Raid gone awry.

[Opal (DELETED 5248)]

Closed to Kallista, Kelly, Nakia, Danton & Jersey if they wish to post.
{ Back dated to the 3rd of December 2014 }

It was your average Team Raid. Opal was close enough to Kallista to raid with the woman. Opal knew her secret; she knew she was a vampire. She knew the whole of god damn Harper Rock was infested – a little vampire nest. All you needed to see now was the queen of all the damned. (see the pun?). There was something about the vampire that allowed Opal to trust her. She had practically moved in with the woman, she even had one of those magical tomes. Fiona didn’t even have one – but then again, she hadn’t heard from Fiona in a while. She had figured the woman was busy training to kill vampires. What Opal didn’t expect was to become one of the undead tonight. It was all about to change, Most raids had gone okay, a few scrapes here and there nothing she couldn’t heal with her nifty little sorcerer abilities.

“Got the switch, lass!” She said in passing as Kallista was tackling one of those odd demi-fae’s in the center of the alter. Doing what she did best. Opal dropped the switch with a rather smug look on her lips as she pushed her long, golden mane up into a tight ponytail. At this point, Opal had obtained a fair few switches to add to her collection. She’d used up a large portion of her energy to get this far. The rest of the team were shooting at the other pesky bastards. The shaman in particular. He was slippery, but he held the key to get to the top floor – the penthouse, Opal usually called it. It was where the Matriarch resided. Sitting high above her perch. Waiting to shoot at anyone who even made it this far up.

An hour or so later of playing kissy chase with the Shaman’s and Workers they had a key to the next floor. It was a short walk to the door. The key was pushed inside the keyhole and up they went as a team – ready to take on the Matriarch. Often she would infuse Kallista with spurts of energy. She acted like a red bull energy drink to the vampire, enough to give her a buzz – even if it was for a few moments. Another nifty perk for sorcerer. This was where things got tricky for Opal. The whole floor was booby trapped. Turrets shot at her, some bullets grazed her pink flesh – causing her to bleed, some decided to nestle themselves inside her gut. The sorcerer shrieked but kept going. She followed the team to the Matriarch, being the Scottish trooper she was.

Mine’s blew up on her as she neared. She dismantled any trap she came across, keeping the parts in her backpack to be used later on. Opal was bleeding a lot now, her blue hues were getting hazy. Nakia was sticking close to the woman, offering support. Opal did love that woman. Her eyes flickered to Jersey. They all seemed to love Kallista unconditionally. She couldn’t quite understand why, even Kelly. The man that didn’t even like Opal hanging around too much. He had made the comment that she smelt like a dog. Opal had responded to that by smelling her own armpit and completely disagreeing with him. The sorcerer was curious as to what a bond between a maker and it’s creation could be like.

A few more bullets were passed between the team and the Matriarch and she crumpled at Kallista’s feet dead. Opal gave out a sigh of relief. The team had won, they could loot the floor. Every inch of treasure was there’s. Opal gave out another sigh and fell to the ground, the wounds she had suffered from the Turrets, the Mines – even bear traps had gotten to her, the woman was completely drained.

“I’m just going to rest a little bit, lass.” She said to Kallista. Her hands shook as she held one over her gut, to hide the bleeding from the bullet wound.

[Kallista]

She was exhausted.

It was the kind of exhaustion that you could feel in your bones. Kallista felt like her entire body was weighted down with fatigue. She ached from head to toe and her wounds were not only painful but they were slowing her down. The demifae that she was trying to get to co-operate with her was being particularly stubborn and Kallista knew it had a lot to do with the amount of wounds she was carrying, but she somehow managed to complete the ritual successfully. A short time later they had the key that they needed and up they went to the final floor,

They were a young team and Kallista was unsure of how they were going to fare against the enemies that waited for them. She was especially worried about Opal who didn’t have the luxury of being able to feed to restore her blood. And Kallista didn’t know if the human was able to heal herself the way that vampires could. Her help though had been invaluable. So many times the mystic was so tired she didn’t think she’d be able to take another step but Opal had done something to her that gave her a shot of something that took the edge off.

Opal. Kallista couldn’t even remember how they met, or how the human managed to make herself nice and comfortable in Kallista’s life but Opal had. She’d already known what the mystic was when they met. How was something that she’d never asked. Kelly hadn’t liked it a bit. He had been rather vocal in his dislike of Opal but Kallista, being the gentle soul that she was, didn’t listen to him. She was rather fond of Opal and yes it made her sad that her husband disliked her friend so strongly but she’d never condemned him for it. He was entitled to his opinion after all.

Navigating the floor where the Matriarch was hiding was a challenge and Kallista winced every time Opal darted ahead to tackle the traps they came across. Hours seemed to pass but eventually the Matriarch was dead. The blade fell from her fingers and hit the floor with a clatter and Kallista soon followed, too tired to remain on her feet. The scent of fresh blood permeated her senses and she looked up to see Opal in front of her. She was clutching her stomach trying to hide the worst of her wounds. It was like Jersey all over again. “Opal….how badly are you hurt?"

[Jersey]

Jersey was a thief for the group, and when she wasn’t, Austin would tell her where traps were for her to break them down. It just wasn’t possible for the petite blonde to take out any of the creatures and even if she could, as she clutched the butt of her pistol, she couldn’t find it in herself to do it. It was something that she just accepted and knew her family wouldn’t question, and with a wince escaping past her slender form, she could smell the burns on her skin.

Austin had already been taken away by the ambulance after he continued to ignore her protests of needing any help and with a concern for her older brother keeping her on edge, she had leaned back against the wall. She moved when called by her sire, did what the others asked. What irritated her most were the gunshots littering her form, but as she smelled familiar blood in the air, Jersey pushed past her own misery to look for Opal.

The two had been friends when Jersey was human, and with a concern expression dancing across her lips as she heard Kallista’s words, the blonde bit her lip. Glancing back to Opal, she focused and after a few moments of checking through the other’s mind, searching for something, and when she finished Jersey felt nervous. “Siren...” She said, her tone showing worry, “She’s low on blood.”

She stood up straight, wavering slightly before she made her way over to her sire and friend. Hoping it would help a bit with healing, Jersey inspired the Sorcerer and automatically as the smell became stronger, she lifted her hand to her nose to cover it as she watched Opal’s shaking. “Just don’t fall asleep, Gem.” She spoke lightly, looking back at her sire.

[Opal (DELETED 5248)]

This wasn’t how she planned on going out. She had planned some epic battle of proportions. Some bank heist gone wrong, and she’d play the hero role. She’d save all these hostages and then be remembered forever, have a whole plaque devoted to her. Yet, as she was slumped on the floor in a heap. Bloody hands scrambled to keep the skin together. She had a bullet hole in her gut. It was nasty, looked like a through and through so it wasn’t like anyone had to stick anything inside her to get out the shrapnel. That proximity mine though, it had burned half of her skin. Her long golden hair was burnt at the edges, matted with dirty, and crusted blood. She looked like a mess, but she usually did when she raided with Kallista.

It shouldn’t have been different, but she had devoted so much of her sorcerer magic, that she had left none for herself. She couldn’t heal herself. She couldn’t do anything really. Her magical chi, had been given to Kallista, which wasn’t a bad thing. Opal was all about the team work.

”Are you ready to die, Oppie?”

There was that familiar nagging voice that always kept her company. A spirit from the other side that had latched onto her, since she was a child. Keeping her company. She sometimes wondered if it was her mother, but she didn’t think her mother could fake a man’s for this long – no it couldn’t have been the woman she had killed during her birth. A grunt left her lips. No. She didn’t want to die, just yet – but it seemed like she didn’t have a choice at this point. She was surrounded by vampires though, could she on the off chance ask them to help her?

“No, I’m not ready.” ”Say your goodbye’s, friend.” “I don’t want to.” ”Have you seen that wound, love?”

Opal pushed her head down to actually look at the wound now, the skin ripped open, blood oozed from the wound like a river that just broken through a dam. Opal tried her hardest to keep the sob hidden inside her, she would not cry – she would not even allow the fear to creep up on her features. She shook her head slowly. Turning her icy blue hues towards Kallista and shot her a look.

“I’m sure it’s nothing bad.” A lie. Opal knew exactly how bad it was. “Just a flesh wound, nothing more, lass.” She gave a lazy shrug of her shoulders before dragging her eyes to Jersey. The woman called her gem, she had never called her gem before. She smiled at her non the less. “I haven’t lost that much blood.” Unbeknownst to the Scottish woman, there was a pool of blood forming behind her slowly; the exit wound in her back was seeping blood, just like her gut wound. “Why am I going to go to sleep, I’m just gathering my strength.” ”You can’t be brave forever, Oppie – let them help you.”

[Kallista]

Of course she was low on blood. It was pooling on the floor underneath the sorcerer curled on the floor at their feet. Kallista didn’t need Jersey’s abilities to tell her what she already knew but she kept her words to herself. It wouldn’t do to snap at the girl when she was just as worried as Kallista was even though the mystic knew that Jersey would understand why. Opal was what mattered in that moment, and she didn’t need to hear bickering from anyone.

Kallista was torn. In all of her time of knowing Opal the subject of her being turned had never come up. It wasn’t that Kallista didn’t want to - she did. She would have loved to make her a part of the family proper even if her husband didn’t like her. Opal had never said that she wanted it, and the mystic figured that the blonde was happy as she was. A human. Kallista didn’t have it in her to try and force someone into a life that they didn’t want.

Now though she might not have a choice if she wanted to live. The wound in her gut was going to kill her and Kallista was sure that they all knew it. She moved in closer and checked the blonde over, noticing with growing alarm that the blood wasn’t just oozing from Opal’s abdomen it was also flowing rather steadily from her back. She wasn’t going to last.

Grabbing Opal gently by the shoulders Kallista looked her in the eye and spoke to her in a gentle tone. “Opal. You have to make a choice. You’re losing blood too fast, and it is killing you. If you want me to turn you I will do it right here, right now. If you want to succumb to your wounds then I will respect your decision. But that decision can’t be put off. It needs to be made now.” The mystic fell silent and waited.

[Nakia]

The shadows were her friend.

They wrapped around her like a lover, their darkness keeping her safe from prying eyes. Each step was as silent as the night, though her mind was screaming. She watched as Opal danced in and out of traps, she cringed as she tried to duck oncoming bullets. It sent a shiver down her spine, and she found herself growing closer to the edge. The scent of her blood was driving her mad, but somehow, she remained steady. She put it to the love she felt for the human, the fierce need to protect outweighing the savage desire to tear into her with her fangs and rip her apart. As the image played in her mind, she turned her head to the side, just in time to see a worker train their gun on the back of her husband’s skull.

“Stop.”

The word was hissed between clenched teeth, and she watched in satisfaction as Opal did exactly that. She made no movement – not even a twitch of her finger. In the second it had taken her to get her sister settled into a safe place, the worker and turned the safety off of his gun. Her eyes narrowed, and without a thought for her own situation, she stepped out of the shadows and attacked. Beneath the watchful blue gaze of her sister, she summoned her sword from the shadows and threw her hand out, the blade skewering itself between the worker’s shoulder blades. As he stumbled forward, she twisted into the air, her Grandmaster’s blade slicing through his skull with a sickening crunch. The sound of gunfire drowned out his agonized cry as he slumped to the ground, blood pooling beneath his head.

“Try to watch where you’re going, baby,” she chided the man before pivoting on her heel. When she was back with her sister, she finally let the pain etch across her face, her hand holding her side as the onyx blood pulsed beneath her palm before fading into tendrils of smoke. “Don’t worry about it,” she snapped, stopping the blonde’s concern before she could even voice it. Without another word to her, she nodded her head down the path, allowing them to continue their journey to the Matriarch. The entirety of the time was spent not allowing the human’s blood to lure her in, though the frenzied rage was just beneath the surface. It was haunting her, begging her to forget the job at hand and drag the sorcerer into the darkest corner she could find. She wouldn’t even have time to scream, Nakia would make sure of that. No. No, **** no. Not Opal, she mentally berated herself. Rolling her neck, she watched as the Matriarch was disposed of, the body falling to the floor. As they scrambled to collect the cash and loot the area, she turned her worried gaze towards her sister.

“Danton, she’s going to die,” she whispered as she felt her husband step up behind her. Without a single thought, she stepped back into him, her back to his chest. It was as if it were second nature to her. At the same time she spoke the words, Jersey had piped up. “We don’t need a telepath to know that,” she chuckled quietly, thought the concern and strain was evident in her voice. It killed her to watch her sister as she swayed on her feet, barely able to hold herself up. She wanted to go to her, to wrap her up in her arms, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t save her, not from this. The knowledge was only strengthened when her sire stepped in between them, the worry causing her beautiful, youthful features to become lined with stress. “Take the offer, Yang.” There was no plea to her tone. Her voice was steady and sure, dark sapphire eyes not moving from the sorcerer’s ashen face.

They all knew her fate.
It was simply in her hands to choose which path.

[Danton (DELETED 5283)]

Fate.

Destiny.

It was all rubbish.

There was no such thing as the preordained. No one future was set, no powers in the universe could hold every being to a single course, bringing free will to heel. He was fully aware of the nature of the world, and the way that, no matter how certain, how concrete or absolute that something may appear, that the impossible was a nonpoint, that the future was infinite in possibility. One only needed to realize that potential, and grasp it. Life had a way of forcing that realization upon the unsuspecting, sometimes in the most brutal, horrific ways that one could imagine.

Blood filled the air of the building like a fine mist. Gunpowder burned in their nostrils, tears made vision bleary with the acrid scent and the burning waft of air that each movement made. The top floor of the nondescript office building, nestled neatly into a block of dozens of the same, uniform buildings, felt like a scene out of “Apocalypse Now!”. The way that smoke curled through the artificial light like a toxic gas, bearing down on the small knot of family that stood together felt like the mists in the jungle, the broken and twisted limbs of their fallen enemies littered the floor around them. One could practically taste the blood on the air, a fine hint at the end of the sharp bite of the explosive powder. Something about it made his mouth water.

Several bloods mingled in the air. It sometimes became difficult to discern one from the other, the various foes that had fallen cast their own fragrance to the blend, making a delicate fragrance with the aroma of his family’s blood as it seeped from their various wounds. He alone appeared to be unscathed. Holes riddled his suit, blood caked in rings around those savage looking rips in the lavish fabric of his jacket. The flesh that peeked through several of the holes, however, was clean and unbroken. The sight was disorienting. Blood dripped from his chin as he rolled his neck. Violence had never been his nature. He had never so much as held a firearm before he had met Kallista, much less fired one. He left the violent shades of life to those more attuned to its bitter flavor, the warriors of the world. He was a scholar, a man of the mind. He was a teacher. Where the world thirsted for blood, for power, he sought knowledge, understanding. He sought the truths of the past, hidden away beneath centuries of dust, locked in the shadows of obscurity.

Now, though… now he was one of those warriors. The heavy weapon in his arms felt natural. It was an extension of himself, as much as an arm or a leg might be. He had learned swiftly that he was quite skilled in such a barbaric art. It had surprised him. He had always fancied the ceremonial blades of sacrifice from ancient cultures, the ritualistic nature of the occult and the weaponry that they had developed in the pursuits of their deities’ favors, and yet, when he had taken his first real steps into the world of magic and the supernatural, he had taken up a gun and had never second guessed the decision.

Smoke rose in a steady stream from each of the minigun’s six barrels, the air along each mouth hissing lightly with the sizzle of heat. The Shaman, or what was left of it, rather, was a meaty soup that splashed across the floor not far from the Matriarch’s corpse. The weapon was brutal; absolutely barbaric. It left very little intact when he took something down. He grimaced when he could finally take better stock of what was going on right at his feet, his initial focus placed on the enemies that had surrounded them, baring down on the small group with a white-hot fury as they locked themselves in combat with their matriarch.

He had seen the enemy that his wife had dispatched, his dark eyes shooting her a look from the corner of his gaze. His thanks was twined into the glance, his lip working into a frown. He had been careless, to let one get behind him. He knew if he could count on anyone, it was her.

What snagged at the majority of his focus was the human at their feet. Her brave face proved a fool’s poker face. None of it needed saying, particularly. They all knew the weight of the moment. It was that apex, that climactic moment where the future collided with the present in that catastrophic, undeniable event that forced action; decision. Anyone could see that the brave woman resting in the floor wouldn’t survive for long. Her face, the color of gray ash, smiled up at them. Her face was casual, matching the words that she did her best to feed them. Her eyes betrayed her. The way she looked up at them twisted something inside of him.

Even if it had been her own stubborn, foolhardy mistakes that put her in the floor, there, it made the moment no less harsh a stab of reality, a cruel and final reminder of her mortality. The weapon sagged in his arms and he looked away. This was a moment he felt that he held no privilege, no right to be privy to. His gaze finally found his wife, and he frowned. He looked her over, assessing the damage she had taken in the duration of the assault. They were fresh; green. They had little experience so deep in the seat of their enemy, so the success had been a shockingly sweet taste, even with the bitter bile of Opal’s mortal situation rising to their throats.

They all looked like hell.

He felt guilty.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as his eyes finally moved to the door. One of the other teams would be finding their way up eventually. If he felt like he didn’t belong in this moment between the two women before him, he certainly didn’t feel like a crowd of strangers would be a welcome interruption. He cleared his throat, and quietly stepped back so that he could keep himself between the small family and the door. He wasn’t much, but he was the final barrier between them and the other weary forms that he heard still locked in combat with the creatures only a floor beneath them.

[Opal (DELETED 5248)]

The voice was always a welcome comfort to the woman, even if it was odd. The sorcerer would never understand the gift, or even the curse at times that had been bestowed upon her from birth. She didn’t think her time would come so soon either. There was so many things floating through her mind. She hadn’t proposed to Fiona, she hadn’t told her she loved her this morning as she had left her sleeping form at the paladin’s apartment. She even wondered about the little things, had she left the gas on? Was the light still on in the hallway. Little, silly things to think about that didn’t involve a imminent death at hand. Blue hues looked at the face of Kallista who looked at her with such worry. She couldn’t quite understand why she worried, then as she dragged her hues over to Nakia, the Ying to her Yang. She looked so worried, it almost made her well up.

The feeling within her was becoming numb. She closed her lids for a moment, basking in the idea of sleep. Would they have minded if they took a little nap? Then make a decision later. A decision which was thrusted upon her. She loved Kallista. She did, she loved most of the people in this room aside from Kelly – the man disliked her, so she kept her distance every now and again. She was in no mood to taunt the man. No position to either. She’d do that when she was well again, if it ever happened. Opal wasn’t naïve, she knew what was being asked of her. Vampire. The idea scared the woman. She didn’t want Fiona to hate her, she already disliked vampires – disliked the fact that she was even friends with Kallista and the Sinclairs. Could she take the offer and become a vampire herself. Would Fiona hate her too?

Think about yourself, Oppie. No one else. The voice always knew. Even now her body sagged further against the wall, she was losing her motor skills. Lips became dry as she now turned her lazy hues to Danton who was leaving the group. Moving away from her. She looked almost sad, did he not care? She turned her gaze back onto Kallista and nodded her head slowly. Using as much effort as she could to make it form a complete nod.

“Ok..” She said, trying to lift her arm to bring Kallista forward. If she was going to become a vampire. She wanted to be the one to take the blood, it would be her last act as a blood thief. The last time she could feel a rush of heat fill her mouth, the last time she would ever feel her heart skip a bit. Blue orbs looked to Nakia. “I am.” She said.