It's A Perfectly Safe Form of Public Transportation (Camille Park)

The grip around Camille's forearm felt soothing enough. Gentle with a subtlety Camille took for courtesy but without adhering to the preset confines of society, the belief in within his fingers lied through his teeth. The atmosphere of the room grabbed the attention of Helix by her sense of conceit. "Why are all these high school losers here? You need to get rid of them before I even begin to think about-" The softness of the man's touch betrayed her with sharp claws. The very touch of the edge sent the motion of energetic force into Camille's legs. The grip kept her running speed, trading her advance towards the door for an advance towards the floor.

Teeth revealed their resolve, but missed their convictions. Camille tried to break from the grip, but could only sit in shock as the grip began to turn her pale skin to an even whiter shade. Her mouth agape, she could only breath in sync with the tension gripping the room. The smell of blood rose from the chest. Its rancorous  stench filling Camille with a queasy dread, while it filled the eyes of her predators with ecstasy. "You can't! I'm too beautiful to die like this!"

A rainbow replaced the man's face. His body dropped to the ground, limp but not without life. "Don't take that personally. I still don't like you." Lightning Bug cracked her knuckles while the other men gathered around with glares of thirst filling their eyes like goblets. "Let's grab these girls and get-"

"Screw that. I'm gone." Camille pushed Lightning Bug to the side and did not even leave behind a trace of rainbow trailing as she began to teleport.

"Hey! I saved you!" Lightning Bug grabbed Camille by the arm. "You owe me!" The free hand grabbed onto the shoulder of one of the victims shoulders, who in turn weakly cradled the girl she was duped into this terrible ritual with. "Now, let's both do something good for once!"

The conversation left the room at the behest of Camille having better things to do than die a brutal, ugly death. The quartet arrived within the upper levels of the club, filled with club goers both horrified by the appearance of the two younger girls and amazed by seeing the duo of Lightning Bug and Helix in the same place. "Use those phones to call emergency-" As camera phones began to appear to snap the image of the duo, Helix removed the second portion of the appearance by delivering a blow to Lightning Bug's stomach. The pictures went off as Bug keeled over, leaving Camille with a perfect opportunity to put on a bored model face and flash a casual peace sign.

While Diana made her way towards the bathroom, the duo of girls made to distract Diana followed, but did not enter the bathroom with Diana. The bartender moved through the door, coming next to Diana, but not giving her enough room to draw her sword from the tube unless she moved back towards the wall. In actuality, the woman entering the room merely acted as the distraction this time. The bartender put her hand up towards Diana, revealing splinterings within the tears of her skin from Diana's defense of herself. "That wasn't very nice." Two sets of arms would tear through the wall, trying to grapple Diana through the wall pulling her hands to her side and wrapping an arm around her neck. "Now, we need you to help us with a job. We have someone you need to meet." The bartender pulled out a roll of pink duct tape to restrain Diana.

Diana continued her feeble struggle, but eventually, out of room and out of options she would eventually make a mistake. She waited around the corner and delivered a face full of boot to the chaser, but this was hardly discouraging to them.

Trying to get the sword out of the tube was one action too many, and soon the swordsman found herself captured. Bone crushing punches and sweeping kicks connected, but too many determined limbs and Hello kitty duct tape eventually gets Diana tied down. Leering monsters taunt her and surround her.

"...Fine. A job? You better know I have a high professional fee." Diana spat, as she was hauled off upstairs, sword in the hands of the replacement barista.

"A payment? Oh, there will be a payment to make alright." The barista laughed as Diana came around to the path the once beautiful looking woman led her. Each one of Diana's kicks ruptured the outer coating of her skin, letting the carapace of her true form seep in to tell the details. "Now, we'll talk of what each of us will pay later. You may be a little disappointed. Bad economy and all."

"We've got to go back, Helix." For a brief second, Lightning Bug overlooked the fact Helix sucker punched her for a publicity stunt. She could revisit that later, but for now, they had irreconcilable differences to reconcile. "I know we don't get along, but there was a chest with girl's blood being dripped into it-"

"That's the exact reason I was about to say we shouldn't go back!" Knowing how this would end, Camille prepared to punch Lightning Bug as hard as she could in the mouth. Unfortunately, Lightning Bug beat Helix to the punch by handcuffing her own wrist to Camille's. "What are you doing insect?"

"Now we have to go together. It's the only way." The look on Lightning Bug's face began to shine with a radiance of doing a job well done, before it faded into failure as Camille began to take a few steps. "Now, listen-"

Helix ran as fast as she could towards the wall, stopping only a few feet away. The momentum carried Lightning Bug into the corner of the wall, slamming her impossibly hard. "Hold on!" Again Helix took off and stopped a few feet away, throwing Lightning Bug against the drywall again. "Will you stop?! I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy"

"I would! You better have the keys for this!" Helix shoved her hands over Lightning Bug's throat, pinning her to the ground just as Lightning Bug blew a bubble in between her and Helix. "You better not!"

"My'll duuit." Lightning Bug kept her bubble in place while speaking her threat towards Helix. "If I uncuff us, will you help?" Lightning Bug rummaged around her outfit in vane.

"After you uncuff me, I'm going to cuff you to an electric substation and turn you into a real lightning bug." Helix disarmed the bubble from Lightning Bug's mouth, causing the volatile bubble to burst, sending the two girls flying to the floor- still tethered together.

"Why did you do that?!" Lightning Bug kicked Helix in the knee. "Now they know where we are!"

"They don't know where we where though."

"Yes they do! We just came from-" The more attractive the man in the room was, the more likely he wanted to drain them of their bodily fluids and eat them. "You know where we're going now right?"

"I'm going to choke you to death. You know that right?"

The placings of the room stayed behind as Helix unwillingly brought herself and Lightning Bug back into the bloodchamber of a VIP room. "Welcome ladies. I didn't expect both of you to show up." The welcome rang true, but for the same reasons turkeys did not enjoy being welcomed to Thanksgiving dinner. "I don't usually like playing with my food, but you two will just have to forgive me." A woman with a slender face stepped out from the shadows. She bore a smile as thin as a string below eyes as jagged as knives.

"You better back off or I'll call for back up!" Camille dragged Lightning Bug forward as she pointed a threat towards the woman next to the chest. "She's already chopped up most of your lackeys and is pretty badass!"

"Oh? A badass? Is it this woman with the sword?"The slender woman directed Camille's attention over to the now regenerated barista. A laugh came from her closed mouth. She held onto the hilt of Diana's sword and gave it a quick swing. "Because I would hope it isn't that tiny thing we found around the club. It would be embarrassing if the other woman was your 'badass'." The blade rested against the small of Diana's throat. Pink duct tape wrapped her wrists and knees together. A long strip of light blue tape stretched from cheek to cheek with a pair of black lips drawn over Diana's mouth. The barista with Diana's sword gave another laugh with her mouth closed while gazing down Diana.

"Okay, Helix, I found the key, but once I get you uncuffed- you cannot choke me." Lightning Bug put very little power in the last part of the deal, more of a plea to someone than a forceful act.

"Now. I cannot choke you now. I will choke you for this. But, first. We need our badass. Yo, girl." The lock in the cuff unhooked and Camille took her wrist out. "We gonna do this?" Camille raced across the room to hook the cuff around the wrist of the woman holding Diana's sword, pulling it away from her throat.

Diana continued some resistance even as the monsters was taking her away, crunching a face that got too close with an elbow strike. "Eat that!" The shapeshifted Korean pretty boy momentarily reverted to his bat-horse-monster face, growled in pain. Diana stood on the ground floor of the dance, the people still somehow mostly oblivious to the fate of its female members. She couldn't scream for help either, given how loud it was. It was hard to notice her as well, since all the lights were on the dancefloor and all the flesh bags there.

The Barista had enough of Diana's resistance and struck her with a backhand. She hit the floor in a daze, struggling with the pain, her nose broken and bleeding and vision blurred. Her hands and feet were taped up, her hand behind her. Indeed, Diana was nearly knocked out, and stayed otherwise out of tenacity.

"Have you finally given up, you skinny blood sack? Good." The barista hefted Diana onto her shoulder one handed. She let none of that nosebleed go to waste, lapping it up with his claws as it poured down. He grimaced slightly. "Ugh, you're a... damnit. We're just going to kill you after this."

VIP ROOM

Diana's ear-ringing headache subsided, but she remained roughed up. She was brought up to the VIP room where a few Korean girls laid around, deathly pale and virtually drained of their blood.  

She was made to kneel, being at the revive vampire queen's mercy. The woman was also had a deathly pallor, but her lips were bright crimson while fresh blood clung to her chin. So, this is the main target. Pretty cocky, using my sword against me. She thought.  

"You got something on your chin, old lady." Diana said the second her taped up mouth was free to talk. It was met with a bitch slap from the Barista. "you disrespectful wench."

"My grandmother can hit harder than you." Diana was really riling them up, but the Vampire Queen stopped them, knowing what she was trying.

"Slay the swordsman. Seal the pact." The demon sword spoke to both the vampire queen and Diana.

"Oh. you are so not getting polished for a week." Diana pouted mentally at her sword.

"Only the strong shall wield me. Only the strong." It replied to current host, in some twisted form of encouragement. Sometimes she wondered if the power of the blade was even worth it at this point.

Camille and her friend the Lightning Bug ended up in the room, and Diana looked at them with some hope. So she wasn't going to be alone. "About time..." She managed to sputter weakly through the blood running over her mouth. The metal taste made talking unpleasant. They exchanged pleasantries and threats with the Vamp, then hopped right into a confrontation.

The speedster was a bit much for the vampires, except for the Vamp Queen who made the attempt to claw Camille with her nasty looking yellowish nails that extended at her will. Still, the sword was moved away from Diana. It was a foreign object to the Queen and was not so easily wielded.

Diana hopped up, capitalizing on Camille's opportunity. Even before the cuff closed, Diana managed a backflip kick from her crouched position to get her sword back, again smashing her favorite smashable objects- vampire fingers. The silver toed hipster boots helped there.  

Diana landed crouched, the sword flying through midair and landing behind its owner's back. Diana cut her hands free picked up the sword.

"RAAAGH PROTECT THE MISTRESS!" The Barista went pro wrestler and tried to tackle Diana, but she sidestepped and cleaved both his arms off. The Barista's momentum carried him into crashing into the coffin-chest, literally unarmed but still howling and kicking. In a blind rage he charged Lightning Bug, determined to fight with fangs alone if need be.  

"Wretched children!" The Vampire Queen cursed Camille verbally, opening her fang laden mouth in a horrific distention, using sorcery to breath out and unleash a swarm of spiders upon her, crawling from her mouth towards the speedster. These spiders were the jumping, biting type.

Helix pulled the Barista's hand away from Diana, giving her enough room to reach over and rip the tape from Diana's mouth. An insult poured out before Diana even went for her escape. "Cool Duct tape. The black lips are fuller than your little bird lips. You should wear it more often." Three yellow nails darted by Camille, but her speed left the danger behind. Camille moved up the wall with her speed, putting her behind one of the vampires. These nails kept shooting with malice, and Camille hoped this queen would continue with her wrath. Each barb from the queen did well to dodge her minions, however Camille used her teleportation to grab vampire spawn before her and place them right before the extending nails.

Blood splashed out around the room while Lightning Bug tried to avoid any instance of carnage. Her first stop brought her towards Diana to help free her, but the more than capable swordsgirl cut herself free. "Hey, I've got an-" A splash of blood shot out into Lightning Bug's face. A scream shot out from the superheroine more inclined for press functions than bloody massacres. "So gross! Oh! So, gross!" After the second arm flew off the vampire's corpse Lightning Bug darted off behind Diana to keep out of site. She knew this incident required a helping hand, but it looked like that hand needed to be grasping a sword. "Wait I have an idea-"

Thinking a creature would avoid aggression because both arms were dismembered felt like a wise thought, but it turned out very incorrect. It could almost come across as 'dead wrong'. but Lightning Bug refused to let this end her. Instead, she bit back on the chewing gum in her mouth and conjured up a bubble. Once the vampire bore his fangs to her, she manipulated the bubble gum to wrap around his face, leaving his last viable means of fighting disarmed. Without his weapon, Lightning Bug put her hands on his back and threw him head first through the wall- mostly because of his force, but she would take some pride in throwing a man's head through a wall.

The queen kept focused on Camille, caring little for the death of her own minions at her very hand. She would end up turning more- possibly even the three women within this room. Camille ran out of vampires to hide behind, leaving her to speed away from the onslaught of blade like appendages. Tiring of the pursuit, the queen of blades threw her nails in front of Camille, forcing Helix to throw herself to the ground before a decapitation would lower her stature. Camille could hear a skittering making its way for her. Spiders jumped towards Camille, trying to tear at her, but found no home as Camille teleported to relative safety a few feet away. Finger nails plunged on either side of Camille's head, keeping her pinned.

Lightning Bug grabbed Diana from behind. "I've got a plan. We're going to work together." Camille would start running. The queen knew something of Diana's reflexes and combat skills, but she would never expect the swordsgirl to move with the speed of Lightning Bug. "Hear we go." Lightning Bug would shoot forward, hoping to get Diana right into the back of the queen.

Diana found herself being carried along at greater speed. She capitalized on it to deliver a killing blow. The blade came at the Queen starting from the hip and curved upward under her arm; it all happened so fast that, for a moment, the Queen hadn't realized what just happened.

The Queen and Diana met eyes, staring at each other for a brief moment, Diana and Bug ending up a few paces away from where the Queen was. Diana flicked the blood off her sword, and sheathed it.

"Foolish girl. I'll kill-" The second the Queen raised her hand she realized she had been neatly sliced in two, her upper body sliding off her lower body. Her torso fell to the floor with a squishy, meaty thud. A look of surprise and shock remained frozen onto her face. Her lower abdomen and legs remained standing in place, spurting blackened blood up to the ceiling and the walls.

The other monsters howled in anger and despair. The death of their progenitor caused a chain reaction and caused the monsters to slowly disintegrate, starting with their skin boiling away and melting, followed by their flesh, leaving their skeletons in steamy, putrid, fleshy puddles of necrotic monster goo.  

Diana then casually pats her new ally in blood covered Lightning Bug on her shoulder. "Good work." Then Diana casually strolls over and draws a hunting knife, beginning to whistle while she sawed the Queen's head off, her eyes still expressing surprise. She had a plastic bag with Buddhist seals over them to transport it with. Diana also carved out the Queen's blackened, withered heart.

Speed kept up when Lightning Bug wanted to stop. Blood kept pouring from every wall within the room and the smell began to get to the lanky super star speedster. Once she landed with Diana in tact, the overwhelming smell of blood sent Lightning Bug head first into the wall. Her weary existence teetered around while Diana embraced her shoulder. Something haunting on the hand touching her made the eyes in her head roll back into a certain shade of white foreboding the loss of blood Lightning Bug experienced in a matter of seconds. "You're pretty goo-" Her eyes clicked the back of their sockets like a binary machine punching off the sprockets controlling consciousness.

"Yeah, whatever. Someone has to clean this-" Helix stopped as she watched Diana begin to saw the head of the beast queen off. The horror of the evening struck the plastic queen with some macabre realizations of the girl she conspired with all evening. "Ew, you smell like blood. So, you just cut her head off? That's lame." Helix moved past the horrors of the room to stick her finger in blood, coating her index finger in the substance the room ran abundant with. The word 'Skank' appeared on Lightning Bug's unconscious forehead with the passing of Helix's finger. "I'm going to duct tape Bug to one of her billboards since she's launching a new fragrance or something. I guess you can just keep on doing whatever lame thing you're up to though. I don't really care."

Diana paid Helix no mind as she stuffed her bag with the bounty she would collect. She instead looked around, peering into the chest where the Queen must have lain dormant until her revival. There was still one more unopened chest.

"Here, some consolation prizes." Diana tossed Helix the small chest, its contents scattering at her feet. Handfuls of gems, gold coins and some very exquisite Hanbok, or traditional Korean clothes, were hers for the taking. At least, that's what Diana assumed she wanted.

"Well. My work's done. I need to find myself a cooler and a hotel. Take whatever you want." Diana slowly made her way out the door. It was clear from her bleeding noggin and tired, limping stagger that the battle roughed her up quite a bit. She had put out a great amount of energy and she was almost done for.

Lightning Bug laid unconscious on the ground. The events and trepidation of the day plastered her face in a pitch white only made more pronounced by the splatters of crimson lining her face. It would take a good nights sleep for her to get over the trials of darkness she found herself mixed up on this terrible night. Still wandering the world of the living, Camille looked down into her chest of goodies. The amount of jealousy from her peers would be something to brag about, but who fears the person with the fancy clothes? And once Camille held the money, all she wanted was more of it.

But, that sword. Power surged in it. not, just within the confines of the steel, but also in how it could treat people to its will. If Camille had the sword- well, she did not know what would be in store, but she knew the blade would bring her power. Before she could reach down and grab the roll of duct tape to race around Diana and tie her from mouth to toe, something else called out for her attention. Not a voice, but a feeling. It pulled her more than any force she could remember. Within the chest rested a black blade. Small, but wicked in shape.

She reached down to grab it. It grabbed at her too.

Once she made the call, the government's response was swift. Ambulances and police secure the site; the victims were placed in critical care for infusions. A black limo, several men in black and an ambulance ride later, Diana found herself at the Korean Idol Agency (Bug too if she's from there), a front for their advanced Kpop Kommando and Metahuman Training program.

K.I.A. HEADQUARTERS - EPILOGUE

Diana met with Iron Monk in the Occult Wing, which had been refurbished to be resemble a Buddhist Shrine. She had her head wound and arms bandaged, and was fit enough to sit on the floor with the bald old monk. He radiated mystical power though, and was in top shape, his attire closer to the shaolin.

They watched as The vampire Queen's parts, in three different clear plexiglass containers were being put on ice and being eventually put away in the Occult storage beneath the shrine.

"On behalf of the Korean people, I thank you for your service, mercenary though you may be... Ronin." He said, pouring Diana some tea from a metal pot.

Diana huffed and took the tea, drinking slowly thanks to her sore limbs. Not too shabby. Her injuries did not heal since she had hunted undead. "Ronin? ... the masterless swordsman. Why didn't I think of that."

Iron Monk continued to drink his own tea and continued asking. "The girl you aided was also a criminal. You could have brought her in for her bounty. Why didn't you?"

"We helped each other during the fight. I don't think we could have pulled it off if one of us wasn't there. Seemed fair to let her go." Diana explained, helping herself to some rice cake.

"So the Ronin has some measure of honor as well." The Monk observed, and the notion of honor made Diana giggle slightly. Her injuries discouraged laughter or other emotional displays.

Diana saw that Iron Monk's eyes slowly fell on her sword. "Thanks for the tea. If you have more jobs, I'm always available." She slowly stood up from the table of the Iron Monk's meditation room, retrieved her shoes, and eventually left.

((END THREAD. FEEL FREE TO POST A PROLOGUE))