Elene backflipped out of the way as a crimson laser sliced the ground on which she had been standing. The concrete buckled and cracked with the heat and a cloud of smoke and dust erupted from the arrow-straight line scorched there. The dust and smoke provided a very useful distraction. Elene leapt sideways, up and behind a nearby dumpster. With a silent psychic scream she sent a barrage of telekinetic energy against the battle drone as it clattered past her, momentarily loosing her in the dust. Its low metallic head swung to and fro, its optical receptors unable to discern her colourful form in the murk created by its own destructive attack. Lifted by the power of Elene’s retaliation, it smashed against the alley wall and detonated, showering the alley and Elene’s hidden position with hot shards of metal and wiring.
“Nice trick Tinky, outfitting your Bots to explode when defeated, but you’ll have to do better than that to stop me!” Elene projected her voice down the alleyway where she knew Tinkerer sheltered.
She was not merely “Elene” today, she was Seneschal Elene, a Ring-Mistress of the Carnival of Shadows, and here on a mission.
She had lured Tinkerer here, professing to love him and offering to help him escape the Carnival’s wrath. In a jealous rage, Mistress De Vore had learned of Tinkerer’s highly profitable rampage throughout St Martial. Secretly, Seneschal Elene and Tinkerer had been collaborating in a crime spree that had the Carnival quite concerned. Elene had quietly provided added firepower to Tinkerer’s robots, and together they had amassed quite a fortune. She still wasn’t sure what she felt for him, it certainly wasn’t hatred but it wasn’t truly fondness either, and yet she could not say it wasn’t some kind of love, the very bait she had used to bring him here today. She could admit that she felt guilty for having used him so far and he must surely wonder how the Carnival of Shadows had discovered their ruse. Yet, could she say she was lying at all when she said she loved him? In some perverted and twisted way, she had become accustomed to his company, and it was impossible to deny that they were successful together…
On the fire-escapes and ladders above and about her, sister warriors of the Carnival moved into position. Elene’s job was to draw Tinkerer into the alley, where he could be ambushed and destroyed, a plan hatched by Mistress De Vore herself. Elene motioned them back into the shadows, motioning that she didn’t want him to have any hint of their presence, at least, not yet.
Elene ran a hand down her smooth flank, smoothing ruffles in her silken costume, and ensuring her chakram were secured at her hips and easy to hand should she need them. Nodding her head half to herself, she looked up at her fellow carnies in the shadows, before standing quickly upright and somersaulting over the dumpster to stand defiant in the middle of the alley.
Garbed for battle, she was an imposing and paradoxically alluring sight.
Long slim legs, tightly clad in shape-hugging, violently clashing colors of pink and green terminated in striking stiletto heels. Narrow hips supported an even narrower corseted waist. Devastatingly female contours threatened to leap from her costume in a life of their own, pale flesh straining at the ties on her purple and red laced bodice. Tattered white and yellow lace looped from every available curve, draping her form like snow and daisies on a psychedelic manikin. Pale and sensuous arms rested casually on hips angled in nonchalant challenge, hips from which hung the twin loops of her razored chakram, deadly weapons she could fling with lethal accuracy. Surmounting this statuesque figure of confident femininity, a dainty face, painted white with baroque curlicues of black and pale lavender topped by an elaborate headpiece from which depended myriad bells and charms. A casual onlooker might find her entrancing and captivating, until his gaze was interrupted by the brutal impact of her chakram propelled by her prodigious psychic powers.
- Tinkerer, my love - she sent telepathically, hand on hips and seemingly alone in the centre of the alley – Send in your assault bot, and come in close behind it. Prepare your forcefields, they await on the ladders above -
“Here I am lover!” Elene called as she spread her arms wide in a welcoming gesture, “Come to mother!”
- Make it good! - she mentally commanded.
Brilliant crimson beams of energy laced the air, photonic grenades flashed and flared against the walls, micro-missiles feathered the alley with miniature explosions, dust flew and bricks tumbled. Into this maelstrom of debris flew a crimson and umber figure clad in powered armor, Tinkerer came screaming, flames pouring from his armour with the passion of his attack.
“Betrayer! Harlot! Jezebel! I will kill you myself!” he bellowed, and with a rush he encompassed Seneschal Elene with his hydraulic arms and tumbled from view amongst the falling brickwork.
It took a quicker eye than was possessed by the Carnival of Shadows, watching from high above, to see the quick flickering of the force-field that covered the combatants before they were hidden from view and seemingly crushed beneath concrete, falling iron, and dust. In the ensuing chaos of tumbling ladders, stonework and fire escapes the watching Carnies were too busy leaping clear to properly pay attention anyway. After the final beam fell, as the final piece of masonry settled, the only sound that could be heard was the clatter of four robot bodies collapsing to the earth, their controller apparently destroyed, their motivating force gone, they were reduced to so much insensate iron and cabling.
“How long can you keep this up Tinky?” crooned Elene as she twined her sinuous body over his armor, deep in the heart of the collapsed alleyway. “A woman might like a man who could keep it …. going … long enough to deceive those fools!”
Tinkerer remained in position, crouched leaning back on the harsh concrete, one arm raised to maintain the pulsating force-field that prevented the two from being crushed. The strain showed visibly in the tension throughout his body, the small shakes and quivers of his limbs. He knew that he would be fine, his armor protected him, but he felt that he owed some protection to the Seneschal, some lingering tenderness prevented him from simply dropping the shield and blasting his way free of the debris. There, in the dark, with literally tons of masonry and metal bearing down on him, he could do nothing as Elene lay against him, nothing to prevent her from toying with him. He hands made small romantic gestures against his chest, as if she were a small girl clutching at him for comfort.
“Ooooh, Tinky!”
How he hated that name.
“We haven’t been this close for months! I do so miss you!” her voice echoed strangely from the crushing detritus, “And now that we’re here, I don’t know how to spend our time…”
Perversely, and with a nonchalant sigh he had grown to distrust, Elene slid her hands down his armor, hands probing casually for the catches and seams that bound it together. Straining and tense, he could do nothing to prevent her probing without dropping the shield and crushing them both.
- Trust the impish Carnie to exploit every weakness, - he thought, - even at her own mortal risk –
Tinkerer felt her hands explore the catch that held his breastplate on, and deftly flick the release. With an effort of will, he kept one arm up, holding the shield, while he rolled backwards to grasp her wrist in his gauntleted hand.
“You’ll doom us both you silly minx! Unless you want to reverse roles and hold this mass with your mind, keep your hands to yourself! Now is not the time for such foolishness!”
He couldn’t see her, but Seneschal Elene pouted, he could feel it in the dark.
“Tinky, darling, you have NO sense of humor, and I grow bored in this cavern. I can sense the other Carnies have gone, and now it is our turn to leave as well.”
Elene’s hand dropped from his breastplate, not without nudging his breastplate askew, leaving it hanging awkwardly on his body.
“On the count of three Tinky-Darling! One – Two – Haha, you thought I’d say three! – Three!”
One silk-clad arm rose delicately in the dark as Tinkerer’s cybernetic arm hummed with power and a fierce force blast ruptured the pile of stone, brick and steel above them, combining with Elene’s not insignificant telekinetic thrust to send shards of debris in all directions and exposing them to the cool night air. It seemed their deceit was a success; no Carnies remained to rain blows upon them. The Tinkerer and his estranged lover had been left for dead beneath the rubble.
“You had me fooled for a while, Vixen,” Tinkerer cast the words over his shoulder as he removed a charred and scarred glove to allow greater dexterity in his work.
“I almost set the Bots for lethal force – only at the last moment with your telepathic request did I begin to trust you again. You’ll have noticed how none of the blasts hit you.”
“Oh Tinky,” Elene purred, running a hand down one silken arm, her costume cast aside and draped like so much fabric scrap over a slab of fallen concrete in their temporary lair, “The Bots missed me only because of my swift and highly trained defences! Tinky darling, you should have learned by now to never under-estimate me.”
Tinkerer turned from his makeshift workbench, a cruddy desk shoved violently against one peeling and mildew stained wall, tools and clamps still hanging loosely from his cybernetic arm, and arched one deeply scarred eyebrow.
“Elene, I think you take life a little too casually. If I had instructed my Bots to kill you, you would be dead. Nimble as you are and fond of you I may be and I may have cause in some vague future to regret it, but nothing would stand between you and oblivion if I so chose.”
Elene pouted and looked up from her resting place amongst the debris of this abandoned apartment on the edge of Sirens Call. Like a cat she was able to look comfortable lying sensuously across broken glass, and just as strangely, not get cut. She still wore her face paint, but the head-dress and brightly colored costume lay discarded and tangled. All she wore was her surprisingly muted underwear, a bare modicum of modesty kept it in place as she stretched and turned her face into a down-turned frown of disagreement. Tinkerer noted, however, that her trusty chakram and fire-stick lay close to hand.
What better place to avoid the attentions of the Carnival of Shadows than here on the edge of the War Zone between Arachnos and Longbow? They’d been here for less than a day, but long enough to clear out the incumbent scum, the Asian Triad spin off, the Tsoo and the modern medievalists, the Warriors who made this war-torn area their own. It made Tinkerer’s skin itch to think that Paragon City lay just a short way across the battle-scarred landscape, and somewhere in there, the damnable heroes waited. The months spent securing his place in the Rogue Isles had lent him a base cunning, and brought him back from the edge of madness, his mania existed still but was tempered by a cold and heartless strategic mind. Tinkerer was no coward, but neither was he a fool, he knew when his time would come.
“Tinky, I tire of arguing with you, when there are much better things we could be doing…” breathed Elene from her reclined position. Elene draped a milky white arm across her prodigious chest and winked at him coquettishly, lips forming a brilliant red arch in the stark whiteness of her face as she blew him a kiss.
Tinkerer’s eyebrows rose dramatically, or would if the scar tissue allowed them to. Discarding the tools from his still open arm, he stood and strode over to her where she lay, crouched beside her and took her delicate face into his one remaining human, dreadfully burned and maimed, hand.
“Call me Tinky once more Elene and you will be no more use to me. You may have been helpful in building our small fortune, but remember that I was the one to bear the attention of these Islands admittedly pathetic law enforcement. Remember that I am the one who has been hounded across the Isles by your Sisters and their lackeys. I am the one who has sacrificed my robots when all I needed to do is instruct them to remove my attackers. You think that by voluntarily subjecting yourself to this self-impose and needless exile that I will trust you again? You think that you can so easily re-form our alliance after the many months in between? The many months where I have heard your voice in my head, and felt the sting of your chakram?”
Tinkerer roughly pushed her back onto the concrete and glass on which she so unnaturally lounged before standing and walking back to his makeshift bench.
“If I were not passingly fond of you SENESCHAL Elene, you’d not be here. Do not think that my trust is so easily betrayed and regained. For all I know, you follow me here on some perverted mission from your precious Mistress De Vore, to make me suffer. You should know that I am no easy prey. But this conversation is pointless, another of your little taunting games. There are other things we should be concentrating on. You will help me get back into the Carnival of Shadows tent city, and we’ll end this.”
Elene sighed, and flowed sinuously to her feet. It would have seemed to any watchers that she defied gravity with her smooth lithe movements.
“Tink..erer. Aren’t you the full-blown, blow-hard posturer today? Where are your manners? If you wanted to goad me into anger, you’re just going to have to learn that I’m not so easily provoked, especially by one so handsome!”
Skipping across the floor, Elene launched herself at Tinkerer’s back and wrapped herself about him before he even had time to turn around. As they landed on the floor in a muddled heap, Elene twisted to one side and planted a kiss on Tinkerer’s scarred cheek.
“If I wanted you to suffer, I’d have had you by now, my dear Tink! If I can get so close to you here, now without my weapons, what makes you think I couldn’t do so at any other time of my choosing?”
Elene placed one hand on the back of Tinkerer’s head and vaulted on to her feet whilst mashing his forehead into the concrete. Before he could launch himself to his feet, she was back against the wall, chakrams in hand and glowing with a violet luminescence. Her soft amber hair performed slow writhing movements about her as the focus of her mind subtly altered space in her vicinity and a pale lavender nimbus shadowed her movements.
Tinkerer rolled to his feet and brushed the concrete dust from his face, taking extra care and time to ensure that no trace remained in the contours of his scars and burns. Reaching down onto the workbench, he recovered his tools and adroitly folded them into his cybernetic arm before locking its access panel closed. Looking over at Elene poised for battle against the wall, he paused momentarily to retrieve his helmet before walking towards the door.
“Get dressed, you minx, we have work to do.”
Tinkerer leaped from the door into the air outside and a brief tapping of one hand against the forearm of his cybernetic limb was all that was required to call the distant thunder that presaged the approach of the rocket-propelled Assault Bot. The Carnies wouldn’t know what hit them, and then, then he would have the capacity to gain an advantage over the sickening heroes, and perhaps discover the location of his nemesis, no doubt cowering deep in the heart of Paragon City itself!