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"I hardly see how that is..." Rue stopped and took a breath, staring straight ahead. It didn't take a reading of her emotions - not that her sudden slamming of an extra psychic wall would allow it - to know that a nerve had been touched with the mention of the name. She turned away, contemplating. The artificer's family issues could possibly be worked to her advantage.

"He is the head of my family," she paused before her next words, her pale face turning slightly green as though she might be sick just from saying them, "and my fiancé. Regardless of his general uselessness as a human being, there are some aspects of him that are to be feared. If he is declaring war on one of the Seven, somebody must have severely offended him." She sighed and shuddered. "In any case, what do you plan to do if we should meet up with them up ahead?"

The fact that she looked green, when she repeated the name- "Irrelevant, right now", and then she mentioned..."Them?...oh..."
Michael sighed in annoyance, "I don't, and hopefully never will, plan on meeting with anyone from Babylon. In the case that we do, however, I plan on locking their psychic abilities down, if they're weak, or killing them, if they're not." He retracted his block as he started the car, again, leaving his memories of Babylon for her to see if she choose.
Pictures of screaming men and women and children in dark chambers having their very being turned inside-out and being made slaves of all sorts. Guilt was intermixed with the overlapping message as his thoughts rang out and he drove forward, slowly because of his weariness. "Babylon disgusts me, and so does the bitch who claims so much infallibility as she slaughters the minds of anyone who doesn't follow her prophecies. I was her pawn once, indebted to her with my life as I gutted and ripped out their memories. I was told not to look, too, but that only pressed my curiosity leaving me tortured by their lives..." Tears began to water through his eyes as they turned blood-shot. "their love..." He shook his head again. "I carried it in and bid my time until I could escape...and then," he said, re-blocking his memories behind a final thought. "I did."
"And that's all there is to it, Rue," he said, wiping away his tears on his sleeve.

Shealtiel perks up suddenly, leaning forward where he sits. He addresses them all.

"Do you sense that? Living souls nearby -- no, not the two following us, in the pass. We're being watched. I don't detect any spirits of particular potency, but there could be a psychic hiding up there... my MID seems to have broken. Can you feel anything from this distance, Feenai? Or perhaps, you, your eminence, with your divine far-sight, could enlighten us?"

"Hm?" Dante stuck his head out the window to get a better view, and received a mouthful of dust. He spat and pawed the stuff out before muttering, "...oh, yeah, there's something."

He forced a laugh, reached over, and poked Lev sharply in the ribs. "Oy, you-with-the-grandness. Get you ass over here."

Feenai threw her newly developed senses forward. There were two people and they probably were not psychics as she could hear their thoughts quite easily. Grimacing from reading the thoughts, even if it was becoming necessary for survival, she told the others what she had heard. "There are two, but they are scouts for a larger raider horde of maybe a dozen people. Neither of the scouts are psychics but that doesn't mean any raiders outside my range won't be. They appear to want to capture us for supplies and..." Feenai's voice twisted at her next words, "fun and games."

"Fun and games?"

Lev's mouth twisted in what was surely meant to be a grin. After a moment he erupted in to laughter, crazed and drunk on mere delusions of what fun and games he could have with their twisted flesh.

"We will have entertainment, indeed. But first, let us send them a message."

With that he undid his long jacket, letting it fall to the ground. He readied the ancient and battered Mosin-Nagant that Lev had once picked out, loading a single bullet in to it with care. With a single hand he ripped the tattered shirt from his body, wrapping it around his face. He turned to the rest of the party, addressing them with a gun and open arm.

"They shall make a donation. A gift of flesh. Every person, no matter how plain, has a special gift that can be given. My vessel! This man, this...Lev. Has bestowed upon me his gift of marksmanship, of skill with a rifle. I shall now bestow the fruits of his gift upon those who do not give gifts willingly!"

With that, Na'lsa leaned out the window Dante had previously used. He steadied his rifle against the frame of the APC, trying to compensate for the bumping and jarring. The shot was far. The conditions problematic. But Lev had made a shot not unlike this one once before. If only he could see better...

Na'lsa grinned, remembering a bird of prey he had ingested some time ago. The flesh was old, but he remembered it. He squinted an eye, aiming down the sight. The eye seemed to move, to bulge almost as the inner muscle and tissue moved. His vision almost faded entirely for a moment, before refocusing. He could see clearly. He could see the great distance between he and the heathens. Grinning, he squeezed the trigger. A single shot rang out, and Na'lsa let slip a single bullet at a raider scout over a mile away.

Dante leaned back a bit, allowing the Lion the room and at the same time stifling the urge to simply shove the man out the window.

That's....unexpected. The Lion's laughter was...contagious. The forced laugh that had just escaped from Dante's lips moments again transformed itself into a wide grin as he felt around and opened a second window and peered out, unconsciously withdrawing a black-flighted arrow from his quiver for later use.

Something caught his eye. Red... He swore with his mind racing in the opposite direction. But the Artificer was driving... Dante calmed his nerves by taking in a few deep breath. He'd settle certain things later.

Among the crevices of the pass's steep defile, voices rise and fall in curt command, unpertubed, even as the corpse of the scout slides down the banks, tumbling to fall in a cloud of blackened dust on the ash-littered sands of Thermopylae. Some twenty figures move with practiced discipline, scaling the craggy walls to take up vantage points on the tiered plateaus overlooking the pass, others sliding down, weapons shouldered, to establish positions amid the natural cover of the lower terrain.

Within moments, all is still once again, then, after what seems an interminable stretch seconds, each more fraught than the last, a figure can be seen striding out from the shadows of the defile. He strides purposefully toward the APC, seemingly unimpressed by the firepower already displayed from the group.

As he comes within focus of Lev's scope, the demon can make out minute details about the figure, presumably the leader of those encamped in the pass. He is immaculately dressed in a white, tailed tuxedo, accented with black beneath. His hair is cut short in a thick wedge of powdery blond, though a queue of wispy strands hands down from the top of his head, almost reminiscent of the topknot of some ancient warrior. He does not appear to be armed, despite the confidence with which he approaches, eyes fixed straight ahead. There is something... wrong... in those eyes....

Feenai sucked in her breath sharply as she felt the man die. Soon after, more and more people entered her field, though they were all dwarfed by the presence of the man walking out of the pass towards them. She attempted to sense his thoughts as she slowed the APC to a halt.

Oh? Dante's smile was wiped off his face quickly as it had appeared. Something was...off. He narrowed his eyes and stuck his head in front of Lev's, glaring at the newcomer, not entirely willing to swing his legs out. The many auras he had sensed don't give off a friendly vibe, and he fingered the arrow in the bow anxiously, but keeping it out of the frame of the window.

Rue heard the gunshot from a distance. She had turned away from the artificer to keep him from thinking that she might actually be interested in his past, but nevertheless she filed the information away for use later. The area's mental patterns had grown stronger and were focused now ahead of them.

"Stop!" Rue held a hand out in front of Michael. They had been approaching the other vehicle too quickly, and she didn't want to be seen and become a target as well. "What is this...?" She absorbed the mental patterns from a distance, taking longer than she normally would have to decipher them.

From the stranger emanates a panoply of twisted, inhuman thoughts, like a cacophony of voices gibbering in every conceivable tongue. Nothing can be discerned of his motives, disposition, or personality, save that there is nothing remotely ordinary about him. His demeanor is blank, bereft of all malice, and indeed, bereft of any intimation of his intentions. From his stance, he is neutral, unconcerned. If he is aware of the unease and hostility awaiting him from the group, he betrays no indication. He is close now, near enough to be seen from the windows of the APC.

Despite the apparent danger, Feenai was becoming fascinated with this man. He wasn't particularly handsome, and his thoughts were complete gibberish. However, Feenai had never heard of anyone like him, and pushed open the APC door to step out. She was fully aware of the danger that she was presenting herself to, and had one chronostatic grenade, as well as her laser, both handy as she stepped out of the vehicle.

"My friends and I wish to pass through here. We know you've been waiting here to try to relieve us of some possessions, as well as some other things," at this, Feenai stared sourly at the scout who had not been shot. "I would rather not hurt any more of you, but I can't say the same for my friends if you all decide to fight."

The man smiles broadly, revealing a bizarre sight of alternating teeth, one gleaming white, almost mirrored, the next rotted black. When he speaks, a split tongue flicks up and down with his mouth, occasionally slithering out to lick at his lips. The voice emanating from him -- she is not sure it is actually being produced by his body -- is like that of a young child, nasal and whining.

"If you even consider throwing that, I will reverse the flow of blood in your veins and explode your heart." His smile never falters, his voice flooded with an almost innocent glee. "And you're mistaken. I don't care at all for your possessions, my friends back there do. Luckily, unlike you, I can take responsibility for their actions, and so you'll live, for now, if you please me."

He strides past Feenai and comes to a stop before the APC, resting his hands in fists on his hips. "Come out, all of you," he says, and they each feel the sentiment slither into their minds like a vial of poison: an innocuous request merely begging to become an irresistible Command.

Feenai could not tell if he was bluffing or not. His mind was a mess and completely unreadable, unlike his friends. "As long as I don't feel threatened, I won't consider it." She hooked the grenade onto the laser's strap and slung it over her shoulder, as she waited for everyone else to come out. His voice...there's something wrong with it. I want to block him out, but despite his promise, I can't just block out everyone else too...

The car nearly swerved off of the edge as Michael hit the breaks. "What the-" His exclamation couldn't have been heard over the sliding dirt. The car stopped just short of leaning off. He turned to Rue with a pissed off expression. "Are you out of your fucking mind!?" Her stare towards the road ahead cuased him to turn his head to where she was looking.
Up ahead a man seemed to be in front of APC that they were following, talking to Feenai. An almost familiar tinge touched the mental block that he kept up, once again. Ignoring it, he watched the events from afar.