Tyrus_

@kaija:

"Track down who's behind the influx of konite. I suspect you'll find an exosuit at the end of that particular rainbow. If you do, see what you can do to drive her out of town." Tyrus said. "I'll take care of the paperwork, I appreciate the help." Tyrus said with a slight smile. "I believe that covers everything I wanted to talk about."

@kaija:

"I don't want you to do anything illegal." Tyrus said up front. "In the last few months Konite shipments into Portland have nearly doubled, the gangs there are arming themselves for a lovely little gang war as a result and someone is shipping weapons into them to top it off. A few weeks ago Venezuela was attacked, specifically someone wearing unusual armor, an exosuit if you will, assassinated one of their top Vibranium mine owners. The mines have shifted ownership to his son but production has declined in the mean time. More recently there was some low key chatter about a possible terrorist attack on the polling places in France. I believe all of these events share a singular connection. Unfortunately I can't be everywhere at once."

Tyrus glanced over at Kaija for a moment. "I want you to go to Portland."

@kaija:

Tyrus followed her quietly and waited until she began speaking. "Just call me Tyrus." She cleared up for her. Tyrus had a real name but she didn't use it, that person...whoever she had been, was dead now. Tyrus was what was left. "A couple of your actions have come to the attention of the Court and I was asked to investigate." She said. "I've already taken care of the investigation, the information is largely readily available and what isn't..." She shrugged. "It's up to me whether or not anything occurs as a result, but I'm more interested in securing your cooperation for something much more important than the ideological mistakes of an inexperienced vigilante."

Tyrus smiled a bit. "I'd like your help with something in exchange for clearing your record."

@kaija

Tyrus arrived at the outskirts of the base without ceremony, she simply approached by jeep. Once she arrived at the initial security perimeter the former STRIKE director dismounted her vehicle and proceeded to stroll calmly up to the guard house, utterly unconcerned with their presence or the presence of any other security measures that might be meant to stop someone from breaking in. She removed her badge from her vest and slid it across the counter of the guard house to the guards on the inside. "I need to see Kaija at the earliest possible moment. It's important, certainly for her and quite possibly for others as well." Tyrus retrieved her badge. "Tell her I'll wait out here"

@satar:

Tyrus's eyes shifted to the machete and then back to Satar with a brief flicker of interest, not of someone worried a weapon would be used against them, but of someone calculating its use. She smiled a little and cocked her head slightly, studying Satar's features for a moment in silence after his request. "The Godbane armor, an interesting choice." She said. "Coupled with that weapon. Interesting indeed." Tyrus smirked. "Alright, Godbane armor it is. Stark will come after you." She smiled a little. She stepped back off the rhino, dropping to the ground without the need to drop into a crouch.

"But you already know that." Tyrus said. She turned and started walking out of the area. "Next time you see me, I'll have your armor. It was a pleasure." She told him.

@satar:

"That's what I like about you, you're a force of nature and you're as consistent as the tides." Tyrus remarked at his silent staring. "There is an organization that has been working behind the scenes for quite some time, they've slipped their fingers into everyone's privates while they weren't looking and manipulated events, gradually at first but now with ever increasing rapidity. It started with the terrorist attack on Gale Xander's little business venture on its opening day more than a year ago where they, under the guise of an environmental wacko group, stole certain containers of DNA from the Prehistoria labs. From there they created a project..."

She climbed up onto the Rhino, standing directly in front of him on the vehicle now, her eyes looking up at him. Her eyes were important, they were windows to the soul...windows to the serpent that hid beneath the surface that was Tyrus. Tyrus was young, an attractive woman in her twenties, but her eyes...her eyes had an ancient predatory look behind them, barely concealed behind a tightly controlled veneer of humanity. "They called it Project Tyrus. Their organization worked in a genetics lab owned by the US Government, an operative branch of the CIA. They took the body of a young woman who had all but died in the field and they strapped her to a table, injected some genetic material into her bone marrow and blood stream and stood back to watch the magic happen. Enhanced strength, enhanced bone structure and something they came to call battle mapping...the ability to accurately calculate the outcome and the path, move for move, of any given fight within heartbeats, provided of course she has the right information.

That was just the first phase of the project of course, they killed off everyone at the base except for the woman, took the research information and moved it elsewhere. No one heard from it again until Colombia when the rightful government was overthrown by a man who supposedly was part of it. It was later discovered by his opponents that the man was also called The Tyrant which coincides directly with the DNA stolen from Gale Xander's facility. They claim he was defeated and either killed or driven into hiding. He has the same abilities as project Tyrus with the additional ability to map out entire wars, not just isolated combats. If Hitler asked him in 1939 what would happen if he invaded Poland, he could have told him the day Hitler would kill himself. Colombia wasn't a defeat, he was testing the waters...he was learning."

Tyrus stopped for a moment to let everything sink in and to plan out the next move in their conversation a little more.

"I don't know if he's still allied with The Organization I mentioned earlier or not, but I do know it should be obvious to an intellect like yours where this plan of theirs is going...one phase at a time. Now...I know, I know, you don't care, let the cattle die, etc etc. I don't need you to care about saving anyone, that'll never happen, what I need is for you to do EXACTLY what you're already doing and I need you to succeed." She didn't fill him in as to why. "I'm willing to offer you literally anything that you need. Need an army of mutants with adaptable genetics? I'll get it for you, need a nuclear bomb, I know where to find one. Whatever your plan requires."

Of course, she'd mentioned it as a business deal, so there was something she wanted in return. "In return I ask for only one thing. When the next phase of their plan starts, I need you, I don't know exactly where or when." She held up her hands. "I'm not saying as some sort of tool, I won't insult you with the suggestion that I can or would want to control you...only that I want you to do your thing in a specific place and time. The specifics of what and how I don't care about, only the location and the time. You're the best at what you do, you're the only one on the planet who has taken on virtually every hero and not only lived but come out on top, anyone who denies that hasn't been paying attention. The reason I never targeted you with STRIKE is because I knew we wouldn't win and if we did the cost would be so high as to make the action worthless. That's the kind of power I want on my side later, call it an alliance if you want or just an exchange of services, whatever suits you best."

@satar

4 Months Ago, somewhere in Africa:

"Your mistake is the belief of an end game." The whispered voice came from the creature that towered above Tyrus, it stood perhaps seven feet tall, cloaked in shadow and robes with no visible features of any sort. It shuffled when it walked and anyone fool enough to rely on sight of strength would have mistaken it for weak. Tyrus had come to understand it in the month since her capture, since she'd discovered one of the secret bases of The Organization. Because of what she was and because of her intellect she had been spared torture in the form of something else...long weeks of silence followed by long conversations with this thing. It's name was The Inevitable of War and it was as old as humanity, older perhaps than that. Her attempts at discerning its true nature had failed, attempts to penetrate its mind had met only with void. So she relied on conversation, probing its verbal defenses for a mistake. It was the enemy of her former employer, The Inevitable of Peace and it was far stronger. War was good business and war was good for business. It was easier to perpetuate war than peace.

She sat quietly in a metal chair meant to be uncomfortable but Tyrus' tyrant genetics didn't much care. "War escalates, eventually you'll destroy yourself, it is the way of things. Rocks became rocks on sticks, rocks on sticks swords, swords into guns, guns into better guns, bombs, bombs into better bombs and then nuclear bombs. Now we have mutants and aliens capable of acting as bombs, eventually everything will die and you will stand victorious on a field of broken bones...just moments before you wither away into nothing. That means you need a different side, a different face to your coin. You're playing both sides." Tyrus smirked. She'd figured it out over the last week, pieced together everything until at last the long conflict that had been the last year of her life made perfect sense. "You ARE the Inevitable of Peace."

The Inevitable was silent, it stood staring, or at least she got the impression of staring. It was angry.

"That's the thing isn't it?" Tyrus said and slowly stood, her chair sliding back and grinding against the stone floor. "You've been playing us all for fools for decades, perhaps longer. I'm starting to figure out your plan though and soon I'm going to have enough information to know your next move." She crossed the room until she stood, staring up at what she assumed was a head. "You rebuilt STRIKE, you put me in charge of it...you encouraged me, helped me prepare for the Time Siphon invasion...you wormed your way into my thoughts. Hell...you CREATED me so that I would fight injustice, so that I would use my anger at what had happened to me as a justification for my actions and so that I would be angry enough to lead STRIKE, to form it into something the governments of the world would despise because they had no power over it...so that itself would create conflict."

Tyrus smiled a little. "I have to admit, I played my part well, I didn't see through your bull-crap until very recently. I see your finger prints every where now. The mysterious donors to the President Brutus campaign, you're never the instigator, but you're always in the background. You help things a long, you're not the guy that causes the riot, you're the guy that gets interviewed on television and spreads propaganda that perpetuates hate. You're not the grand wizard of the KKK, you're the guy everyone sees on TV spreading his lies. You're like a disease...no you're not, you're the rat that carries the flea that carries the black plague."

"You can't stop it now." The Inevitable rasped.

"You're going to let me try though." Tyrus said with a growing smile. "You can't help yourself, you're going to organize my escape so that you can add another piece back onto the board. You're an addict. You feed on conflict. When there isn't any, you stoke the fires of pre-existing hatreds."

She walked around him like a predator, her smile growing. "The problem is, you don't think you can lose."

Tyrus took her seat again, crossing one leg over the other and smirking. "We'll see."

-----------------------------------------------

Sometime later:

Tyrus stood on the bridge of her ship, her hands clasped behind her back as her Tyrant brain processed all the information flooding into every console and monitor visible, put it neatly into categories and assessed its usefulness. STRIKE had been re-organized after she stepped down and the Inevitable of Peace, or war, depending on its nature on a given day, had withdrawn. It no longer needed STRIKE, at least not currently. She had quietly acquired the old STRIKE carrier when she stepped down, it had been lost in the shuffle, vanished in the paperwork. There had been more than one carrier of course and she had chosen the oldest. Eventually someone would notice, but she didn't much care.

The Street Judge turned on her heel and strode from the bridge. They had finally located what she had been after since her 'escape' from The Organization. One of Satar's men, someone high up enough to know something but low enough that no one would care if he went missing. She had been hunting his men systematically for some time, each one gave her just a little more information with which to stalk her prey. This was the final piece, she hoped. She met the prisoner detail as they escorted the violently resisting man from the deck of the carrier to one of the interrogation decks, waved them away and pushed him into the Silence Room. She walked inside, shut the door and smiled.

His screams were drowned out by the sound proofing of the room.

------------------------------

@satar

Somewhere in the Amazon:

Tyrus was in free fall, the wind whipping past her as she plummeted towards the ground below. She was in the classic sky diving pose, adjusting her body position ever so slightly to change her rate and angle of descent. It had taken three months to get here, three months to track Satar down to an actual location. Rumors were all she had had to go on, rumors and captured members of his still fragmented gang. It had taken days of interrogation to gain the information she needed and mountains of paperwork to get the clearance to come to this particular corner of the world. Only Tyrus' old ties had eventually cracked the case, a few old friends from her time in STRIKE and one or two people from the CIA, but eventually she had the information she needed.

As she reached one thousand feet she hit the button on her chest, activating a quick deploy parachute that instantly arrested her descent, slowing it down to less than lethal levels. At three hundred feet above the canopy her eyes scanned the forest floor and her Tyrant augmented brain located the exact pathway needed to pierce the canopy without being pierced by it. Another press of the same button and the entire parachute mechanism fell away from her body. She fell the last three hundred feet without the safety of a parachute and tucked her arms in to her body. She fell through the canopy, narrowly avoiding tree limbs and branches until she landed in a flawless three point landing, her enhanced anatomy absorbing a blow that would have snapped human legs like twigs.

Tyrus stood up, her eyes following the stairs of an ancient ruin hidden away in the rain forest until they landed on the hulking form of Satar. His back was to her. She smirked a little, plenty of people would have wanted her to draw her gun and empty the magazine into his back but she knew two things that prevented that. First, she needed him alive and second, it likely wouldn't have killed him and he more than likely knew she was here.

Instead she kept the weapon holstered and simply walked up their stairs, taking no effort to mask the sounds of her approach. About thirty feet behind him she moved so if she continued her approach she would end up standing beside him. "You're a hard man to find." She complimented. "I hate to interrupt whatever your latest project is, but I want to talk." She remained thirty feet behind him, not ignorant enough to walk over and stand beside him when she'd yet to convince him this wasn't some form of attack.

"Just so we're clear, I don't care what you're doing, I don't care about stopping it either, I have other concerns to worry about. I'm certain your advanced memory will remind you that when I was Director of STRIKE, I never came after you, so I'm sure as hell not going to do it now. Consider this more of a...business meeting."

@satar

Somewhere in the Amazon:

Tyrus was in free fall, the wind whipping past her as she plummeted towards the ground below. She was in the classic sky diving pose, adjusting her body position ever so slightly to change her rate and angle of descent. It had taken three months to get here, three months to track Satar down to an actual location. Rumors were all she had had to go on, rumors and captured members of his still fragmented gang. It had taken days of interrogation to gain the information she needed and mountains of paperwork to get the clearance to come to this particular corner of the world. Only Tyrus' old ties had eventually cracked the case, a few old friends from her time in STRIKE and one or two people from the CIA, but eventually she had the information she needed.

As she reached one thousand feet she hit the button on her chest, activating a quick deploy parachute that instantly arrested her descent, slowing it down to less than lethal levels. At three hundred feet above the canopy her eyes scanned the forest floor and her Tyrant augmented brain located the exact pathway needed to pierce the canopy without being pierced by it. Another press of the same button and the entire parachute mechanism fell away from her body. She fell the last three hundred feet without the safety of a parachute and tucked her arms in to her body. She fell through the canopy, narrowly avoiding tree limbs and branches until she landed in a flawless three point landing, her enhanced anatomy absorbing a blow that would have snapped human legs like twigs.

Tyrus stood up, her eyes following the stairs of an ancient ruin hidden away in the rain forest until they landed on the hulking form of Satar. His back was to her. She smirked a little, plenty of people would have wanted her to draw her gun and empty the magazine into his back but she knew two things that prevented that. First, she needed him alive and second, it likely wouldn't have killed him and he more than likely knew she was here.

Instead she kept the weapon holstered and simply walked up their stairs, taking no effort to mask the sounds of her approach. About thirty feet behind him she moved so if she continued her approach she would end up standing beside him. "You're a hard man to find." She complimented. "I hate to interrupt whatever your latest project is, but I want to talk." She remained thirty feet behind him, not ignorant enough to walk over and stand beside him when she'd yet to convince him this wasn't some form of attack.

"Just so we're clear, I don't care what you're doing, I don't care about stopping it either, I have other concerns to worry about. I'm certain your advanced memory will remind you that when I was Director of STRIKE, I never came after you, so I'm sure as hell not going to do it now. Consider this more of a...business meeting."

@kaede_:

Kid's gonna get herself splattered. Brave though. Tyrus had files on all of them after the Nebraska incident but she'd judged them clear of wrong doing. She shook her head a little and walked to the bar. Once there she ordered a glass of water and proceeded to move through the crowd until she had reached Kaede's side. She slipped the glass into the girl's unsuspecting hand. "You really should keep one of these on you at all times." She told her in a quiet whisper. Tyrus didn't say anything else, she moved back to the juke box and leaned against it again. Here she was in a corner that allowed her to view the entire club with nothing to her back but walls.

Tyrus wasn't here for any particular reason, she was actually on a separate mission of her own and had stopped here on her way through the city to relax and get away from everything. Of course, relaxed for Tyrus meant still treating the room as a potential battlefield, it also meant carrying her weapon under her civilian clothing. Heh...maybe relaxed is just a lie some people can tell themselves...or maybe I'm just really really bad at it. Either way, this isn't any more relaxed that how I normally feel.

@the_xsoteric:

Go for it.