Plans Awry (Forcewave)

Arienne was not what one would call a fine upstanding citizen. She wasn't violent, not really, and she didn't take advantage of anyone who couldn't deal with it but the words respect and law just didn't go together in her vocabulary. Maybe if she had any real skills and it was actually possible to make a life for herself within the confines of the law she'd actually do so, but when had the law or those who enforced it ever done anything for her? The answer was absolutely nothing. Not when she had been home with an abuse drug addicted mother that was for certain nor when she was bullied and abused. No point in even trying to be a proper citizen, that's what she figured.

When Arienne had made the discovery that she was special she never once considered being a 'hero' who tried to help others. No, it was her motivation to make something of herself, to live the life she had always wanted to live. So, she practiced and learned what she could do then fled her hometown in search of greener pastures elsewhere. Greener pastures turned out to be New York City. So, here she was living all alone in the Big Apple with nothing to attach her to anything. It was the first time in her life she could remember being happy.

The fact that, in order to make the life she was just beginning to forge, Arienne had to steal didn't bother her in the least. She was careful about the targets she chose, either aiming for businesses or those individuals of obvious affluence. Tonight she found herself sanding in the shadows near a nightclub waiting for just the right target to come out of its doors. She knew it was one of the more popular clubs were some of the more wealthy patrons frequented. Most came out in groups but not everyone. It was easy to remain hidden when one was little more than a living shadow.

It was, perhaps, 2 hours before the ideal target presented himself. He was obviously intoxicated and the quality of his clothing and jewelry suggested some degree of wealth. More importantly, he was alone and turning into one of the nearby alleys. Arienne separated herself from the wall and began to follow, living shadow trailing after the intoxicated man. It shouldn't take long.

There were many, many unanswered questions that plagued humanity. This wasn't about those many, many unanswered questions. There was only one unanswered question that mattered at the moment for humanity. Well, it actually only mattered to John Capore, but to him, it mattered a lot. That question was a simple one. Why was he back in New York city? Seriously, this was the second time this month that he had been in this still messed up city. The first time was for that weapons trade stuff that he had only managed to disrupt the operations of to a minor extent due to unforeseen circumstances. By those he meant random people showing up out of nowhere to mess things up. That was a few weeks ago, now here he was back in the city because well, he was a superhero, and this place needed something at the moment.

Yes, John Capore was a superhero. He had named himself 'Forcewave' because it was just what he came up with, and for about three years he had been doing things that superheroes do. You know like try and stop criminal activity and fight supervillains that were trying to do something evil. He was relatively successful at it too. Still being alive after all this time certainly indicated something. Somehow he was one of the more well known superheroes in the world. Not sure how that happened though.

Enough with the past, back to the present. Presently John was in New York city to provide some assistance in trying to deter crime here in order to allow it to try and flourish once more. Tonight he would be checking out some neighborhood full of stuff happening. Apparently some of the major local criminals could be found here sometimes. If he managed to find any of them, then he could get them captured and this city would have less criminals on the streets.

Nighttime rolled around and Forcewave currently wasn't finding anything going on in this neighborhood that would require a superhero to be here. So much for this being an active crime zone. Was he actually disappointed? Sure seemed that way. Also that guy was really drunk. Forcewave was watching some guy emerge from a nightclub completely unable to walk in a straight line. How was he even still standing up at this point? Somebody forgot to cut him off from the alcohol. It didn't even look like he had a clue where he was going because he wandered directly into an alleyway, and somebody followed him.

Somebody was following the drunk guy into the alleyway. Or at least it looked that way to him. Forcewave could swear he saw another shadow pass by in pursuit of the drunk guy. Were his eyes deceiving him, or was this simply the power of some metahuman or other being entirely? Forcewave decided to keep an eye out for anything just in case. He could still see the drunk guy and moved to keep track of him until something happened.

Arienne may not have been on her own for long, but even in her relatively brief stint as an independent adult she had gotten the whole stealing from people thing down to a fine art. It was simple really: find the right mark, follow them until they were some place secluded and then make herself known in such a fashion as to frighten them enough to make them want to give her all their money. It was the second part of the game that was the challenging part and, in truth, the fun part. There was a certain thrill in the game, a surge of adrenaline that she found herself looking forward to almost as much as the actual prize at the end. Could she, this time around, win her bounty without placing a scratch on her target? Was she good enough to avoid outside attention? Or, most inciting at all, had she accidentally chosen the wrong target who might be, like herself, something more than merely human?

Arienne had her doubts that this particular target was anything other than a far too drunk raver with little to no common sense. These were the sorts of targets she sought for a reason: easy marks and easy money. One day, maybe, she'd find someone who might actually test her talents and make her work for her money but she was pretty sure that day wasn't going to be today. The logical part of her mind told her this was for the best but some small part of her couldn't' help but feel just a little bit disappointed.

The time it took for her target to stumble far enough from public eye wasn't long enough to test Arienne's patience. When the fool stopped to lean against the wall and discharge the contents of his stomach she made her move. Stepping closer, a black tendril formed from her chest and wrapped itself neatly around the man's mouth preventing him from speaking. "Keep calm, lets do this easy. You give me your money and then you never see me again."

Drunk person, alone at night, in an alleyway. Never a good combination. Throw in wearing expensive looking jewelry and you got yourself somebody that might as well be wearing a target on their back with a sign that says 'rob me'. Somebody or something seemed to have taken that cue and was planning on doing just that. Forcewave would try to stop them though. Whatever they were. As of now, all he could see was a shadow.

"Must be someone that can turn invisible." Forcewave thought as he kept watch of the shadow. Wait, do invisible people cast shadows while they're invisible? This was like a scientific mystery or something. Did he know anybody that could turn invisible? Forcewave wasn't able to think of any off the top of his head. He should probably stop thinking about this though. The drunk guy wasn't going to save himself from the shadowy stalker.

Forcewave was now in pursuit of the thing that was in pursuit of the drunk guy wearing all the jewelry that emerged from the night club. He almost lost track of them for a moment, but found them again just as the shadow emerged to begin their attack. The shadow was some girl that apparently could use shadows as a power. Good to know. Forcewave quickly fired an energy bolt to break the tendril that she had wrapped around the man's face in order to free him and get her attention. "Hey, no robbing the drunk guy. He's in bad enough shape as is."

Arienn's target froze the moment her tendril of black shadow touched him and she could smell urine as he voided his bladder. Disgusting and cowardly, she couldn't bring herself to have much sympathy for him. It was people like him, the wealthy and privileged, that she had always hated. When she and her dysfunctional struggled just to have enough to eat, his kind lived in luxury without a thought for the less fortunate. Why should she have sympathy for his misfortunes when he would never have sympathy for hers? What went around came around, so to speak, and she was simply karma acting upon him this night.

The man fumbled in his jeans pocket, searching for his wallet and mumbling, desperately trying to get words out from around her tendril. "Oh come on, its not like I've actually hurt you. Stop whining and give me your wallet so we can both go home!" Irritation could be plainly heard in her voice. Why did everyone around her have to be so incompetent?

Given a little more time, Arienne's victim might have finally gotten his wallet out of his pants and she might have been on her way with hopefully a few extra dollars in her pocket. Unfortunately that was not to be as a flash of blue lightning shot into her tendril. The electricity arced from her tendril and into her body, the shock of it causing the tendril to wither and disappear back into herself. She half turned and half staggered at the sound of the voice, affronted that someone would dare try to stop her. Given time, she might have have also felt a bit of fear but for the moment adrenaline and shock won over any other emotion. No longer held up by her tendril, the man crumpled to the ground in a quivering heap.

What do you care?" Arienne demanded, long black claws growing out of the tops of her hands.

The shadow controlling girl's attempt to rob the drunk man in the alleyway were interrupted by the heroic Forcewave. With one quick blast of electrical energy, Forcewave was able to break the tendril of darkness that the girl had wrapped around the man's head. Once free of the tendril, the drunken man fell to the ground and began to whimper in fear. Seriously dude, get up. You're embarrassing yourself right now. Seeing that the guy wasn't taking the opportunity to get up and out of here, and away from the shadow master, Forcewave decided to talk to the guy and tell him to leave. "Hey, you there. Guy on the ground. Get out of here. I'll cover you while you run." so he told him, hoping the guy would have some sense and take his advice.

The drunken man that the shadow user had been attacking looked up at him for a few seconds before he started crawling away as fast as he could. Not getting up and running, crawling, like an insect or something. This was really embarrassing to witness. The guy's drunken stupor was not pleasant to bear witness to. Anyways, while the drunken guy attempted to get away, Forcewave decided to focus on the shadow user before him.

This woman looked a lot like a large humanoid shaped mass of shadows. They had clearly covered themselves in their power to keep anyone from seeing what they really looked like. Fair enough, he figured since he was wearing a costume for similar reasons. Also they had grown claws from their hands. Long, shadowy claws, something to watch out for. Probably be best for him to utilize a long range strategy in order to increase his chances of avoiding those things. Would he follow that train of thought though? That could play a major influential factor in what would happen next.

Forcewave quickly attempted to create a wall of energy between the shadow user and the fleeing drunken man to give him a chance to escape. All he had to do was keep her focus on him long enough for the drunken man to escape. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Forcewave then took a fighting stance as he attempted to talk to this person. "Okay, I'd prefer not to have to fight you, just so you know. Who are you anyways?" he said as politely as he could in this situation. No telling how they would react to his words though.

It wasn't that Arienne necessarily bore any ill will towards the drunk man crawling desperately away, at least not beyond a desire to possess what money he happened to have on his person. But it certainly was hard to feel anything other than complete and utter disdain. He was an embarrassment to his people, that was a fact and that fact alone was surely enough to justify the lightening of his pockets. Unfortunately, some would-be hero apparently disagreed with that assessment.

"I wasn't going to hurt him," Arienne stated, a little bit of anger heating her voice. "And he wouldn't have missed the money anyway. Look at him, he's loaded." She made no attempt to follow the fleeing human; her concern was the one who was here to save the day. Not only was he clearly the danger but she doubted the hero would let her make a second attempt at the man's wallet anyway. He wasn't moving very fast so if she could deal with the new threat she might still have a chance at success.

Arienne's new enemy erected some kind of energy barrier between the two of them. Well, perhaps this was a chance to test out what she could do against another metahuman. New experiences and all that. "You're the one who attacked me, not the other way around. You expect me to answer your question? I might ask the same of you."

Taking a fighting stance of her own, Arienne summoned a spike of black energy, emerging from her left shoulder and smashed it, lighting quick, into the energetic wall. Time to see just how strong that wall of energy actually was.

The shadow user seemed to take offense to Forcewave's action of interfering with her attempt to rob that drunken guy. This was not much of a surprise to him. Not the first time he had this happen to him, and it would probably not be the last. First came the defense of their actions, and what they said wasn't completely ridiculous. The drunk guy did look exceptionally and unnecessarily loaded. Was being a bit careless too, what with dangling jewelry around like that. That was no excuse to steal from him though. Which is exactly what he said to this girl in response to her statement. "That may be true, but it's no excuse to steal from somebody."

Forcewave was expecting to get attacked at any moment now. Probably utilizing the power of the shadows too. He had no clue what the extent of her powers were. Forcewave had met others with this same power before, but their powers weren't used the same way. One had been Cain, who was quite aggressive and powerful, and had proved to be very dangerous, the other, more or less a loudmouthed coward. Whatever happened to Cain anyways? He had practically disappeared lately.

The shadow controlling girl didn't seem interested in revealing herself. Looks like this was going to go poorly. A spike of her power came out of her shoulder and Forcewave expected it to come at him. Instead it struck the barrier that he had put up between them and the slowly escaping drunk man. The spike managed to pierce through where it hit and damaged the barrier as a whole. It still held up, but wasn't entirely stable. Another strike like that to it would surely cause it to break, and allow this person the chance to go after the drunken guy. As soon as he saw this happen, Forcewave immediately tried to put up another one before she could break through it. Hopefully he would manage to get it up in time.

It was almost tempting for Arienne to switch her attention from trying to reach her target to trying her talents against the would be hero. Of course she had previously encountered more conventional enforcers of the law but the talents of conventional cops didn't hold up well against the shadowmancer that she was. Her shadows were strong enough that blunt force trauma was all but useless when she had her armor erected and even small firearms didn't do much when she was prepared for them. Larger guns, quite possibly, might be different but she hadn't had the misfortune of testing her gifts to that degree at this point in her life. The electricity of her fellow metahuman was, apparently, a different story and there was a certain danger inherent in not knowing what the actual limitations of her power were.

Still, her original target hadn't yet fled so far that she couldn't get what she had originally come here for and it did seem like her attack had at least weakened the electric barrier so perhaps one more shot at it might be to her benefit. Failing that, she could test her powers against this new enemy as she liked. Probably. Assuming she completely fuck up and get herself permanently maimed or worse. The disadvantages of not knowing exactly what all your limitations and weaknesses actually were.

Trying for a different technique this time around, Arienne took a running leap towards the first barrier. With each step her legs elongated as black shadow grew from the bottom of her feet. She jumped, just before reaching the barrier and as she jumped black wings sprouted from her back. She was far too heavy for true flight, but they often proved useful in extending her leaps. As she jumped, she pivoted around and if she had judged correctly, she would land on the other side of the barrier facing the electric hero.