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Evariste Wolvord

4:15 PM, Thursday, August 26, 2027

Chasing people had never been one of Evariste's strong suits. Not that he was pursuing people, per se, but he definitely was on a chase, an annoying one. It was ridiculous that a group of zombies (and, he reminded himself, they were just mindless brain-munchers, childhood phantasms) should prove so elusive. But, as he was telling himself, he was not much of a tracker. His skills lay in the arena of dispatching the beasts, and finding them was an unfortunate prerequisite to disposing of them.

Evariste snapped back to reality as his foot slipped on a loose bit of rubble. He really needed to be more careful, or his natural clumsiness would land him in a boatload of trouble. He was already in unfamiliar territory, stupid given that he was alone. People knew he had left to track down that group of walkers, but they did not know exactly where he was. Of course, he thought, he should be capable of handling any threats he might stumble upon. Walkers rarely congregated in groups large enough to be dangerous to him, and he was unlikely to encounter a sentient human who as both malicious on sight and able to win in a fight against him.

Catching himself sinking back into a reflective haze, Evariste resolved to focus on the world immediately around him. He concentrated on his surroundings, trying to absorb every detail. He felt almost like he was in the ruins of a plaza, standing in a wide open space bounded by the remains of taller buildings. The debris around him were low, below his sight line, but high enough to bark his knees and trip him. Wonderful. It was a good thing he was alert now, because his observations would come in very handy should he actually be attacked.

At that thought, Evariste increased his pace. He couldn't see very far in the dim light and dusty air, and he did not want to fight here in this unfamiliar and inconvenient territory. He lengthened his stride, easily adjusting to covering more ground with each step. Something about the locale bothered him, though he could not pinpoint the impetus for his anxiety. He briefly considered turning back, giving up his quarry. It was an appealing option, except for the part where he had to go back to the Saber with some walkers still on the lam. Eradicating these pests was his job, and he would do it. After all, he had come this far already.

Ev was tempted to fall back into a reverie, but he needed to be aware at his speed level. Twice already he'd nearly tripped over junk on the ground he hadn't seen, so he contented himself with scanning the ground ahead, sweeping his gaze carefully over the rubble-strewn ground. A quick swerve around a jagged piece of cinderblock saved him a twisted ankle, and Evariste felt himself becoming absorbed by his new task.

Cosmo Grimaldi

Cosmo wished this day would never end.

There was something indescribably pleasant about the afternoon breeze. The way it kissed off his skin, or tousled his hair as it snaked around his form, felt simply sublime. The wind sent a tingle down his body while he adjusted to the sudden, cool blast. As he toured further along the territory of the Golden Banner, Cosmo eventually found that he was completely alone, with no one in earshot of him. The stragglers who were in the vicinity either went about their daily lives, or wisely tried to avoid his attention—and that suited Cosmo just fine.

With a deep breath, he wafted the air into his nostrils, noticing the delicate scent of a thousand flavors mixing in the air. Many of the survivors would call the broken gas pipes, littered debris, rotting flesh, and old bombs a foul, odious odor, but Cosmo paid little heed to his contemporaries that chose to complain so incessantly. They, it seemed, lacked the ability to adapt and adjust to their new environment. Even the grungy smell of post-apocalyptia had its noticeably delightful days.

He lifted his head. The orange rays of the sun peered tentatively through a tiny crack in the clouds, and for the first time in days, Cosmo felt the earth bake with a golden hue—quite the change from the dreary gray. With the sun came a cacophony of colors that Cosmo had not seen in some weeks. He could have sworn, in the distance, a pale purple glint caught his eye, perhaps a flower growing out of the ruined pavement. With a brief but charming grin, Cosmo marveled over the quiet magnanimity of nature; sometimes its productive silence was so far superior to the boisterous ineptitude of the humans that still had the misfortune of occupying the planet.

Oh how he long lamented over their lack of subtlety and inventiveness, their deficiency in flexibility. They were so far stuck in their own old ways—their arbitrary mental expectations of where they should be—that they failed to see the viable alternatives. They could not help but to see the breathtaking beauty in the randomness of the destruction—the littered debris placed in a perfectly unsystematic pattern that too deserved their attention and praise just as much as their finest works of art and sculpture.

They failed to see the mysterious around the corner, that beautiful sensation of uncertainty that ensured that they were still amongst the living, that mystifying feeling of danger that ensured that nary a moment passed in boredom. They were too busy complaining about how terrible their lives are, or how they lack the skills and initiative to earn themselves a worthwhile meal. With a quaint sigh and a subtle shake of his head, Cosmo moved on, hands clasped behind his back, curious eyes alert and attentive, and lips ready to smile at the next tantalizing observation.

And that next remarkable happenstance came from the surprising hand—or foot, rather—of a clumsy intruder. Cosmo did not recognize the figure, and never felt his presence before. His eyes peered on him from around the rubble-strewn wall of what used to be an appliance store. The figure seemed more absorbed in ensuring that he didn’t trip over the debris than glancing ahead to see if there were any lurking dangers just outside of his view. Cosmo figured that he was either extremely overconfident in his own ability, or that he had never been to the cutthroat, dangerous world of Queens.

Even Cosmo would expect a fight whenever he came to Queens, and he had little to worry about from walkers, who seemed to treat him as a peculiar oddity before moving aside.

He had orders to strike with impunity. If anyone had given him reason, he could cut them down and ask questions later. With most people, Cosmo would have approached them broadly, openly asking them what they were doing stumbling around Queens with nothing on their mind. Instead, something told Cosmo that this particular individual was different. Cosmo could feel each of his clumsy steps leaving ripples in space-time, as if the debris that the intruder was kicking around was somehow connected to Cosmo’s senses. He could also sense the intruder's experience, his battle-tested history, and immediately Cosmo knew he had a curiosity on his hands.

That’s when he made his mind to test the stranger. A black rod seemed to snake out of his left sleeve, as if pushed from his forearm itself. The rod formed a sharp pike, longer than Cosmo was tall. When fully formed, the Golden Banner lieutenant casually skipped into the open, tossed the pike into the air, caught it with his right hand as he cocked it back, and in one fluid motion, launched the obsidian spear at the intruder. The pike, whistling as it sliced through the air, shot forward straight and true, and within a split second, gobbled up the hundred or so yards between them.

This beautiful day just got fun.

Evariste Wolvord

In almost no time, a series of mysteries presented themselves to Evariste, and he reeled mentally with the shock of them even as his instincts for self-preservation took over. He could deal effectively with the most immediate consequences, but coping with—let alone solving—the gaping questions in front of him was just too much of a strain on his surprised, horrified conscious. He was glad to retreat into the protective un-mindset of not thinking and just acting, usually so inaccessible to his constantly-chattering brain.

The first shock to Ev's system was a keen whistle, the sort made by a thin projectile zooming through the air. Even as his head snapped up and his eyes widened at the sight of a dark thing flying towards him, Evariste was frantically trying to come up with a reason for the existence and behavior of the spear rushing towards him. Long before he came up with an answer—relative to the speed of the projectile—he stopped it from reaching its destination. A repulsive gravitational burst was coordinated perfectly with a blast of adrenaline. Evariste saw the spear reverse, just a fraction of an inch from piercing his skin, then fall along with a considerable cloud of dust and rubble also caught in the pulse.

But given his very near-miss, that was not where he was focused. He had found the source of the spear, but that only raised a greater question than it answered. There was a figure standing at a distance, perhaps two or three hundred feet away. The figure was near a wall, so Evariste could understand why he hadn't seen it before. What didn't make sense was why he hadn't caught its aura; he should have had some awareness of it, even if the person was standing behind a wall.

In a fraction of a second, Evariste realized why he hadn't known there was someone there: The figure had no aura. For a moment, his mind rested on the idea that a figure was a walker. Ev cursed himself—why wasn't he paying more attention?—he was looking for walkers, and he knew he would have to rely on his conventional senses to find them. The mindless carnivores usually made at least a little noise to alert him though, he excused himself. Maybe this thing wasn't a walker.

In his attempts to exonerate himself from any responsibility for the near-mishap, Evariste hit on an even more terrifying possibility, even probability. After all, walkers didn't throw spears, especially not with such accurate aim and deadly force. The figure attacking him wasn't a walker, and it wasn't a human. Ev cast about wildly for ideas. Was it a robot? A marionette? A golem?

The fear and confusion permeating his consciousness brought him back to the reality of his situation. He was standing, immobile, in front of an unknown enemy who had already come extremely close to killing him. As much as he wished to relax and berate himself for such unbridled stupidity, he still had a fight to win. Though he didn't know the most effective way to deal with his mysterious opponent, Ev figured brute force should do the trick. He couldn't get overconfident, of course, but collapsing a wall on the figure's head should—at the very least—slow it down. In Evariste's experience, very few things respond well to being crushed, especially not when he is doing the crushing.

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Cosmo Grimaldi

With eager eyes, Cosmo watched as the pike hurtled towards his target. He had no real expectation of what was going to happen, but that only served to double his anticipation. Cosmo had an interesting manner of conducting himself without any real expectations. He would never expect any given outcome; he did not even view the outcome as probable unless the statistics were distinctly in his favor. Expectation, he reasoned, was an entirely human emotion that spawned from their desire to understand what would happen next. Once he could actually algorithmically calculate everything out, it no longer was necessary for him to have any.

But what happened next genuinely compelled him. The split seconds between the spear and its target seemed to drag on for eternity—his heightened speed allowed him to witness each passing moment with pinpoint clarity. He saw the spear near its target and come within a mere fraction of a second from running him through, before it suddenly reverse its course altogether, flying back in Cosmo’s general direction.

And so did all the debris laying around.

With a feline tilt of his head, Cosmo’s eyebrow darted into the air as the debris rolled past him, impressive given the distance. At that same moment, the pike that had been so graciously hurled at the target was returning to its owner. The vanquished weapon grew slack and slithered back to Cosmo, completely disappearing up his pant leg.

Cosmo did not seem to notice the vanishing act. Casting a curious glance at the intruder's direction, he replayed the burst in his mind. The force that sent his spear chortling back in his direction must have been startling. The strewn debris that came with it seemed to echo his sentiment, and he felt a pang of excitement to think that his opponent had such a curious power. Was it gravity manipulation? Telekinesis? Both? The possibilities galloped through his head, as he weighed out each of them against one another.

Cosmo did not spend too much time in thought. He knew that the blast, though pretty and useful, would not be too effective on him, and he seized the moment to pounce. Even though he did not appear to moving at all, the gap between the two closed rapidly. One hazy distortion field later, Cosmo had zipped across the hundred or so yards between them—as if he was on a mystical platform that shuttled him off towards his destination. Within a few blinks, he was upon his target.

Cosmo’s hand shot forward towards the foe’s chest. Within the time of the strike, his extended fingers seemed to transform into liquid black spikes, fusing together into a single sharp blade. The blade, some inches longer than his normal hand, whooshed through the air towards his opponent’s body, ready to slide effortlessly into his torso.

Time to see just what this intruder could do.

Evariste Wolvord

Once Evariste heard someone explain the process of reading fiction as suspending disbelief. It seemed like a pretty accurate description of what he did while reading, but he had always thought it stopped there. He never would have expected the pithy explanation to apply to his actual experiences, but suspended disbelief was definitely his state of mind as he dodged his assailant's next attack. The whole experience started to feel like an extremely immersive and realistic story.

Evariste was not expecting the figure to zoom suddenly towards him as fast as it did, but he was prepared now for the more-reasonable swipe the other thing took at his chest. Ev did not stick around to get a good look, but as he dropped out of range of the figure's arm, he thought he saw something sharp in the thing's hand. He wasn't sure, though, because it was dark, not glinting as metal should.

Responding to his directives, gravity increased its hold on Ev, speeding his drop into a crouch. As fast as the attacker was moving, the downward force on Ev was enough to save him from that strike. His ordinary reaction time combined with his ordinary muscles would not have been enough to dodge, that was for sure. Adjusting the gravitational field gave him the burst of speed necessary to get out of the way, though.

As he hurtled to a crouch, Evariste was able to steal a glance at the form in front of him. His impression was blurred and partially obscured by his own eyelashes, but Ev was able to resolve it somewhat as he relaxed gravity to slow his fall. The person—and it did look like a person—was, Ev thought, male. He seemed to hold himself with a conscious energy that was very different from a Walker, despite his lack of aura. Based on his fleeting impression of his opponent, Evariste would have thought his ability to sense auras had simply ceased to exist except that he could still see his own aura.

There was no time for reflection, though, as Evariste sharply adjusted gravity again, this time considerably lessening its hold on him. Much freer, Ev easily shifted his trajectory from straight down to down and forward, using his momentum to carry him towards his opponent in one smooth motion. Splitting his focus was difficult, but he also managed to put a harder gravitational hold on the person in front of him. It was not strong, and it would not last long, but for the next few seconds, the thing's motions would require much more effort. And when Evariste flipped the field in the other direction, he should be able to easily knock the guy off his feet.

In the meantime, Evariste was lunging towards its knees. He needed to time his manipulation of gravity just right to get the full effect, but if he pulled it off properly, he could send his foe flying. Sweeping the thing's leg out from under it should make it overbalance neatly. It would soar backwards, not weighted by gravity. Then Ev could yank it down to earth again, and hard.

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Cosmo Grimaldi

His hand shooting out in front of him, the black blade shimmied through the air, missing its target altogether. The curious phenomenon puzzled him initially, but with his close proximity to the situation, Cosmo could more adequately diagnose the situation. He could sense the quantum mechanical space-time grid distort as his target dropped to the ground quickly—too quickly to be natural. His weapon slipped clear over his head, slicing nothing but air.

Cosmo was fighting a gravity manipulator. As his hand whipped past his opponent’s head, he pulled it back towards his body, as a smirk seemed to spread across his lips. He had faced gravity manipulators before, and he knew what to do with them. For the most part, they were very fun adversaries, especially once they realized that their power to tweak the interactions between gravitons was not exclusively theirs. It was always more fun for Cosmo to beat others at their own game.

But this one was good… very good. Just as Cosmo had retracted his arm towards his body, he felt the blade abnormally heavy, drawn by some unseen force. He realized that his foe had strengthened gravity’s hold on his body, and he felt the downward pull on his body weighing him down. He cast a quick glance downward towards the crouched figure, trying to predict his next movements. He wondered what his adversary could have possibly been planning by trying to keep Cosmo glued to the ground, but he figured that—whatever it was—Cosmo was willing to find out.

He did not have to find out long. His opponent lunged for his knees. His movements were quick, catlike even, but did not seem to be superhuman. Instead of trying to dodge, Cosmo stood his ground, concentrating especially at the probable point of impact. He felt his body lighten, as if the increased gravity no longer applied to him. The tactic worked well enough; just as his adversary was supposed to slam into his knees, he didn’t…

The figure passed straight through him.

Letting his opponent pass straight through his legs was hardly a conventional tactic, but Cosmo figured that he would let him do that instead of trying some other evasive maneuver. It was also a cunning psychological ploy. If Cosmo let him pass straight through him, he knew that he would be engaging in a mind game, daring him to try a different tactic. Cosmo wanted to see what else this intruder was capable of, and he knew that he could never do that unless he pushed him to show all of his cards.

As the figure slipped through his body, Cosmo quickly turned around. The liquid black composition of his hand changed again, as the bladed weapon elongated, thinning out into a flexible whip. With a fluid motion of his right arm, he cracked the weapon towards his opponent. The extra reach of his newest weapon worked wonders—it was long enough to reach him even though the other’s momentum had carried him away from Cosmo.

Evariste Wolvord

Evariste's plan worked perfectly—except that it didn't.

As he sailed forward, well beyond the figure's knees, Evariste raced through possibilities, searching for an explanation. He was aimed just right; the person hadn't dodged or darted upwards. No, Ev had passed straight through the thing's legs, yet another mystery for the tally. Apparently it wasn't a physical construct. It must be a projection or an illusion of some kind, a specialized hallucination. And a good one. He had been completely fooled, dodging the thing's "attacks" as if they could hurt him. What a waste of energy.

Now Ev was annoyed. He was fighting something incorporeal, something incapable of being harmed. The whole charade was completely needless, and in fact pointless. A waste of time, it was, too, and embarrassing, and he was still hurtling forward, but also down, towards the dirty, unforgiving ground. He couldn't do anything to change what had already happened, but he could, at least, stop himself from the seemingly-certain, seemingly-imminent impact.

A brief burst of focus and Evariste's fall slowed and stopped, allowing him, with a couple of stumbling steps, to regain his footing and then his balance. Standing again, he spun quickly on his heel so he could see his opponent. It was an automatic response—never, he could hear his father counseling him, never turn your back—not something he really necessary, he figured, given that his foe wasn't even real.

Once he could see the figure again, though, Ev's certainty flickered. The thing had a whip now, and it was cracking towards Evariste, clearly long enough to reach him despite the extra distance now between them. As much as he thought the figure and, by extension, the new weapon, couldn't hurt him, his reflexes still saw them as threats, and responded accordingly.

With a smooth sweep of his hand, Evariste brought his will to bear on forcing the whip on a downward path. His hand still in motion, he began curling his fingers. There was a large rock just a few feet away, perfect for wrapping the whip. It should render the weapon useless for a while—Evariste's skillful blend of telekinesis and gravity manipulation meant the whip would be attached thoroughly, and thus difficult and time-consuming to unwind.

His next move in progress, Evariste indulged in a moment of reflection on his newfound doubts about the nature of his opponent. He wondered why the thing should bother with a charade of a whip at this point. If it was intangible, it had already revealed itself to be so, and it had no need to continue scaring and harassing him with trumped up weapons. So, he concluded, it must be real after all. In which case it was a formidable fighter, not human as Ev knew humanity, and apparently able to selectively cease to exist in the physical world.

As Ev considered, he realized, then, that binding the thing's whip would not hold it for long. No physical attack would really work against it, since it could apparently just choose not to be affected by them. It was confident in its ability to hurt him, though, which meant Evariste would have to keep fighting, but find a better way to do it.

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Cosmo Grimaldi

How curious. Cosmo felt the jolt of his hand as his opponent’s telekinesis pushed the whip away from him and sent towards a rock instead. It seemed his adversary had both telekinetic powers and control over gravity. Cosmo wracked his memory for another parallel example, but came up empty.

But he always did enjoy a new challenge, especially one so willing to dance.

Did this little intruder think he could outsmart him by wrapping his whip around a rock? Cosmo took a split second to watch in earnest as the figure pushed up his hand and bound his hand-whip around a large rock. The whipped end wrapped clear around the structure, looping through the entire circumference of the rock. That was when Cosmo suddenly pulled back his hand with enough force that the taut, black whip actually pulled the heavy rock towards him. The end of it wrapped all the way around and knotted around the band.

He had plans for the rock. If his opponent thought he was being smart by buying time with the rock, Cosmo would just have to turn the tables against his strategy. If his opponent thought that the rock would pose him trouble, he would just have to prove to him that it wouldn’t an issue. Even if his strategy failed to finish the battle, it was a mental challenge; the intruder would eventually have to recognize that he could not so easily dispatch Cosmo with his conventional tricks and ploys. That's when the real fun would begin.

A split second later, and the entire weapon seemed to shift again. The whip that wrapped around the rock fused together into a complete circle, and the band seemed to flatted out and harden. With yet another sudden tug against the rope, the broad black ring dug into the rock face like a shackle. With a third jerk of his hand, the black ooze that had formed the whip separated from his fingers altogether, and it too hardened into a solid beam. After a final sweep of his hand, he took this new handle and shifted his weight. Placing his other hand further down the handle and counterbalancing with his body, Cosmo lifted the rock by its ebony handle and flung it over his shoulder—now he had a new mallet.

And he released an eager smile, ready to show off that he knew how to use it, especially considering his adversary had been so kind to equip him with the weapon.

The ground crunched and cracked beneath his feet, as the weight of Cosmo’s body and the rock-hammer was too much for the old asphalt and concrete. Putting his entire body into the swing, his quasi-muscles tightened and tensed, and Cosmo briefly looked cartoonish, like animated characters that swung objects that were far too big for their body. The massive mallet lurched through the air with a roaring whooshing sound, as Cosmo brought the hammer down towards his opponent. At the last moment, he concentrated on the ground beneath the mallet and knitted his brows in focus, bending the strands of space-time to increase the gravity so that the mallet suddenly accelerated towards the ground with even more thunderous force.

Evariste Wolvord

A jolt of true fear—not just surprise-triggered adrenaline—shocked Evariste's knowledge of the limits of reality. Disbelief mingled with concern and doubt about his continued well-being made Ev's stomach lurch a little. What was happening in front of him was not at all what he had expected when he set off on this prolonged and now hideously mutated walker clean-up mission. Naturally, in wandering around the city, and especially in brushing so close to the territory of the rival hegemon to the Saber, he was assuming some risk; he knew that. Apparently, though, he'd taken a big risk and lost.

So now he was faced with a person holding—no, hurling towards Evariste's head—a giant mallet he'd spontaneously molded out of some mysterious black ooze which had previously been a whip and a rock that was only part of the situation because Ev had included it himself. And now it was being used against him. He could feel hysterics eating around the edges of his consciousness as he fought the simultaneous urges to laugh and cry.

But not for long. Though a waffler, Evariste was not one to wallow in an emotional response. A fraction of a second revealed his next course of action, a complicated one that involved focusing on several different things at once.

The first, reflexively-coordinated order of business was just to get away from that ferocious hammer. Lessened gravity was, once again, Evariste's aid as he skipped quickly back out of the path of the hammer. Given the strangeness of the events up until now, Evariste did not at all trust the hammer to continue on its trajectory once he was out of the way of it. He thought it seemed to speed up on its own beyond the norms of nature as it whooshed through the area where his head should have been, but it was moving so fast he didn't trust his observation. It didn't really matter if it was—in fact, it was better for him—but it would have been nice to know what his opponent was doing.

As he was hopping out of the way of the hammer, Evariste also bent much of his attention on rapidly cooling the stone that formed the head of the mallet. He wasn't sure how cold he could get it in such a short time, but he just kept forcing the temperature down and down as the hammer continued to fall. He tweaked gravity in the back of his mind, accelerating the downward motion and unconsciously bracing for the inevitably formidable impact.

It did not disappoint.

The rock head of the hammer ruptured the ground as it hit, carving a sizeable crater and shaking the debris. Ev thought it—or rather, the tremendous noise it made—may have also ruptured his eardrums, but he discarded that thought since he could hear the responsive crashes coming from within the buildings surrounding him. The shock of the blow to the earth was more than enough to destroy whatever fragile construction remained.

A veritable cloud of debris and dust bounced away from the point of collision, including the shards of the rock itself. Evariste was gratified to see his plan had worked, but lost no time congratulating himself as he telekinetically directed the concrete and stone shrapnel to zoom roughly in the shape of a body towards the person standing on the other side of the crater. A quick adjustment of gravity dropped the rubble moving towards him. He would have liked to deflect it, too, towards his attacker, but it just required too much effort and coordination. More than enough detritus was already flying at the other figure. Evariste just hoped some of it would hit and perhaps damage his opponent (it was moving fast enough to cause, at the least, flesh wounds), but he knew it was too much to expect at this point.

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Cosmo Grimaldi

He did not get to flex his muscle very often. Cosmo found that most of the opponents he faced were either hardly worth his time or they were quick to surrender whenever he did something that they deemed strange. He had to resign with the understanding that his style—his very being—was ‘strange’ or ‘weird.’ He also had to reconcile that, for whatever peculiar reason, that was reason for people to fear him. His opponents of the last few years were usually too fragile to muscle around with him, or too straightforward to present much fun.

As his hammer whooshed past nothing but air, Cosmo wondered if he had actually found someone who could engage him and present some sort of challenge. He needed someone to keep his skills sharp, and since the war against the Crimson Saber concluded, Cosmo had found that there was simply too little to catch his attention. He had the enviable position of being a big fish stuck in a small pond, and that bored the life out of him. The way this particular foe had managed to use his own control of gravity to duck his attacks on two occasions already showed he had some potential.

But as his hammer was accelerating, Cosmo could feel something changing. It was subtle at first, but then the change rapidly increased. The rock was getting drastically cooler. He could feel the temperature change through the black band, through the ooze that was—despite its separation—just as much a part of his body as any other part of him, as much a part of his body as his appendages. Just like the rest of his body, he could feel with the handle of his weapon.

The crash did not disappoint him, but the subsequent events were a little unexpected. Cosmo had gotten used to predicting what would happen in the immediate future. He had the ability to perceive in quantum time, and know what would or could happen in the immediately adjacent time to the current timeline. He was used to anticipating which one was the most likely based on this insight. This time, however, his opponent had cooled the rock so quickly and so much that he barely had the time to anticipate what would happen next.

As the rock came down, the deafening roar produced such an enormous shockwave that Cosmo could feel it blow past him, tousling his hair and tugging at his clothes. Nearby structures collapsed underneath the reverberations of the earth, which shook Cosmo to the core. A mountain of debris kicked high into the air, temporarily obscuring Cosmo’s view of his opponent. The tremors that immediately followed rattled his frame, and yet Cosmo stood there, steadfast and stalwart amidst the blast. The cooled rock failed to survive the impact, shattering on contact, its cracks splitting apart and bursting into many tiny shards.

Exactly, it seemed, as his adversary wanted. Hardly before the dust had scattered, Cosmo found shrapnel and debris flying towards him, no doubt sent by his opponent who thought that this would be a very good chance to attack him.

His eyes narrowed as he watched the debris shoot at him, almost in slow motion. The time when rapidly moving objects or dangerous looking things sent rapid adrenaline rushes through his body had long since passed. Since then, Cosmo had learned to rapidly and algorithmically apply logic and reason to every observation. He had the ability to glance at a situation and assess, realistically, what would happen in the immediate future, without the need of trivial, sentimental emotions like fear or anger—tools for the slower being to semi-accurately assess dangers—telling him what to do.

Or what not to do.

Cosmo stood there, like a statue, as the debris flung towards him. The impact was impressive, like the sound of rock against steel. Pieces slashed at his body, others clung to his frame, still others attempted to penetrate his body, but were quickly turned back by the black ooze that appeared and solidified just under his skin. This ooze appeared to seep out of any cuts, expelling loose bits of debris from his body before instantly healing him. After the dust settled, Cosmo stood there—shards of rock and ice littered around him—looking exactly like he had before he was struck.

His glare, though, had changed. Cosmo had turned that piercing stare towards his adversary, assessing him after the latest attack. He took a few silent moments of scrutiny before he said, in perfect deadpan, “... Ouch.”

Comments

I love Cosmo's deadpan.

Evariste Wolvord

The cloud of dust and debris was too dense for Evariste to tell whether his latest attack had been successful. As he held his breath to avoid inhaling any of the dirt still swirling, he wasn't even sure what success would mean in this case. Normally, he would expect the attack to have injured his enemy, perhaps even seriously if he was lucky. Certainly it should have been enough to provide some distraction and annoyance.

It was too much to hope, but as Ev strained to hear and see through the dust, he thought at least some of his shrapnel attack was making contact. The sounds of rock and concrete crashing into flesh were—maybe—just barely audible over the noise of the debris raining on the ground and the ringing in Evariste's ears. As the cloud dissipated, the outline of his opponent became clearer and clearer, and Ev was sure he saw some bits of the rearguard collide with the other person. He began to be a little bit hopeful.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, dismay slammed into him as he he was finally able to make out the details of his adversary. No blood, no cuts, no gaping holes, no dents, scratches, not even any dust. Ev thought the thing might be a healer, but it was possible his barrage had just bounced off entirely, or flown straight through, as he had. He found himself craning his neck slightly to try to get a good view around the other guy, to see whether all the stones and junk had landed behind him, but Evariste didn't think so.

He couldn't strike his opponent. Ev had encountered force field generation before, but this was different. Evariste's attacker had a whole arsenal of ways to dodge blows and a whole separate battery of ways to inflict damage. He couldn't imagine such a range of powers in anyone except an aura absorber, but Evariste knew instinctively he wouldn't be able to absorb his own aura, so why should this guy?

His curiosity was satisfied on the question of whether the stones had passed through his assailant, if not about the mystery of the person's abilities. Evariste quickly shifted his focus back to his opponent, where his eyes locked into the person's stare. He felt oppressed by the weight of the gaze. It wasn't even a feeling he could identify, just an oddness around the edges. He felt his body calm down, relax almost, though his psyche was in even greater turmoil. Ev was deeply, instinctively scared. It was not just the tactical prediction of a bad outcome, but the paralyzing horror of the unknown he'd last felt huddled in his bed at age four, waiting for something horrible to burst out of his closet.

The sound of his opponent's voice was the monster he'd been waiting for. Evariste recoiled slightly, drew his breath in sharply. The single syllable seemed harsh and out of place given his lack of aura. As the meaning of the word and intonation penetrated his unconscious, Ev fought the urge, once again, to laugh hysterically. It was funny, hilarious even. His terrifying attacker had a sense of humor, and Evariste was just standing there at a loss for what to do next, trying not to giggle at the absurdity.

A flash of movement behind Ev's opponent made him start again. Probably a new attack. Evariste thought he could hold his assailant off for a while still, but he was making no progress towards success. His energy would not last indefinitely (in fact, he was already tiring), and he could not imagine having an opening to run. The guy was just too good.

Evariste stared into the distance for another second or two, trying to make out the shape stirring a hundred yards away. Unused to any real sunlight, the relative brightness of the day was uncomfortable. He unconsciously adjusted the amount of light hitting his eyes, improving his ability to make out the motion in the distance.

When he realized what was happening, he couldn't help but let out a slight snort. His original prey had finally shown up, drawn, no doubt, by the prodigious sound of the hammer striking the earth.

"Great timing," he muttered aloud as the pack of walkers picked up their pace towards the two combatants. He half meant it as he considered that his opponent, too, would have to fight off the band of predators. Perhaps it woud give him an opening. There were certainly enough of the beasts to go around, he thought, as he counted twelve, thirteen, fourteen of the former humans rushing towards them.

__________________

Cosmo Grimaldi

In the years since he had last been ‘human,’ Cosmo took up the hobby of people watching. He could reconnect with his past that way, and it was an effective—if not an oddly and perhaps uncharacteristically sentimental—form of nostalgia. There was a world of insight he could gain from watching the expressions change on a person’s face, and Cosmo wondered if normal humans could even understand them all. Too many people seemed to ignore all of the cues from another person’s body language or facial expressions. For Cosmo, who no longer used many of these expressions, he felt distinctly refreshed whenever he could see them appear on others.

And what he saw was an individual, who he had just recently met, contort his body and strain his face in a number of ways. Cosmo caught him peering through the dust, glancing at him as if questioning if Cosmo was really there. He saw a number of micro-expressions flash across the man’s face, ranging from surprise to a little disgust to brief glimmers of amusement. Cosmo knew from history that people who ran the gamut of emotions were usually near their breaking point—their bodies were not supposed to handle the stress of rapidly changing expressions.

Amidst the bewilderment though, Cosmo discovered one of the most basic and primal emotions of them all: fear. His adversary was practically dripping with fear. Cosmo could even discover—faintly and no doubt aided by his superhuman senses—a wobble as the other one struggled to stand face-to-face with the Golden Bannerite. He wanted to peer into the character’s past, to discover more about him and his background. Was he a member of the Crimson Saber? What would bring him so boldly into Queens alone? Didn’t he know that the Golden Banner had long-since seized control of the borough and it was Cosmo himself that repelled several of the Saber’s attempts to retake it?

A range of thoughts passed through him as he continued to scrutinize his adversary. He made no comment, and said nothing beyond his one word response. He felt that he had nothing more to say to his enemy. Words were useless in the moment, and Cosmo was never one for small talk.

Luckily for Cosmo—and perhaps even more fortuitous for the marauder—they were not the only attraction in the vicinity. Cosmo did not even have to turn his head to notice the walkers closing in on them. They moved with surprising speed, spurred by their appetite for raw flesh. But something was strange. Instead of reacting to them, Cosmo’s glance never came off the intruder. He continued to look at him, calm and expressionless, as the walkers closed around him. Their snarls and the pitter-patter of their frenzied steps practically enveloped them as no less than a dozen walkers burst towards them both. Many of them ran on all fours like crazed beasts, their rotting flesh and tattered clothing hanging off their sinewy bodies.

The stroke of fortune did not escape the notice of his opponent either, as he snorted in relief and muttered at his good luck. The eerily handsome face of Cosmo still did not change. There was no agitation, no relief, no annoyance at the interruption. There was no fear, no anticipation, no apprehension as the walkers closed around the two. Instead, his steely gaze continued to scrutinize the trespasser. What other secrets was he hiding?

He had good reason to be confident. The walkers neared him, mouths agape and fulminating with hunger. One of them seemed to pounce on him, but landed harmlessly to his side before moving on to attack the marauder. Another one passed Cosmo as if he wasn’t there. Then another. A fourth. A fifth. All of them zoomed past Cosmo as if he was simply a post or a tree—completely uninterested in the Bannerite. They sprang upon Evariste with shocking fervor, clawing and biting desperately as if they had not had a meal in weeks.

Yet Cosmo remained still, his expression and penetrating stare the same as it had been from the initial attack. As the walkers closed in on his adversary, however, Cosmo finally relented and released the slightest of a smirk. Maybe now he can see what this invader was capable of doing.