to recruit you in our quest, and serve as my personal healer, we ask that you assist us so that you may use your powers to increase our odds of survival, and give us a better fighting chance against those dangerous experiments. I will not force the issue however, but the deal includes all your living expenses, any purchase and such are all available to you upon membership, should you agree to join us, Project Perfection promises that all your desires will be fulfilled" Necrodium said in a calm, robotic tone the raspy voice, making an echo with two voices making the same messages. "Not to mention I stopped you from being raped and possibly murdered, but you do not have to repay such a debt. We only ask that you help us rid of these experiments so that they do not get out of hand, should the occasion arise"

Though Necrodium did add a little more of a heroic flare to his proposition, he was not lying for the most part. Most of the experiments that Necrodium had killed were all violent and savage, unable to control their unbridled rage from consuming them and making them engines from destruction. It was only a rare case that one of these had a mind at all, mainly simple if that were the case. Necrodium thought it through, but if he went straight to her and told her of his plan, he wouldn't likely fail, but if he did, she would merely given a change of opinion in order to keep her in check, though Necrodium did know if she would agree or not.

"So Ms. Bradiyya, what is your stand on this offer."

Astrid listened closely to what Doctor Necrodium said, head titled down as she listened. She didn't want him to see her thought process easily. She wanted to be able to take it all in and make her own descion without him playing on how he thought she thought of it. She grinned a little to herself. If it involved experiments and the like, she figured he was probably sugar-coating it some, he was a deadly robotic man after all.

As he finished, she lifted her head to look at him, silver hair goulish in the moonlight. "Your offer, it sounds nice and everything, but I'm sure you aren't telling me the whole truth. I understand you are asking me this way because you would like me to say yes. I will let you know that I will agree to come with you, under the condition that you tell me the real story. Not now, not until we are sure we can trust each other, but I will expect it at some point in time." She wasn't stupid, she had discussed business with a lot of people to know when she was getting the full truth.

Astrid put her hands on her hips and sighed. "You did save me, and I owe you that much. I will come with you without any trouble. I will be glad to assist you in whatever way you need me. You may say I don't need to repay you for saving my life, but I see that as a ploy to ensure that I am guilted into your service. I just think some extra protection on my part would be nice." She laughed and winked at the metal man, not sure if he was even capable of respnding to her reaction.

Necrodium smirked mentally, the woman was smart, like his reports say. This was a good thing however, Necrodium did not want a simpleton on his side to act as his healer, such actions would be self destructive and would not be worth his time. Though his mind did not care for the appearances of his associates, he did make note that Astrid could be a fine person to act as an assassin, her natural beauty and her hair gave an exotic appearance. However, Necrodium himself threw away those feelings long before he became what he was now, women are of little to no interest now, unless they were to prove useful.

"I see you have a good mindset Ms. Badiyya, but I sincerely do not need you to repay a debt such as that, but if you think I am merely trying to make you feel guilty, then I do not mind either way. However you are correct, I was not being completely truthful with you. Project Perfection was the reason for creating the metahumans that we hunt, we are merely cleaning up after ourselves, but we do take drastic measures at times to make sure the job is done correctly. I will not lie or justify our means, we do very horrible things, but we wish for you to act as our combat healer, in order to make the job run quickly and much smoother than it would without you" Necrodium said plainly, he did not sugar coat it this time "I warn you, we are indeed killing people, we do experiment on people, and we will likely have to kill innocent people in order to get this done, but we are killing few so that the many can survive. Not a noble justification, but it is how we do things, as you will see. We may be villains, but we are a necessary evil. In addition, the money is no lie, you will be given anything you wish of us. But be warned, this is not a job for the faint hearted, the results of our actions could be catastrophic"

Necrodium banged the bottom of his staff against the ground, sparks of green energy began to shoot through the bottom of the staff and into the ground, travelling a few feet away before exploding into a violent vortex, the wind picked up around the portal, winds blowing every which direction. The portal was created so that Necrodium could travel with others safely and without need for enhanced speed. As Necrodium watched, the portal attracted small papers and other trash from the alley, but on the other side lay a vision of the Olympus Private Quarters. Necrodium began to walk towards it, but as he stood at the end of the portal he turned and extended a hand towards Astrid.

"Come if you wish Ms. Badiyya, I will not force the issue. I cannot guarantee complete protection from everything, I can only guarantee that so long you are with me, no one else in Project Perfection will attempt to touch you" Necrodium said as his final "kind" offer

Astrid fell silent as he gave her the real and total truth, her eyes narrowed as she listened. It was indeed a crooked evil thing, but at least they are working on cleaning up the mistakes they were making. The being that this orginization were bound to be deadly, and shouldn't be out and about anyways. She mused over the details and only smirked at him. "If you are worried about me being faint hearted, don't. You will learn to understand how I operate Doctor. I have killed myself, I am not worried about that factor, in fact the only thing I was worried about was my safety. I see that that will not be an issue, however."

She stepped back in slight awe as he opened a kind of portal, her mouth slightly agape. She recovered quickly and grinned at the trick. She moved to follow him as he extended his hand, her eyes lit with the fire of excitment. She placed her hand in his and flashed a sweet smile at the Doctor. "I will assist you in your mission, I think I will be of great use to you, and I like being useful." She laughed softly and motioned for him to lead the way.