Thread: Empire-City of Sin (Black_Out and Sardonyx)

The beast known as the Killer Komodo lingered on his little island habitat in the midst of the silent and slow moving waters of the polluted swamp lands where he had taken refuge. Gnarled scaly fingers were busy playing around with an antenna that rose up from a derelict old tube style television that he had salvaged from the junkyard and waste facility that bordered the forsaken marshy habitat. Wires ran from the television that sat a top a dingy and dirty red plastic milk crate. They connected to one of several used car batteries that he had arranged in the usable portion of a busted up set of shelving, another of his reclaimed finds. More wires connected from another battery into the power cord of a dinged up stereo system which had only one good speaker remaining. The music that speaker provided was dulled, but it still reminded him of the little bit of humanity that existed within his ever changing body. With a hissed out grumble of disgust from his long reptilian lips Eric Handler took a step back from the monitor and took a deep breath to calm his boiling emotions. His sharp nails absently rose up and scratched at the flexible, elongating metal collar around his neck. No matter how much his body had changed, no matter how thick his neck had become that damnable contraption seemed to grow with him. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't find a way to free that seemingly unbreakable metal collar from around his neck. Nor could he manage to find a way to get rid of the shackles that still were wrapped about his wrists and ankles. To cover up the noise from the remnants of the chain links that dangled from those shackles he had wrapped the remains of frayed and ruined blankets about them. He wasn't aware of the dimmest red coloration that pulsed from a small bulb at the very back of the tracking collar secured around his neck. Though it blinked with a steady tempo, the meager glow was never enough to bring him to notice the flashing signal. Just as the man responsible for his new found monstrous appearance had intended. The collar made him feel like a prisoner still, and caused him to reflect on what little memory he still had of the culmination of horrid experiments that had led him here. He was just a simple electrician that ran his own business and toiled by himself for the most part. Maybe he should of thought it odd when the call came that fateful morning from the Cathedral Corporation . Time's had been difficult though, there was plenty of competition in his field and he certainly needed the money. If he didn't screw it up, a gig like this could set him up with a nice little bump on his resume and maybe even lead to some steadier flow of work. So of course he accepted when they mentioned a word of mouth referral that must of impressed them. Apparently their normal electrician had come out of the weekend with a case of the Monday's and he was the only one available on such short notice. It was what sounded like a simple job. Renovations were being done on some of the higher levels that had been vacated by a tenant and some conversions needed to be made to accommodate the needs of the new client that was going to move in and take over the floor. He intended to undercut the pay of the man who had called off and work himself until as late as he possibly could. All in an effort to impress himself upon whoever made the decisions on whom they hired. None of that panned out. Instead he had found himself lured into a trap. He was the perfect target, really. There were very few people he was on friendly terms with. None that he considered close, anyways. His folks, whom he had been out of contact with ever since he left, lived on the other side of the country. His mother was a long suffering drug addict, while his father was a drunkard who was plagued with spells of violence. Eric was more then glad to pack up and leave that all behind and head to the bright neon lights and a promising new start in the big city. His escort who was responsible for taking him to the floor where he was supposed to be working had him out like a light by the time the elevator doors closed. He had no idea where he was when he woke up from whatever foul concoction that man had injected him with. But he quickly figured out that he was in a place where no good intentions were going to be given birth too. The white walls of his cell, the shackles around his arms and legs, the collar fitted around his neck, and the steel slab of a tilted vertical operating table that he was secured upon were more then enough to unsettle him. In that room, helplessly bound in place was when he met the him, the one calling himself Paradox . A slab of meat, that is how he was treated. Injections followed by treatments of brutal horror. Samples of his blood and tissue collected on a daily basis. The waves of pain he endured were only to joyfully commented on by the methodical and malicious villain. Oh, pain is just weakness leaving the body. He would repeatedly say in response to his shrieks of agony. When there is no weakness left in you, you'll thank me, oh how they'll all thank me. He could barely recall the exact tone of his tormentor, though he remembered that it was a voice distorted by the insidious mask he wore. Your not the first, you won't be the last, but the world will change because of your selfless sacrifice. He wasn't sure how long he had suffered at the mad doctor's hands. Couldn't grasp when his body began to change, but he could clearly remember the sickness of it all. Moments like that, well they were borderline impossible to ever really push under the rug. He barely even remembered the moment of his escape. Paradox hadn't realized the levels of strength that his subject had achieved until it was far to late. The chains were snapped and he reclaimed his freedom. Only after a rampage through the hidden bunker of a laboratory where he had been altered. Much to his dismay, the one responsible for his condition wasn't present, so he made do with dismantling the vile doctor's underlings. Most of what remained beyond those recollections were a blur of disorganized imagery and sound. When things had calmed, when his fury was sated and he was far from that hell Eric Handler found himself on the fringes of the swamp, as if instinct itself had brought him there. The local news flickered amidst the static display of the monitor, then scrolled vertically in a rather disorienting manner until finally with a bit of persistence and aluminum foil the broadcast gained some fuzzy stability. He found himself settling for that meager quality, and the quality of the audio wasn't terrible. It was a much needed connection, something to remind him of the man he was beneath all this shifting, morphing sinew, muscle, and bone. Without it, he worried that he would eventually lose what precious little remained of himself in the depths of his mind. Slumping his haunches against the ground he wrapped his long tail forward, sweeping it across his lap as he watched the local news. They ran a short report, one that made mention of the hero he had always admired prior to his change. Justicar. He was in recovery, for that he was both glad and sorrowed. He had just intended to steal food from the stalls at the market when the commotion drew the famous vigilante to him. The rage that consumed him when Justicar landed a solid blow to his ribs reminded him all to much of the wrathful violent fits of his father. Having that potential trait passed down, dormant and now awakened by his new form frankly terrified him. Every day he felt as if more of who he was slipped away and was replaced with just the primal need to survive. He tried to find some relaxation in the music as he turned his attentions away from the monitor of the television, letting out a rumbled sigh as he looked about the bleary landscape of his new home. Last edited Oct 10, 2018