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A slim dark streak, common in most places nowadays, she moved around the district to pay a visit to her favorite garage-inventor. With her e implanted eye, Kadia skirts the back-alleys. Like a silent wind, she began to quickly scurry up a string of pipes, connecting the target to resources like water and propane. ‘How this guy survives in these times is a mystery’, Kadia thought, ‘but without him, I’d never be able to fight.’ She recalled her father taking her to “the Garage Man”, a burly bald chap with a Santa’s beard and a reek of smelly feet – Gates feet, her mother had once said. At that time, she was barely walking and talking, and she continually tripped over herself – the ground seemed so different between her two eyes…
*Creak* went the pipes, and Kadia snapped out of her reverie. She needed to focus on the job at hand – Garbage Man was reported to have made some breakthrough in technology – a device that “deadens” ones presence to others. ‘If I am going to compete with the upper league mercs – demigods, almost – I’ll need to keep myself blind to them.
Checking to see if no one was around, and sparing a glance for primary traps, Kadia slipped into a window. She crept downstairs to the workshop. A staff was on the oaken table, looking like something about to be scrapped for the next “upgrade”. Made of a fragile metal, with circuits sprouting from it like leaves and an incomplete dial pad, this looked to be the piece. Kadia unhooked a sack of herbs, cheese, and bread from her shoulder. Even for a guy who had more than most in the area, food was often scarce. Placing the sack on a chair, she then grabbed the staff and headed back out to figure the thing out…
-1 week later-
‘I got this,’ Kadia thought, ‘If I overlay wire A with wire ZZ, then my Aura is deadened. If I cross BB with GG, I am covered by a white noise on the psychic plane’.
Pleased with herself, Kadia accidently wandered into a part of town strange to her. “Verdammt,” she muttered, “where am I?” She heard thunderous steps of a man heavily armed, along with a few others. Activating the staff, Kadia decided to risk a look. With saucer-eyes, she beheld some of the larger-league mercs (so she thought) striding along. Kadia was unable to sense auras as the staff was still working its whiles, but she read the faces of the party. The gunman looked both proud and…off, though he was trying to cover it up. There was another big warrior, but Kadia figured his appearance was more intimidating than his abilities – she knew the type. The priest looked domineering, and Kadia first thought he was one of the guards from her monastery…the one that took her in when…when…
She snapped back and observed the others. ‘A blind man…’ Kadia put her hand to her bad eye – her cursed eye, as her parents called it. He and a young woman, seemingly paranoid –not as paranoid as you-shush – and both relatively under-armed. Kadia cocked her head in thought, confused at why two –she assumed - magic people would be needed for a mission – the only mage she knew was back in the gang. He was such a good lay…
She shivered at the memory, and continued watching them from the shadows. ‘They may mostly look insane and deadly,’ she considered, ‘but such a group has to be after something good…they stride with purpose and caution. If I trail far enough behind, I may be able to get in on their mission.’ She checked her discs, modeled after the Shuriken of her mother’s homeland. Her wrists were almost permanently attached to a disk-fed wrist-gun. As her strongest ranged weapon, she had to use it often (and recover the white hot metal disks to reuse). Those adjusted, she mentally lifted her “fire wheels” – like a reusable pipe bomb strapped to the Japanese wind wheel – she remembered often distracting her opponents by only burning a little of the fuel stored in them, pouring down hot flames in a wall/wheel pattern. Her Poi-balls, like small maces, hung at her waist with a combat knife. Finally, Kadia grabbed one of her twin swords – hook swords that she could swing around, trip foes, and sever diamond-adamantium armor when superheated. Ready, she mentally called for Rurik, her robotic wolf-companion, and as the group walked by, she followed like a half naïve-half experienced cat, her “claws” being unsheathed.
-In “Hell”- (Start Here)
As she crept up behind the group, both entered the sanctum. Calliope quelled her curiosity and continued on. Mentally, she took a few peaks through the "senses" of Rurik, who was built to be adept at noticing things people could not. It was a curious piece of technology, allowing her to mix her mind with a semi-sentient piece of technology. Rurik, however stayed very close to her, so not much on this round.
Lost in thought, Kadia lost track of the group she was hoping to join. Rapidly, Rurik and she went down the pathway, hearing a scuffle up ahead. 'Maybe this will be my chance,' she thought, and readied her fire wheels to offer a distraction for the group. However, to her shock, three of the group just plowed through the abominations like a blade through cheese.
'By the Way, these people would just kill me by accident, or for kicks. There is no way I could join them,' she thought. Realizing no way back, and resolving to not make this a wasted trip, Kadia kept to the shadows. However, her dampener was malfunctioning...gradually falling apart in her hands.
"Verdammt! The Schieskopf of an inventor couldn't have made a better quality device to steal. I just hope it keeps working until I can get out of here-"
She noticed the blind man look her way. She shut off her whispering, and fell back a ways.
- - - -
Kadia saw that once again the group she stalked was fighting. Initially, she believed that, like last time, they wouldn’t need her help…However, these monsters seemed different. They were not Dybuuk. They moved as if given a central com-That was it! A Hive mind corpse compilation, like her father had instructed her on from his brief experience during the Calamity. She had two options if she wanted to help – wait and find the “center” – or simply hack her way through them. She mentally activated part of the fuel and waited for it to superheat her weapons. The substance acted like a mix of a vibrating tool and near-metal-melting flames, thus “superheated.”
Kadia mentally launched her flame wheels into the fray, slicing through two of the dead, but with little effect. Flames, on the other hand, following the arcing wheels in a leaf-like or oval-like pattern, caused some of the threat to follow them – trying to catch or attack what a nonexistent fiery elemental. Kadia then triggered her Shuriken-shooting device on her arm, targeting some of the demon-possessed attacking the group directly…