Not with a bang but a whimper."
- T.S. Elliot, The Hollow Men, circa 1925
Rurik Udovin officially existed. There was no denying that now. He now had a major military presence in Libya, what with its complete isolation from the West. The Sixth Brigade had done its job well, and all was going as Rurik had planned. Well, all was going as he liked to pretend he had planned. His actual plans had involved an army of super-soldiers sweeping Russia and declaring himself its Emperor, but that had gone to hell when he had lost the plans to the Nazi super-soldier project during the battle between Heaven and Olympus. Libya was cool too, though.
Who
The OIA, meanwhile, was enacting Rurik's plan. With the Blade of Huang in their possession again, they now had a massive and nigh-invulnerable army. Russia had never stood a chance. Everything north of, and including, St. Petersburg was theirs, as well as anything in Russia east of Mongolia. That was not to say that they easily maintained their control over these lands, no, they were plagued by constant NATO-supported rebellion. Russia had, by necessity, joined NATO, which added a delicious amount of irony to this Cold War sequel.
do
The Society has finally decided to side with Heaven in the war against Olympus, although the war has gone cold since Rome. Olympus is Heaven-occupied now, and most of the gods but Hephaestus have been executed. He has only been kept alive to help Michael improve upon his SEL design: The Olympo-Paradise War had awoken a hibernating part of Michael's soul, the soul that sent the Conquistadors on their quests, the soul that had started the Crusades. Heaven was a nation of warmongerers once more, though only they knew it. Remus, a member of both pantheons, had given up neutrality and had now sided with the Olympians, if only in spirit. Remus's pack remained neutral as well, though any who knew of them knew that they would side with Heaven in the coming wars.
the
The world at large was not in a good position. The international economy had utterly collapsed at this point, with the financial foundation that was Santa Claus's operation pulled out from under it. Europe was beyond fucked, collapsing into total anarchy. Don't take that the wrong way, things were largely chill, except for Italy, Greece, and England, nations that had been licked by the flames of disaster. Those were consumed by savagery and violence. The rest of Europe was mainly a calm kind of anarchy, with local militias maintaining order with shotguns. It wasn't ideal, but it could be much worse. Germany was safe, for the most part, since Krampus loved them and delivered their gifts on time. He refused to help anyone else, however, as it would be too great a workload. Now that Germany had, by default, become established as the principle superpower of Europe, that good old German imperialism peeked out again. Military expansion had begun once more, and they now owned much of what had once been Denmark, Poland, and the Czech Republic. America fell into a depression, one that drove Bachmann to resign from the presidency. Yes, folks, President Gingrich was in charge, and his vice president was Mitt Romney.
gods
White had not yet disclosed the cause of this sudden economic shift, the murder of Claus at the hands of Oliver, and she never had to: Oliver had not been seen nor heard from since Rome. No one but White knew what happened, and, if the Sixth Brigade was lucky, she would never say.
pray
Ten thousand people have risen from their graves after the destruction of the Pearly White Gates of Death. Thousands of the greatest people to have ever lived from across all of humankind's history live on earth once more. Abraham Lincoln is running for senator of Illinois. Gandhi has become an Indian political activist. Martin Luther King Jr. has become a pastor once more. There are now ten thousand more mouths to feed in an already faltering economy, and many, many people refuse to recognize any rights for these great people. Social issues concerning these so-called "zombies" and the supernatural community has a whole grow ever strained, with the increasingly conservative nation of the United States out-right refusing these people any rights. The world is in a very dark place, and even the brightest lights have been blackened. What no-one knows though is what is to come... the rise of the Destroyer. The ringing of the Sixth. The Crusade of the Fallen and the Burning Inferno. The Last Quest and the Choice.
to?
The end.
July 1st, 2014
They doubted Kuvel. They didn't think he was good enough for their pack. As far as Kuvel was concerned, that didn't matter. What did matter, however, was Remus's approval. Remus was like a father to him, as much so as Grey had ever been and much more so than his actual father had been. Andrew Braddock had never been anything remotely close to compassionate, he'd only taken in the young Kuvel (these were the days when they called him by the false name "Oliver) out of the need to make his public image better. It had been at a time when he was being considered for the presidency of some government organization whose name Kuvel couldn't remember. This agency wouldn't have taken kindly to a man who had let a child go to an orphanage, but if Kuvel's memory served him correctly, they had gotten a bit more forgiving of such things in the years after his father had been sacked for... "misconduct" with an executive named Angela. That's all they had ever called her, Angela. That was her real name, not one of the color-based cutesy nicknames they gave to the executives. Andrew had been Blue, and Kuvel had been in the running to be the new Green before Rome. To be honest, Kuvel didn't remember a lot of the important things about his life before the Black Forest. He tried not to. Only odd little details slipped in every now and then, like bat demons, a katana, some submarine, a Brit named Gwen, and a dwarf named Durim. There was also a guy named James, but the details about him were hazy. Kuvel got the feeling that they were supposed to be.
And then there was Rome. Rome was different from the other memories, Rome was still just as vivid as it had been when it happened. There were eight of them, though who they were Kuvel had forgotten, and four armies. Four armies in one war, all on their own side... it was the clusterfuck that had driven Kuvel away from humanity. At least, that's what he told himself. He tried to pretend that he hadn't snapped, that he hadn't tried to kill the people he loved because he couldn't handle what he remembered. But he had, and that's why he couldn't remember them - it was too painful. Maybe he did remember a few of them, but he couldn't make the connections. He thought that the man in the panda suit and that Indian kid Raj might have been on that team, but he really, really hoped they hadn't been.
Only two things were seared in his mind forever: The 800 years in the Nothing were prime amongst them. It was hell. No, it was worse than hell. Kuvel was pretty sure he knew. He was alone there, with nothing around him but a dead body. The Hounds of God may have been a ruthless pack, one that refused him, but they were a pack nonetheless. They didn't fight nearly as much as his old pack, as far as Kuvel could tell. But then, his new pack lacked a certain alcoholic quality to it that had permeated Kuvel's original group. Then, there was the Remus in Rome. He had told him what he was: An angel, a Hound of God. That wasn't the destiny Kuvel had wanted, but it was so much better than the one he would have gotten with his old pack. So much better, indeed. These memories visited Kuvel every afternoon while he slept, and they awoke him without an hour's rest. Memories don't care much for insomniacs.
It was such that Kuvel awoke screaming under a tree on that day. He was in human form for the first time since he had found the Hounds four months prior, and he was naked. As Kuvel remembered, humans didn't appreciate seeing other humans naked. And as Kuvel knew, the Hounds did not appreciate their members in human form. Nor did they appreciate their members awaking them in the middle of the night, howling at memories of old lives. This was why they forced Kuvel to sleep in the Forest itself, rather than the cave that the rest of the pack lived in. Kuvel was not alone in this, another of his fellows named Saldel shared his day-terrors. Saldel, however, was also the alpha male and he hated Kuvel with a passion. This was why when Saldel awoke to find Kuvel breaking one of the Hound's primary commandments (the aforementioned ban on assuming human shape), he replied in a very werewolf way: racing from the tree he had been sleeping under and leaping to rip out Kuvel's throat. Saldel was a mighty wolf, a powerful specimen made of gray fur and massive muscles. His fangs were long and yellow like a saber-tooth tiger's, and his eyes were red with hatred that did not befit an angel. Kuvel was, in his human form, different from what he had once been: He was now 6 feet tall with muscles fitting only a wild animal, and his hair had turned to a chestnut brown color. His eyes, even in the shape of a man, were the yellow eyes of a wolf. Other than that, he still looked like "Oliver Braddock".
When Saldel rushed at him through the foliage of the forest, Kuvel instinctively shifted from human form to wolf form. However, Saldel was faster than Kuvel had anticipated, and he was at Kuvel's throat before he could turn to his canine body. No matter, Kuvel compromised and accepted his wolfman body, or, as the Hounds knew it, his half-wolf form. Half-wolf Kuvel looked much like his human shape, but covered in brown fur. His human ears and nose were also replaced with wolf ears and a wolf's snout. This snout had small, white fangs for teeth as opposed to Saldel's mighty yellows. All and all though, Kuvel remained human-shaped. What the Hounds liked to pretend was that the half-wolf body was weak compared to the full-wolf body. The opposite was true in fact, and this was why, when Kuvel swatted at the airborne Saldel much as a bear would, his paw cut the wolf's flesh wide open and send him sprawling to the ground. Saldel collided with the earth, the right half of his face absent. He whimpered in pain, which Kuvel responded to by stomping on the wolf's neck and killing the alpha male. "Oliver" would have felt pity for the pathetic beast, but Kuvel did not. Kuvel felt nothing. Kuvel was a wolf, through and through.
And then it dawned on Kuvel that he had just killed the alpha male. Shit.
Each member of the Sixth Brigade was supposed to meet White that day at 3 o' clock. Wayne, being Wayne, arrived ten minutes late. She was not conducting their business at the Franklin Building, rather at a Starbucks in DC. There are like 100 of those. This one was not far from the local Hilton, which had not been a Hilton since January of 2011. It had a really nice doorman and White recommended it highly, as did Nat. She sat at one of the tables outside, sipping a caramel mochafochafrappadappadooacino latte or whatever, watching the Washington traffic speed by. Wayne sheepishly took a seat next to her, noting that there were only four seats and one was occupied by White. Sorry half of the Brigade, you guys would have to stand. Wayne also noted that he was the only one who had made it so far, and also that White was wearing a giant straw-hat with a pink flower in the headband. Who the hell wears straw-hats? Grandmothers, that's who. White had lost a considerable amount of weight since last September, and now much resembled her old supermodel-esque figure. However, one could notice the tinges of gray entering her light blond hair.
"Hi," Wayne said in order to break the awkward silence that had dominated the preceding description.
"You're late," she remarked bitterly.
"And you're old," Wayne replied, "let's not flatter ourselves here."
Wayne himself wore his usual attire of a brown leather jacket, blue jeans, a black shirt, and black boots. He had a slight bit of scruff on his chin, though compared to his transformation in Rome, it really didn't matter. He'd gotten a bit more careless about his hair since then... about anything, really. Rome had changed him in many ways, it was the most traumatic day of life. More so than the day his parents died or the day he killed several children for his own good. At least then he had Zero. Now, he had no one. He didn't even have Oliver.
"Get some fingerless gloves to finish off the biker boy look," she commanded, "make sure the girls know you're an idiot."
"I'll have you know I had a girlfriend back home," Wayne answered.
"Just like my son has a girlfriend in Canada and Gabriel left me because he was becoming a celibate monk in Guatemala," White countered.
"You have a son?" Wayne asked in surprise.
"You speak English?" White mocked him, "Its like Planet of the Apes!"
Prequel: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=146155&p=7357011#p7357011
OOC: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=129772
