Remember that time when Cthulu and Abholos... [Open]

Victor was at his desk in the library, going through the lists and organizing returns, sending out notifications to students who had yet to return their books, and generally being antisocial. A few people approached him as the time passed, and he blew them off with curt answers and a distinct lack of eye contact. Victor was in no mood to be bothered. He had other things on his mind at the moment. Most prominently, he was trying to devise a good strategy for training his newest student in the use of his special abilities.

But that was not all. Victor's head was also going through various things he had learned the past few weeks. Things about ghosts and Homunculi, and spell circles. He had wondered just how he could create a homunculi of his own, if only for servant purposes, but that would have to wait. He had work, and much as he despised it, he needed to keep up the appearance of a poor, powerless crippled librarian. A crippled librarian that, as point of fact, did not want to have to use his wires to get things off of the top shelf. A homunculus would be able to do that wonderfully. And much better than this idiot assistant that was helping him. He had a tendency to drop important books at random.

Of course, it wasn't all bad. Victor was addicted to the smell of musty old tomes and fresh new books alike. He didn't care for computers, he had found. They didn't have any smell of their own. Sure, technology was amazing, and it had all sorts of benefits, but typing gave Victor hand cramps, and he found that he preferred writing anyway. Aside from all of those things, Victor was just glad to be among so many pieces of knowledge. The students had no appreciation for just how much information was preserved here. Victor did.

As he carried on, he looked up, only to notice a very strange girl walk in, who seemed to fit all the descriptions of a homunculus. Victor rubbed his eyes and refocused. Surely he was mistaken.

Things were looking up for Index. She had found herself in the windy city, Chicago. She had also found a small amount of cash on an accosted criminal, which she took for herself and spent at a thrift shop. Her clothes seemed to collect tears and bullet-holes on a regular basis, and she was happy to get some new ones. She even found a white t-shirt with a cartoon owl on the front. She loved owls. The t-shirt and jeans may have been second-hand, but it may as well have been the finest of fashions to Index.

The sound of her white tennis shoes on the floor seemed to echo in the quiet near-stillness of the building she was walking into. She was visiting another of her favorite places, a public library. To someone that could read a novel with the touch of a hand, a library was like an all you can eat buffet. Long white hair bounced at her back as she strolled into the building. Another thing she liked about libraries, she never got in trouble for walking into one. A few people looked up and gave her a passing glance, but for the most part they ignored her. If they had leaned over to stair she wouldn't notice though, her bluish-silver eyes were busy scanning the shelves for books she had not "read" yet. As she passed the science fiction section she passed a hand over some of the volumes, instantly absorbing the entire book's contents instantly. After doing this with two or three books, she simply sat at an empty table, rested her chin on her hand and reflected on the knowledge she had just inhaled. Though her reading speed might be miraculous, her comprehension of abstract concepts was by no means super-fast. She was deep in thought over social evolution and other very human concepts disguised in the fantastic stories she had just read. So absorbed she barely noticed the rest of the people going about their business in the library.

Ailill Hale, noted expert in the field of the supernatural, but one that many tended to be very wary of far more than any of the others in his family. Perhaps it was what some might call the odd behavior he exhibited at times. The Hales were very well known here in Chicago as the experts in the field of what most people dubbed paranormal. It was a well earned title really due to just how much the family knew in general. They knew things that many could not even imagine being possible. Not even with all their knowledge however, did they know of all the things there were to know.

He was now in a local public library dressed in pretty cheap clothes despite being wealthy. He could not enjoy the lavish pleasures that wealth could provide at all. He just found it too uninteresting. Ailill was there reading up on the various entries in the collection of books that pertain to the supernatural. Ailill was one to see just what normal people as you might call them knew about the world he knew so much about. The lack of information they possessed might lead to questions asked that not even someone who had spent so much time and effort studying such as Ailill had might not know. His plain but charming self had found himself a small table in one corner to sit down for a bit and relax while perusing through all these textbooks of information and could avoid the various others wandering around the library easier. Most of them seemed to be students from the nearby school. As he was doing so he noticed a white haired woman just walking around touching the books rather than actually grabbing any of them off the shelves.

Ailill turned away from this sight thinking of it as just some woman acting weird and went back to the books he had brought to the table when he noticed that he was missing one of the books in the series of entries he had been looking for. Groaning a bit with annoyance he stood up and walked back to that one section in hopes of being able to find the one remaining book that he had somehow forgotten to grab earlier and getting back to the table to start reading again. On his way over there he noticed several of the other attendees were focused on watching the white haired woman just sit there doing nothing.

Victor eyed the suspicious white-haired girl as she simply meandered about the library, staring at books, and then eventually waving her hand over a few volumes in the science fiction area. Her actions were already odd, but then she sat down, and began an act that Victor himself was quite familiar with - she was meditating on what she had just learned.

Victor frequently found himself doing this after a particularly enlightening bit of information was given to him about the occult, or about some dark secret. The implications, the reasons leading up to that... meditation was a process of processing, a way to make sense of something complex and nearly senseless. And this girl was doing just that. Except she had read nothing in the library.

She read those books. I'm sure of it. But how..."

Victor suspected her of being different. He hoped she was a homonculus, of course, but it was a fleeting fancy of his. He did not truly suspect her of being such, though he certainly saw it as more likely than before. But instead of that suspicion, there was a simple certainty that she was not normal, and that she had some secret to hide. Perhaps she was a superhuman like himself. The number of superpowered individuals was increasing, Victor had seen it. But unlike most, Victor had earned his powers the hard way. That made him stronger than even the strongest mutation.

His frail arms slowly wheeled him down the ramp and over to the table, where the girl with the pale hair was pondering some newest insight. He wondered for a moment if she would even hear him, so deep was she in her thoughts. But of course, Victor would have to try anyway.

"Excuse me, are you alright? Is there anything I can help you with?"

His voice was not loud by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly carried farther than Victor had intended in the silence of the library. Hopefully he would not attract undue attention to himself in this manner. He would be careful to be more quiet in the future, but for now, what was done was done, and Victor was too interested in this girl to care overmuch about who heard his prying question.

The large doors to the library swung open, letting the cold air of the late winter night in with a strung "Windy City" breeze. Standing in the door frame was a athletic looking, raven haired woman, who wore a worn, black leather jacket, a tight pair of brown military style pants. She carried a small duffle bag, which contained all that she possessed at that time. A far cry from a woman who some months ago was one of the most in demand mercenaries in the world, as well as one of the best paid. She lived fast, enjoying the finer things in life, then came the fight with "The Perfect Soldier", her stunning defeat, and a long coma.

She was defeated almost a year ago known as "Soldier of Fortune", a greedy, ruthless vigilante, who fought and killed only if money was involved. She awoke from her coma, after experiencing something.... Simply profound.... And in that profound was reborn as "The Black Angel", a force of good, and avenged of the weak and helpless. The young woman truly putting all her stock into the near death experience, which gave her a second chance at life, so long as she used it to help the helpless...

And so after some misadventures, she left NYC after awaking in an abandoned hospital, the destruction and suffering in NYC being beyond her help, though she'd helped any she could. With only a few commandeered weapons, a change of someone else's clothes, and let more, she hitch hiked the distance from the formerly great city to Chicago, remembering she'd left a safety deposit box in one of the cities banks, "Just in case of emergencies..." she always use to say, having no idea how prophetic that decision was.

It was late, and the banks were closed, and lacking the money for a hotel room, "The Black Angel" found a church where she made her daily confession -Something she'd just begun after waking from coma, which resulted in hours of prayers and self contemplation-, and after sometime she'd stumbled upon the library, seemingly a good place to keep warm at the very least, and perhaps even find out something useful.... What the hell had happened to the world in the time she'd be in a coma.

Entering into the warm library, "The Black Angel" made her way to the newspaper archives, and immediately began immersing herself in the events of the last year. She didn't notice the bag which she left on the floor slightly exposed several of her weapons, which could be taken the very wrong way by a passerby.

One story in particular was having a disturbing effect on Index. A science fiction story that paralleled the civil rights issues of the time using a group of people that had evolved to be genetically different from humans. Flawed like her, Index thought. The story had a very melancholy ending, and Index didn't like it one bit. She had just made up her mind to find some light-hearted fantasy novels she hadn't read, when the librarian approached her.

"Excuse me, are you alright? Is there anything I can help you with?"

She looked up from her meditation to see a man in a wheelchair, as well as the fact that she was gathering quite a few stares. She stood out more here than in LA, she supposed. "Erm, no. I was just reading." She said, despite the fact that she had no books on her person. "Um...perhaps I should leave." She said nervously in response to the stares she was gathering.

She began to get up, when her silver eyes shifted towards the newspaper archives. A woman had a laid a bag on the ground, with some pretty serious looking weapons inside. It had been almost two weeks since Index had been shot, so she wanted to nip this situation in the bud. "Excuse me." Index said politely tot he librarian as she made her way to the newspaper archives. Once she was close she addressed the woman. "Miss, please step away from the bag." She said in her most official superhero voice.

The Black Angel had been reading for several minutes, digging deeper into the attack on NYC, which she'd survived (Albeit in a coma). The true horror and destruction a powerful enough meta-human could unleash was...... Simply to terrible to comprehend. It was then the girl wondered if she truly was beyond gods grace, and if whatever the Triads had done to her had made her even less human than she'd thought. The attacks on NYC were changing the world, and come to think of it, Black Angel felt truly changed as well. Not just her name, not just her scene, but her skills, somehow they were sharper then before, she was sharper.

Black Angel shrugged it off just in time to hear a young girls voice say "Miss, please step away from the bag.". Not thinking twice about it, the Black Angel kept reading, but when the voice said it again, this time more seriously, the new hero thought to herself "Please don't tell me I forgot to close the....... Bag...", and looking down, sure enough there was the butt of a pistol exposed. The Black Angel lowered her head for a moment, turned away from the girl and whispered "Great....".

Pushing the hair that had fallen in her eyes as she'd been reading, the Black Angel turned around and stood up, facing the young fair featured girl. She began to scratch her head as she said "Listen..... I don't want any trouble... And this isn't the place to start it.... So if you don't mind I'll just be getting back to my reading...".


With that the Black Angel turned around and was seated once more, albeit sensing if their was any movement from the fair skinned girl, or anyone else for that matter that was behind her.

Well... Victor was a cripple. And cripples didn't play well with guns. In fact, when guns were pointed in Victor's direction, he tended to be very cautious. So Victor would do nothing but watch in silence. He wanted to just wait, to sit this one out. But he had a sinking feeling that this was going to escalate. And that meant trouble. Victor didn't care too much what people did, but this was a library. And everybody was here for a reason. So Victor probed around behind the desk, where... ah yes. There it was.

His bag of wires.

He had spools upon spools of them, just stocked up and ready to be used should anything ever happen. It was his failsafe in case of an attack on the library, or some kind of threat on his life. He manipulated four spools up into the ceiling from a distance, where nobody would really notice. Or at least, he certainly hoped not. They'd only be visible for a moment.

As for his actions, the cripple himself would awkwardly wheel himself up beside the odd looking girl and the mercenary looking one. He hoped he wasn't about to get himself killed, but there were other issues here. Innocents. And now the odd looking one was making a scene, which the mercenary looking one clearly did not want. Victor hoped to defuse the situation. He placed his hand on the odd looking girl's arm, pulling her lightly away from the mercenary girl.

"Easy. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm certain there is a perfectly good explanation for this. Certainly this woman knows there are no weapons allowed in the library, however. And as the librarian, I have to ask why they've been brought in here if you are not looking for trouble."

It seemed a simple enough jump of logic. If she wasn't looking for trouble, why carry guns? Was she expecting trouble to come to her instead? Victor was genuinely curious, but that curiosity was momentarily suppressed by his general fear for his life. Guns made him nervous. The presence of his spools of wire hovering just a few feet above their heads, inside the ceiling tiles, eased his nerves to a certain degree, but Victor knew good and well that his wires were nowhere as fast as a bullet.

It was one of the few benefits of being a cripple, Victor thought in a moment of odd bemusement. For that split second where the thought hit him, Victor realized that few enough people would shoot a cripple. Perhaps he wasn't so unlucky after all. He'd find out in a moment anyway.