Pariah #1: New Arrival: Perils of Azure City

by Void

  After surveying the scene for long enough, she was satisfied that Crowley's information was accurate and she felt rising anticipation that she had finally found her quarry. Crowley had told her to expect at least a dozen men inside, perhaps as many as twenty. Each would be well experienced in Underhaven's trade and many of them would be armed. There was also a high risk of hostages inside given the likelihood that they were holding kidnapped women.

  She considered her options. If the men became desperate it seemed inevitable that they would make use of a hostage, and she wanted to avoid that if she could. That meant hitting them hard and quickly; end the ordeal before any of them thought to turn to such measures. Being shot at also seemed inevitable, so she would need her powers at their sharpest in order to manage that threat - and it would be best if she could keep them from getting behind her. Focusing her telekinesis to such a level required great concentration and it needed her to be able to see the area she was trying to connect to. If they shot her from behind, she doubted she'd manage to deflect it.

  She eased herself into a standing position, her cloak catching the wind and blowing lightly over her shoulder. She flexed and tensed her body in preparation, absently checking herself for battle-readiness and limbering up for what was to come. She was still a little sore from the earlier fight with the Snakes, but it was nothing she couldn't handle.

  These people had played at slavers for far too long. Tonight the consequences had finally caught up with them. Pariah had no intention of taking it easy on them like she had with the Snakes - they would get no mercy from her.

  You're mine, now, she thought with satisfaction.

  Pariah leapt from the rooftop, her fall speeding her towards the street four storeys below and whipping the tail of her cloak into the air above her. As she neared the ground she gripped the air with her telekinesis and guided her speedy descent towards the depot entrance. At the last moment, she focused on the air to hold her and killed all of her speed before dropping lightly to her feet barely a meter away from the stunned doormen.

  As her cloak settled back around her shoulders Pariah flashed the thugs a predator's smile, blue embers lighting her eyes from beneath the hood, 'Hi there, fellas. I'm looking for a band of sadistic, spineless miscreants who like to enslave women - any idea where I might find them?'

  The astounded doormen shared baffled looks before their brains finally kicked in. They both went for their holsters, reaching for slick black pistols.

  She didn't give them the time. The moment they started to move, she was on them; her fists and legs a whirlwind of blows always preventing them from recovering. She pressed her initiative, bringing the first guy down as he wavered on his feet with a steep roundhouse kick to the face. As she flattened him she turned to see the second doorman on his knees, reaching back for his handgun. She built up a wave of force and threw it right at him, easily blowing him through the door that he was meant to protect and opening up a path inside.

  Beyond the doors lay a dimly lit reception hall of sorts, with a heavy desk flanked on both sides by walls of storage lockers. A group of five very surprised men sat around the table, evidently mid-way through a poker match. They stared down in shocked silence at the crumpled form of their buddy.

  Pariah took the sight in at a glance and charged in at them. She focused on the table and with a sharp effort of will sent it into a rapid series of spins. The thugs were bashed off their feet as they made to stand from their game, being scattered about the room by their make-shift poker table.

  She released her connection to the table and let it come clattering down in the centre of the room. Even as it dropped she was still coming; she pounced on the first downed man, coming down on his forehead with the full force of her elbow. With him dispatched, she was quickly back up, running over the toppled desk and throwing herself at the other men as they stumbled back to their feet.

  The ruckus had made quite a noise and Pariah could hear cries of alarm coming from further inside the depot. She would need to move quickly to press her advantage or else risk them organising themselves.

  She set about the recovering men, targeting them in descending order from the one who seemed the greatest threat. She connected a jumping kick with one guy's head before springing at the man next to him, pulling no punches as she hit him with a salvo of attacks designed to quickly retire him from the fight. As he began to fall back down, she gripped him in a telekinetic field and launched him at the next nearest man. Just as the guy pulled free his sidearm, he was hit by the hurtling form of his colleague and sent crashing back into the lockers before slumping to the floor.

  Turning to the final man, she found he hadn't even bothered trying to get back to his feet and had instead drawn his gun from the ground. Her heart caught in her chest with surprise and she reached into the air with all her focus as fast as she could, the air in front of her rippling with her influence.

  The bark of the gun was deafening in the confined space and it echoed loudly throughout the depot. The bullet was met by waves of increasing force as it propelled through the air, gradually losing speed as it forced its way through. It stopped inches away from Pariah, leaving a bizarre trail in the air behind it where it had pushed through the force net.

  The bullet's journey had taken the space of the blink of an eye, and the prone man looked in mystified disbelief at his bullet hanging in the air just in front of her.

  Pariah wasn't about to let him fire a second shot.

  Releasing her pull on the air, she let the bullet fall to the floor before she threw up a force bubble around the prone man and yanked him towards her. He had just enough time to scream as he slid across the floor towards her before he was met with a stiff boot to the face that knocked him out.

  Pariah wobbled on her feet as the exertion of the last few moments caught up with her. She had pushed her telekinesis hard, and her head pounded with pain from the effort. It lanced through her temples and gave her a brief sense of nausea before she got a hold of herself, pushing the ache down to the back of her mind. It wasn't just her mind that had been pushed; her heart thumped in her chest from the vigorous activity.

  She knew there was still a long way to go. The cries from deeper inside the building had turned to panicked alarm after the gunshot. She could hear heavy footfalls in the next room and multiple calls for response from the men that now lay at her feet.

  Hard and fast. Keep moving, Evelyn, she thought to herself as she made her way to the next doorway.

  She reached into a pouch at her belt and retrieved three flat metal discs. Her supply of equipment was witheringly difficult to replace but she needed to up the ante on this. This was no time to go slow.

  'What the fuck is going on down there?' called a deep voice from beyond the doorway, 'Tully? Walters? Anyone?'

  Pariah couldn't resist. 'Tully and Walters aren't in a position to talk right now,' she called out while prepping the charges on the discs, 'But I'm happy to explain what's going on... Better yet, why don't I show you?'

  She tossed the discs in a spread pattern through the doorway and hugged her tight body into the wall to wait for detonation.

  She heard mumbled grunts of surprise next door and allowed herself a small smile. Each disc popped open on both sides and emitted a five-second burst of ear-splitting noise and blinding white light. Shouts of distress sounded out over the dirge, and Pariah's smile faded as she realised there had to be as many as nine more men through there.

  The moment the deluge from the discs ceased, Pariah flung herself into the room.

  She found herself in the loading area for the depot, closed shutters on the near wall revealing where the vans would drive in. The room was very large, acting as the warehouse and primary storage space for the facility. Crates upon crates littered the room in no real semblance of order and Pariah didn't need to look to know they would be filled with all sorts of contraband. At the back end of the room was a set of stairs leading up to what she presumed would be the manage
rial offices.

  More pressingly there were men dotted about the room, still stunned by her flashdiscs. The majority of them - if not the whole lot of them - seemed to have been busy dealing with the crates before her arrival. Many had stripped to their waists, revealing lean, tattooed torsos. Mercifully, only few of them seemed to be armed. In the centre of the room a tall and handsome black man seemed to be ordering them about, trying to rally the surprised thugs. His voice seemed to be that of the guy who had called through.

  She assessed the situation even as she hurled herself towards the nearest of the armed men. Those with guns would need to be the first to go, then she'd go for the leader.

  'Tyrone! We need to get the boss!' yelled one of the thugs, furiously trying to rub some sight back into his eyes.

  'Fuck the boss,' called the leader - Tyrone, it seemed, 'Get her! Will someone turn on the God damned aria, already!'

  Pariah took the first man down in short order and lifted the nearest crate to her with her telekinesis before flinging it in the direction of the next armed man. She judged the shot just right and the man was out of the fight before he was ever really in it.

  The men that weren't armed grabbed whatever tools they could find and tried to close down with the flowing heroine, running at her from all directions.

  Pariah unclasped her cloak and enveloped it in her power, bunching the material up into a long taper and flying it around her. It glowed with her power, coiling and moving as if it had come to life. She had practised this technique many times before and it made her cloak her most trusted weapon.

  She sent the cloth out at the first man to reach her, wrapping it around his arm and pulling him off balance towards her. As he fell, she span a kick in to his face and was already sending the glowing taper out to the next goon, ensnaring his feet and pulling him over.

  It was like a well-practised dance. Pariah used her telekinesis to wield her cloak as a weapon, while also making it like a living partner to fight alongside her, and it was poetry in motion as she whirled about the overmatched thugs.

  As Tyrone watched the heroine pummel his guys, he felt his fear rising. It had all happened so quickly. One moment he was ordering the next shipment of Rapture to be unpacked, then the next thing he knew there was an explosion of activity as some kind of force of nature tore through his people.

  It was shock and awe.

  He could see they had no hope of winning in a straight fight, so he ran away from the conflict and towards a workbench near the stairs, 'I'm going to turn on the aria, keep her busy!'

  Pariah watched the man run but couldn't break through the press of attackers. She would need to deal with them first. As she punched out the lights of a man to the right of her, her cloak struck a man to the left of her as if it were a striking cobra. As both men fell to the ground she noticed the last of the armed men drawing a bead on her. The cloak rapidly uncoiled from its tapered state and instead spread out as a blanket in front of her.

  The main reason that Pariah made such use of the cloak was its nano-bonded properties. Though the weave was extremely thin, the bonding in the cloak could not be separated. That meant that when she combined the cloak with a wave of force to hold it in place, she effectively had a protective shroud from bullets or blades.

  She heard the shots and saw the telling indents in the taut fabric where the bullets were impacting, but her make-shift wall held firm. When the man stopped firing, she fired the blanket out at him, wrapping itself around his arms and pinning them to his sides. Knocked by the collision and unable to arrest his fall, the man fell back and knocked his head off the corner of a crate.

  Pariah ignored the gnawing ache that throbbed through her head from the use of her powers, and turned to see the last of her attackers fall to his knees, looking up at her in terror.

  'What...what the hell are you!?' He called out to her as she made her way towards him. Her eyes were lit in blazing blue light from the use of her meta powers and it seemed to him like she was some sort of vengeful demon. 'Please! Don't come any closer!'

  She stood over him, barely contained contempt etched over her face. She raised a hand to finish him.

  Then the aria started.

  Part Four: The Aria

  Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  Pariah felt the change in the big room immediately, and she stood in a daze as she tried to gather her senses and to quantify what was happening. A deep sense of unease started to settle on her.

  The dim lights in the warehouse had gone off and in their place other, stranger, lights had come on. They were dotted about the walls and the ceiling, shining pulsing lights that gradually faded from deep red to vibrant purple. There were other lights that seemed to continually flash, but the flashes were so brief that Pariah was never sure if they were even there at all.

  As well as the lights, concealed speakers that had been placed in the corners of the room also came to life. They played a strange din of contrasting and abstract sounds. A deep base filled the room with throaty vibrations to the point that she felt the sound as much as she heard it. Laid over it were bizarre pulses of sound that came and went so fast that Pariah found it difficult to pin down exactly what they sounded like. Finally there was a warbling, distorted choir that seemed to sing out in rhythm with the pulsing lights. The voices sounded at once beautifully angelic and sinfully dirty.

  The mix of sound and light was chaotic, and yet the more Pariah focused on it the more there seemed to be some kind of order to it. The strange mix of finding order in chaos drew in her attention, making the whole thing disturbingly moreish. The experience was pleasant in ways that she couldn't even describe.

  It was almost blissful.

  It would be easy to just drift away with the lights and the sounds, following the choir deeper and deeper into the song. It was like the choir sang specially to her, like it was beckoning her, tempting her. They sounded so passionate, and Pariah's mind wandered as to what could make them feel such ecstasy. Their voices were filled with pleasure, and the promise of greater pleasure yet to come.

  It was so wrong.

  The light ebbed from her eyes as her focus drifted with the aria, and she felt liquid warmth rush through her body as it responded to the subliminal messages barraging her.

  She shook her head to try and bring herself back to the here and now, pulling her attention back from the choir. Though she was out of her daze, she threatened to slip back into it at any moment as the lights and sounds continued to play about her.

  Ugh... need to focus.

  She looked down in confusion at the terrified man cowering at her feet. It took a moment to remember where she was and why she was here. She brought her hands up to her head as she tried to block out the sounds and lights. 'What... what is that?'

  The man watched the change come over her. Moments ago she had been a terror the likes of which he had never known, about to punch his lights out - but increasingly her aspect had changed. The blue light had almost completely faded from her eyes and the frightening anger that he had seen on her face had morphed into confusion. Her cheeks were flushed with arousal and he saw the taut muscles of her body gradually relaxing.

  She was starting to look weak. She was starting to look more like the girls he was used to dealing with - the girls that would call him master.

  The man's fear started to slip. He started to smile up at Pariah.

  Tyrone saw the change as well. He stood over a control panel by the workbench, carefully watching the aria take hold over the heroine. It looked like he had turned it on just in time. She was down to her last man before she would have come after him.

  He tried to steady his nerve. This woman was Pariah - she had a reputation for brutality, and the criminal fraternity spoke of her in hushed tones like she was some kind of bogeyman. After having seen how fast she took apart his people, Tyrone had to say that she more than lived up to the hype. Even now, with the aria pressing upon her, Tyrone considered fleeing the scene
. This woman was a weapon; if she managed to shake off the aria she'd resume her rampage and he imagined she'd take a particular interest in him after this.

  Fear beckoned him to run.

  On the other hand, she was the most beautiful creature that he had ever seen. Under the effect of the aria they could go to work on her like they had done with so many women before. Whatever else she was, she was still a woman and still susceptible to the aria along with the arts of submission that Underhaven taught. It was a dangerous game to play - but what a prize.

  Fear fought with perverse ambition, and his decision was made when he realised that it didn't even need to be him who took the risk. He still had one guy left who could play the game in his place.

  'We call it the aria,' Tyrone called out to her, his deep voice carrying over the din, 'It keeps the girls in line. Gets into their heads and opens them up - makes them compliant. It’s got all sorts of subliminal signals designed to get into a woman's mind. You feel that, don't you, Pariah? Just relax and go with it.'

  She tried to focus on his words and found it was a struggle to put anything other than the choir at the centre of her attention. His command to relax was a tempting one to obey. Weary from the fight, her body felt like it yearned for rest. Involuntarily, she slumped her shoulders and let all the tension bleed out of her sleek figure.

  She shook herself again, trying to rouse her resolve.

  I need to finish this before it gets out of hand.

  'Lenny,' Tyrone called out to the guy at Pariah's feet, 'Why don't you help our guest to relax? She looks like she needs persuading.'

  Lenny's smile widened as he grew in confidence; suddenly he was the predator and she was the prey. He rose back to his feet and made to grab her wrists.

  The danger was enough to restore her attention. 'No!' she called out as she slapped an arm away and lashed out with a kick to his chest. It lacked conviction and was a weak effort, serving only to knock him back a few steps. 'I'm... I'm far from finished here.'