November 08, 2016:
Hyperion and Angela meet when Trolls decide to make DEO Agents disappear. Guess who is hunting who?
Alaska
In First Pose.
Characters
NPCs: None.
Mentions:
Plot:
Mood Music: [*\# None.]
Fade In…
Seventy miles east of Point Hope, Alaska. It is not late, but it is already dark here; it is snowing and cold as hell. Which is why the D.E.O. sent one of the few agents they have that is unbothered by weather and can see perfectly well at night during a blizzard.
Also, because the previous special ops group they sent has not reported in four days. Six heavily armed formed rangers, two of whom had important cybernetic improvements. Enough to deal with almost anything.
Those six raise the number of missing people to 57 in two months. Enough to call for overkill. Hyperion is his name. And the red-clad man is currently he is following the invisible trail of the D.E.O. team snow-bikes. Invisible for anyone without enhanced senses, at least.
Alone. As Angela preferred. If anyone was in space, or could feel the rocking on dimensional Richter the light there came and went like a burning out star, but what remained in the area of burnout was a body. Solid in stature like that of an age old stone of special making and a big bang, the burnout the red flowing of hair that flung out like tendrils from the winged coronet that thrust Valkyrie like spires in display from temples and beneath the crimson blaze of hair.
Sweeping along high cheekbones and beneath eyes, contouring jaw are the lines of red tattooing, framing the burning white of eyes, but as her head lifts to the air like a wolf on the scent they flare gold. Illuminating another heat that has her reaching towards her back, grabbing dual hilts that thrust low and angled out from hips, curving blades and mold into the form of miniature clawed scythes.
"Oh, no you shall not." And from that atmospheric hover in space another boom sounds, a blink…
Earth's atmosphere is penetrated 70 miles outside of Point Hope, Alaska, but through the snow and cloud cover it is an easy thing to miss.
Hyperion just walks. The trail is cold, the traces of the snow-bikes on the terrain, under the snow, hard to notice even for himself. Still, he is making good progress, and it is not as if he ever tires.
He pauses, and crouches, his right hand easily pushing through frozen snow to grab something underneath. Then he stands, a metal forearm in his hand. The steel torn at the elbow, as if it was ripped from the rest of the metal limb. There was a fight here, he decides, now seeing bullet casings under the snow.
But his investigation is interrupted by the sonic boom overhead. He raises his gaze to the sky, eyes narrowing, and peering through the blizzard and the darkness, seeking the cause of the sound.
Silence after.
But that does not last long, as cutting through the heavy downfall of snow a shadowed form slices through, a horizontal barrel roll, at first limbs were seen but then they tactfully drew inward, warping an evident surprising launch into a airborne show like a gymnast in launch.
A thud lands before Hyperion, pillowed in snow and causing a small rise of the dust in a wave before it settles…
Just like the figure of the woman landing behind him, head tucks artistically, rolling her over shoulder, along her back and when feet kick upward t bring her back to a stand after the landed roll those curved scythes held within each grip reappear. Brandished and held at her sides, pivoted hook-side down in a twist of grip and snapping from her sides and behind are red and golden ribbons, acting as if they are angered heads of a hydra and their direction is where those burning golden eyes focus. Before Hyperion, at his feet where a severed arm of a troll lies, and then beyond where multiple large shadows begin to cast through the blizzard in their approach with the sound of Thunder.
"You better be ready or be buried on these grounds beside your metal friends." Stated as tongue sweeps at a bloodies corner of lip and she smiles.
Hyperion is not someone easy to sneak upon. Despite the blizzard, he can see the blur in the air that was Angela coming, and he should have been able to spot the trolls too if he had not been looking upwards.
Now, when he lands behind him, the young man turns to look at her, searching in his memory for a name to attach her face. The D.E.O. database is extensive, but the warrior woman is unknown. Or past his clearance level. "Who are you?" He asks, giving her a few seconds before turning to the advancing trolls.
"Before you do anything foolish, like attacking me… the law of this land demands I request you to drop your weapons and surrender." His voice booms loud enough so the advancing creatures can hear him, even if for his posture suggests he knows they will not. He put the metal arm down on the snow almost carefully, then he rises a few inches over the ground.
Angela's eyes burn, and the path from the silhouette of the advancing trolls to Hyperion does not waver in friendliness. Her smile splits her lips and casts the red tattooed ink into creases that only accent the hardened glare.
His words only make the smile split wider and the pink stains across white teeth only show what was left of a cracked jaw and the mottle of blood she had dabbed with her tongue. Angela rights from her stance then, those twin scythes sheathed upon her back as the winds around them blow the snow into small cyclones and do not aid in visual nor the feel of bitter cold.
Angela seems to not feel it either, only clad in the golden armor upon feet that rides to just above her knees, contouring musculature of the base of thighs. Left bare until the large belt that hangs off the birth of hips and again skin, unscarred and flawless along abdomen to the armored brassier across chest.
"Do not bring your laws to me and lay them at my feet. I have stood upon many threats and offers of the same and vanquished them where I stood. I will not renounce my weapons until the day my true death comes, and you will not bring it!" Motion could almost be unseen with how natural it was she drew the massive bow, bladed with the teeth of a dragon along the body. And just as quick an arrow is fired, but not at Hyperion, just behind him and the speed of charge of the troll brings its body sliding to stop just at their feet.
"Now move aside and wait your turn, or take it with them. Today is not my day to die." And once more Angela is moving past him, towards the trolls in a blur of speed and a leap aided by flight.
"I was talking to them," comments Hyperion offhand. Not that the trolls are listening. Maybe they don't even understand him. He was genuinely offering them a chance to surrender, though, or at least to parlay. They are obviously inhuman but intelligent beings, many of them wearing chainmail or even breastplates, and carrying heavy axes or war hammers. He finds that interesting, even if it seem obvious they killed his D.E.O. colleagues.
He is not sure he feels anything about that. He maybe should, but outrage comes slowly on him in these times. Even curiosity is difficult to spark. Alien monsters and the female huntress just did.
Three of the trolls, all of them between seven and eight feet tall, charge at Angela, but other three come at him. He glares at the first one, and his eyes blaze white hot, twin steaks of fiery plasma striking the lead monster, instantaneously turning red-hot the chain-mail and making him scream and stumble back. The second troll aims his hammer for Hyperion's head, but he shatters it with a sweep of his forearm, and lightning-fast strikes with the flat of his hand at the face of the creature, shattering several teeth and his nose and sending him tumbling down fifty, sixty feet through the snow and rock of the ground.
The third troll roars and smashes his axe against the man's back, sending him rolling through the snow too. Then steps back, looking alarmed. The axe blade shattered.
Angela's show does not bear lights, but it is a dance among the ones this Hyperion provides with his own tactics. "They will give you the same response."
And with that began the crunching and sounds of a brutal battle among monoliths in the Alaskan frontier. One charges Angela head on, leading the trio, a motion that has her leaping upward, one of those handheld scythes sweeping upward, hooking from beneath the jaw of the troll, up through his nose t goes through and through, hooking him in her leap to drag him upward and then promptly flip the weapon and throw him to the ground.
Her follow up is swift, the second weapon that was once a scythe reshapes into a spear and with the speed of descent and her weight she drives it into the fallen troll as it tries to rise, spitting him into the ground.
The other two close in, one swinging a bludgeon, the other his own dual swords, her body spins around the spears shaft, kicking outward to hook a knee around ones throat as they charge from opposing directions to close in on her, the one swinging his club into her cling with the loud thuds of impact, one landed the others following through to the ground. But when he looks up, Angela pivots, a ribbon of hers having looped where leg had around the trolls neck and she spun free it acted as a garrote, tightened by Angela's withdrawal from the incoming impact as the trolls collided.
For now Hyperion is not her focus as the remaining trolls are counted and positions mapped. Another blur of motion and Angela is ripping the spear from the fallen trolls body, reshaping it to match its counterpart.
"Remarkable," comments Hyperion, standing up and shaking off the snow. "You cut me," he says to the Troll, giving him a nod of acknowledging. There is a swallow cut going through his back and side, he is even bleeding. The troll growls, stepping back. "Thee shouldst be dead!" He complains, sounding both childish and monstrous.
"I don't believe so," replies Hyperion with a faint smirk. He flies forward, punching the troll through his raised axe, breaking it and knocking the creature down with a single blow. "And you are under arrest," he adds.
The two trolls' collision has left one bleeding from its belly, and his neck from those ribbons. That does not stop them, though as they both charge and continue the battle with Angela, meeting only the empty air over their dead comrade. A moment to look around, brace, and feel the force of her landing blow as she lands upon one, staring at the other with a smile that narrows her eyes, but as he charges forward he finds himself spitted upon her lance.
"Tell you leader he is breaking the rules!" And when Angela rises the manner in which she hoists the monster is almost like a flag, but the motions of poise seem to be that of a battle dance, one that opens a tear and in a flash the troll is gone, only blood remaining on the lance, all the while the one she had landed upon is relieved of the Xiphos sword from his neck with a screeching sound of metal and bone.
"What is this arrest you speak of? If you seek to let him live it is a mistake, and it is a mistake I will not let you make."
"I am an agent of the law," says the man in red. "My name is Hyperion. This creature and his other surviving allies will be judged and punished for what they have done." He studies Angela again, then picks up a fragment of metal from the ground. "This ultra-dense metal is not native of Earth. But it matches the one of your weapons, so you came from the same place as them, didn't you? Again I ask. Who are you, warrior?"
"Agent of your law." Angela states as she keeps the distance between them, standing beside the fallen trolls on her side of this scrap. None breathing, and the one she lanced and sent away will only survive… long enough.
"Angela." The name is stated on chilled words, while stance and posture remains unwavering, the only thing that changes is the rise of her chin, a gesture that seems to bring the snapping flow of those gold and red ribbons to a slow, speculative… Like her.
One moment there, the next Angela is a blur, both of those scythes are drawn, but now they are dual edged axes, like the larger one the troll had wielded against Hyperion, and unless he stops her those two weapons seek to land in the trolls torso and to sever his head from his shoulders.
"Obviously. But we stand on American land," however he doesn't move a finger to defend the lives of the unconscious trolls. "He was helpless, why do you want them dead? Have they offended you in the past, Angela?" Hyperion does not seem to really care about the trolls' lives, but he is genuinely curious about their origins and Angela's, and it shows.
"An agreement had been made. They were to abide by it." The axes were drawn up, spattering the snow in blots of black blood, a pivot of them in her hands spun them and when the blades spun free of the visceral remains she sheaths Ichorous weapons at her back where they once were.
"The laws and rules I abide by are ones I was borne of. I recognize no other." A sniff and even in emphasis one of those ribbons seems to snap backwards, then they all seem to recoil and twine around her body like straps to meld to her attire and cast a light illumination over her body. Warmth.
"If we allowed any and all to hide under governing laws of the lands they set foot upon, it would bring ruin. People are only worth their word."
In that case, thinks Hyperion, most human leaders are worthless. But he knew that already, didn't he? "I see," he notes, looking the executions with little interest. "I need to ask where did they came from, and how did they arrived to this land. Because I know the authorities will want to prevent this to happen again."
"There are authorities from there that will tend to them and serve them the justice that is fitting of their land. They made a deal and broke it, they come back and you will see me again. I think the message I sent will cease their presence, unless their Leader is being foolish." A smile then, one that Angela typically bears when a challenge or a hunt is on, and not one part of it is friendly. Rancorous, and yet somewhere in there, thrilled. It is obvious what she is.
"What manner of name is Hyperion? Rank? Title?" In the query her eyes scan the man, his wound eyed with little concern, save for how little damage it caused.
Hyperion shakes his head, "that attitude won't earn you friends in America. If you seek to impose your law here, eventually someone like me will be sent to stop you. I do not consider important this matter… but humans in power, they can be zealous on their beliefs, inflexible and prideful."
"My name… it was given to me when they made me their agent. My father called me Mark. But perhaps Hyperion is more suitable now, even if that was the name of an ancient sun god, long forgotten by most."
"Well, in some manner then we see eye to eye. Although I would hate to end their Agent Titan." That smile of the Hunt fades to one of a quirk at corners, still bearing teeth in a near shark like manner.
"Mark is not a name of truth, as they made you one and even the metals of their world did not stand against you." A pause. "They will come back with better if they return at all. You are best to prepare."
A turn then and Angela is walking away through the snow, a pause, a dagger plucked from one of the bodies and sheathed within ribbons wrapped at her thigh.
And Hyperion still does not know where the trolls came from. But the occultists of the D.E.O. will know. That he lets Angela kill them will cause some irritation, they would have wanted interrogate them and know exactly why they killed and when, but he doesn't care much about it. "And you, Angela, would you come back?" He asks before she goes too far.
Angela stops, her back to him as well as the reveal of the weapons that reside in holsters there, and her newly collected one that will fetch a nice price or perhaps later serve a purpose as 'disposable'. Looking back those golden eyes narrow at Hyperion. "For what purpose? So your high and mighty leaders can attempt to exact their brand of justice and law upon me? It does not seem a sport I desire to play, nor a challenge I wish to accept." A tilt of her head and a slow nod is offered, tilting her chin to nowhere yet /somewhere/.
"I will return if I must, but I have no collections here."
"I will find you," promises Hyperion. "Farewell."