The Pipes are Calling [Plot Case] [Eva]

A long figure walked along the dimly lit crumbling Japanese backstreets, her trainers splashing through rapid streams and murky puddles driven by an unceasing torrential downpour, glinting just ever so slightly against the harsh, flickering, garish neon and even the twinkling lights in the distance dotting the towering skyline of ceaseless endless glass and steel piercing up through dim clouds stained a greasy dull amber.

A set of cold mechanical eyes scanned their surroundings, hidden behind a trick of the light. They outlined each building in the far distance, to the signs with their chipped and faded kanji to even the cars and the road grime encrusted plates affixed to them. 

Japan. Probability: 97.32 percent. 

The woman stepped back as though she could she could back away from the glaring orange heads up display overlayed over her vision, which had by now conveniently flickered off and out of the way into the far corner of her peripheral as to not foul her view of the world in front of her before vanishing away from view altogether. She took a deep breath, held it, and then finally let out a sigh with a shivering exhale. There was nothing for it. She had to continue onwards and at least find some manner of shelter, some way of getting out of these frigid wet temperatures that were already causing a beeping in her ear and a flashing warning on her HUD, text flashing up warning about exposure risk, low skin temperatures and even an image of a human form as if viewed from a thermal camera, the picture dotted with little hexagonal exclamation marks. 

Yeah this sucked. This really sucked. Had she known that she was going to end up in the middle of Tokyo on a winter's night so cold and rainy it was more akin to the ones back home she would have put more layers on. Instead, her light hoodie and jeans get-up was doing little more than absorbing the rain and clinging to her, serving only to sap yet more body heat. That was the thing though, how did she get here?

Managing to find a bus shop to serve as a temporary respite from the downpour, she sat down to think. Her name was Eva. She knew that much. She was British as well, that was another thing that was a certainty yet as she racked her mind further, pulling out knowledge without any shred of memory attached to their roots, she could grasp onto nothing else that was anywhere near as tangible and solid. 

There was one other thing that she could not even figure out for certain either. Was she even human? Sure, she felt human, she even looked human through the reflection of the rain spattered glass of the bus stop, yet why did she have the heads up display overlaid onto everything she saw? Why did she instinctively know that something was off, as though something was underneath what felt just like normal flesh and blood? She tried to fling those thoughts to the back of her mind, they were only distractions from trying to figure out just what the heck to do next, right? Other things had to take priority. 

The scan's results would be rather strange. Sure, the person in question was a Renamon with a holosuit of some description equipped yet nothing else seemed to quite match up; from the advanced, extremely high resolution holosuit that wasn't projected from a single source but rather seemingly from the digimon's entire skin to a more alarming reading indicating what would appear to be severe injury with some seriously mashed up and bodged together data despite completely the person in question having stable vitals. Even the core was wrong, with various hotspots in her body that seemed to be leeching energy directly from it, some with seemingly little rhyme or reason and others in more specifically structured formations around her limbs, head, and where a digimon's internal organs would be.

She was looking at a faded map affixed to the side of the bus stop in a scuffed, chipped, graffiti covered clear plastic case illuminated by a flickering light when Maria walked on over. Hearing her voice, Eva paused in her efforts to make heads or tails of just where the heck she was and turned to face her, wiping away an offending lock of blonde hair from her eyes. "Waiting for something? No, I'm just trying to get my bearings."  She managed a smile while she said that despite the fact that she was both still shivering in the cold and a little thrown off by the exact wording of the question. "Or something else perhaps?" seemed like an odd thing to ask. "That and I'm trying to get out of the rain for a moment."

The holosuited digimon spoke with a rather distinct English accent, if she were human her voice would perhaps mark her out as someone from Oxfordshire. Then again, if it weren't for Maria's scanner there really would have been absolutely no way of telling that the woman sitting there at the bus stop wasn't in fact just some lost tourist who got caught out in the downpour in the wrong neighborhood while looking for some of Tokyo's nightlife.

"Uh, what?" Eva turned away from the map, her finger on it mid route tracing as she stared at Maria, looking at the DATS agent as if the woman had two heads. "Champion level threat? What are you talking about?" She tilted her head slightly, frowning as her HUD zoomed in on the agent's eyes. No sign of pupil dilation, at least, no more than one would have in a relatively dimly lit nighttime city, nor were there any signs of odd eye movement at all in general. In fact, the woman with the umbrella seemingly just said that rather strange sentence completely straight faced.

Eva mentally scratched "stoned" off the list of explanations, though that only really left one on the table. This woman was bonkers. She adjusted her tone a little, trying to sound as non-threatening and non accusatory as possible. Perhaps she simply misheard? Or she was making a reference to something that flew completely over her head? Either that or she was about to pull out a knife screeching about government mind control nano-machines in the air. Had to be one of those three. " Slow down there. I haven't seen anything that could be considered a what was it? "Champion level threat"? What do you mean by that? Is there something chasing you? Someone? You said "us", are you with anyone else?"





Eva's HUD lit up, a warning about an incoming undentified projectile flashing before her eyes. She moved quickly, much faster than what human reflexes should normally allow for and shoved Maria hard out of the way of the predicted trajectory lit up by a three dimensional orange blinking line before raising her arm in an instinctive effort to block her face from whatever was coming. Instead of shouldering the impact though, her arm instead twitched, something under the fabric of her hoodie unfolding and clicking into place leaving an sharp angular bulge in the material before flashing brightly.

Three pipe like objects skittered away across the pavement after smashing through the plate glass of the bus stop, knocked back with a shower of sparks as if someone had beat them out of the air. Eva stood still for a moment, frankly, unsure of how she was still standing or even still alive as her holosuit flickered and faded away around her.

Standing there instead of the relatively ordinary form of a young woman was instead a Renamon, or at the very least what at first glance seemed to be one; yet under a slightly closer inspection further things became more apparent. Even though she was still wearing the same clothing, which seemed to still fit perfectly fine over her strangely human-like form enough could be seen of her to make one very solid conclusion.

This was not a regular Renamon.

There was a look of horror upon the digimon's face as she stared down at her shaking hands which had not a moment ago been seemingly flesh and blood. They were now cold and synthetic precision engineered carbon fibre and titanium with four fingers and a thumb in simulation of the human form, yet despite their structure these were very much not the hands of a human, nor as Maria could likely tell, even the hands of a digimon. The technology involved while almost impossibly advanced looked to be very much man-made rather than what the digital world would have spat out as its own interpretation of robotics.

Eva then looked up, slowly, towards the direction those "pipes" had come from. Standing there was a creature, an impossible monster forged from a metal that her HUD could not get a read on and flexing as though it were a living being. It took a clanking step forward, yet as it did so the cyborg felt something in her left thigh, as if something inside it was slightly buzzing and vibrating.

Reaching into her pocket and flexing her hand to tear through the lining, another bulge appeared for a brief moment like the one that had expanded from her arm, yet it was larger and longer, and when she pulled her hand out she was holding a boxy looking sidearm which again just like her cybernetics had the look of something man-made yet paradoxically advanced that was buzzing with a high pitched electrical screech as she aimed it squarely at the Tuwarmon's centre of mass.

"I don't know what the hell you are,-" She said, doing her best to hide the waver in her voice and instead sound at least somewhat imposing and intimidating against this wall of impossible steel. "-but you're going to stand down, and go back to wherever the bloody hell you came from."

"I'm not exactly sure of that myself." Came Eva's reply to the Tuwarmon's question. Even so, she was still holding the unknown pipe creature at gunpoint with what seemed to be an extremely well trained stance and trigger discipline. She was certain that she'd never fired a weapon before, or at least, had no memory of doing so yet the way the weapon felt in her hands had a strange familiarity to it, as though handing this weapon that she was certain she had never seen before in her life was something she had been drilled in a million times over.

"Is it no surprise to you that the hunted can return fire to their hunters, DATS puppet?"

The cyborg shot a quick side eye glance to Maria at the other digimon's words. "What the bloody hell is he talking about? What is "DATS"?" The Renamon's attention then fully turned back to the Tuwarmon standing right in front of her. "I've been patient with you so far. Damn patient actually, seeing as you fired at me. Start explaining or start leaving. What are you, why are you here, and what are you after?"

"Very well. You want to know why? I heard that DATS has reactivated and I relish the opportunity to infiltrate this cosy, safe city and send you humans into a helpless frenzy like the animals of this world that you look down upon!"

"I'm not sure if you know what "infiltration" means, but you're doing a pretty terrible job at it."


Eva's response to the Tuwarmon escalating was completely instantaneous. Those Renamon reflexes were certainly completely intact, heck, if anything they were perhaps even enhanced further as she first rolled into cover behind the engine block of a car and then scanned the area. The quick evasive teleport made her lose track for a second but she soon once again picked up the creatures outline, targeting information streaming past her eyesight. "Tango, three o'clock, twenty meters." She quickly pointed the Tuwarmon out for Maria and her digimon, before loosing off a couple of well aimed shots from her sidearm.

---

Passive: Sentinel sensor package used to maintain track of target.

Active: Diplomat MK3 hybrid gauss pistol. Shots fired: 2/7.

Eva raised her arms in an attempt to trigger the shield and block again, but instead was met with nothing but a blinking "system recharging" alert and a wall of water that plowed past her cover without even the slightest hint of being slowed or deflected, effortlessly flipping the car she was hiding behind end over end before the "Tuwarmami" hit her proper. The mysterious cyborg was significantly lighter than Blanc or Noir, in fact, with her rather short Renamon stature she was even still a fair bit lighter than Maria, despite all those cybernetics grafted to her form, meaning that when the torrent hit, it hit hard. 

It sent her flying backwards and slamming hard into a shuttered storefront, the water flowing in and buckling the graffiti covered metal security roller covering the now splintering glass and metal which too failed to slow the flood which now stood ankle deep and murky inside the building itself. 


[[ANALYSING...]]

[[WARNING: WATER ASPIRATION. PURGING.]]

[[CAUTION: RIB STRUCTURE MICROFRACTURE DETECTED.]]


Eva rolled over, sitting up on her hands and knees to bring her head above the waterline she painfully coughed, hacked and spat out the water that had been forced into her cybernetic lungs, turning her head slightly to the side to watch the battle still ongoing outside through the warped crack at the bottom of the shutter as she forced herself back to her feet once more, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve and hand before she simply vanished in an amber flicker of bent light. 

Under the cover of the "socs" cloak, she crawled out from under the twisted security grate, a sting in her side causing her to nearly stumble upon straightening up once again. The only sign of her approach to the Tuwarmon were brief splashes of water from her footfalls as she quickly moved to close the distance and jumped at the other digimon, hoping to connect her fist with whatever passed for its face, Eva's form outlined and shimmering almost like light passing through a prism for just a brief moment.

---

Active: Subdermal Optical Camouflage System, Duration: five posts (unless interrupted by a dedicated attack move, simply punching/kicking with it active instead is momentarily disrupting it), cooldown 3 posts. 

The force of the water did not short circuit Eva as one might expect, with the cybernetic digimon's augmentations seemingly being thoroughly waterproofed, after all, how would she be able to live with such augmentation should a splash of water bring her to ruin? Nonetheless, the wind being knocked from her and sharp stabbing pain in her side following being smashed against the counter had nonetheless left their mark. Despite that though, the Renamon wasn't slowing down. Riding the wave of adrenaline she weaved to the side, stealth field still shimmering as her boots made splashes through the flooded streets. 

Under its hazy cover she again went into a flurry of physical attacks; first feinting left with a distracting spray of floodwater kicking up from a carefully placed footfall before striking right, using that momentum along with her cybernetically enhanced strength and agility in an effort to land several more in quick succession. 

Following this though, she finally disengaged the cloak, fizzling back into view behind the Tuwarmon in much the same way that she had originally slipped out of it with her sidearm once again raised and emitting a menacing buzz as she pointed it at the back of the rogue digimon's head. "You've got two options."  She said, a snarl on her lips as she held her other arm up, a black vicious looking blade shooting forth and locking into place from its concealed locked back position. "You can stand down and leave, or I fire a ten mil' depleted uranium round through the back of your head and sell your body parts to the nearest scrap merchant. I'll give you a couple of seconds to mull it over."

---

No moves used, Eva has decloaked and has pre-aimed other attacks.

---

She kept her weapon trained on the Tuwarmon as it left, the opening of the portal causing her to flinch slightly and take a few steps back before she slowly lowered the sidearm to her side. She stared for a moment longer at the now empty space where the hostile seemingly robotic creature one stood, her hand reaching to her pocket to put the pistol back into the compartment in her leg that she had pulled it from the first place which snapped shut with a harsh mechanical clunk. 

She paused again after that, looking down at her hand itself. She flexed her cold black fingers, watching the precise, perfectly engineered mechanisms at work, the amber glint from the buzzing streetlamps and the raindrops sliding off of the sleek carbon fibre like surface. These were not the hands she remembered, these were the hands of a machine, a synthetic dead simulacrum of an appendage belonging to the human she was, or perhaps merely thought she was a mere five minutes ago. 

A glimmer in a shop window caught her attention next, her eyeline switching over to a reflection in its polished glass surface. Standing there was not the familiarity of a face and form that she swore she had seen thousands of times staring back at her in the mirror, but instead was the visage of an animalistic, alien yet strangely human-like and human proportioned figure standing drenched in the still pouring rain. It was only then that she noticed Maria and Noir's approach, forgetting for a few seconds to retract her blade, the weapon giving a metallic "snikt" as it went.

"This isn't real." She softly said, more to herself than anyone else. Five minutes ago I was human. I- I- I am human." The Renamon looked up, repeating "I am human." with a little more certainty this time, looking up towards the DATS agent and the... well, she had no idea, despite the mocking glinting reflection in the window. "This has to be a strange dream. You can't real, that thing, it was impossible. This here-" she gestured to herself and the cybernetics "-none of it. This can't be right. This can't be possible."