Minutes to Midnight. (Zeke.)

[aether]

Can you say magnetorheological? No? Well, Kestryll Heart can say that nicely. Hell, she's been saying it ever since she stole the idea from some ancient USA government patent.

You see, not so long ago, she'd hacked her way into an intranet system the way she did when she was a teenager and ripped thousands of defence files from the database. She'd transferred the duplicated files to her laptop, changed her IP address for good measure, and re-encrypted the database after herself, wiping any trace of her existence from the site. And that was the mark of a good hacker.

Rifling through the files, Kestryll had found some that she had deemed particularly interesting. The designs for state-of-the-art soldier body armour. She had edited these plans, enhanced them, and set to work.
Then, barely even a month ago, Kestryll had perfected her prototype. Wanna know the name? Magnetorheological armour. Yes, Kess knew it was a mouthful, but it explained itself well. Better than having a name like 'Doom Suit' and having to explain to every separate dumbass out there what it did.
Mind you, most people Kestryll was forced to consort with probably didn't even know what 'magnetorheological' meant. It meant that when a magnetic force was applied, it changes its state from liquid to solid within thousandths of a second. Using this, Kestryll had developed a cloth that remained smooth and fluid until it reacts to gunfire, becoming bullet-proof in an instant, and until tonight it had sat on Kess' desk in her lab, gathering dust and accumulating loving glances from it's creator who adored its very creation, but would never want to risk damaging it by wearing the suit for real.
Not that she doubted it. Of course, every scientist and genius knows that theories that hold up in the lab often don't match up in reality. For that very reason, Kess had put it through scores of rigorous testing, including wearing it and then trying to shoot herself in the leg. Sounds imbecilic, but she was safe.
In addition, she'd added a lightweight exoskeleton crafted of a dense but slightly yielding polymer. Originally she'd intended to grant the wearer (in other words, herself) natural flexibility, but she'd figured out a way of enhancing the wearer's strength while still retaining their potential agility. The suit was scent-masking, and also featured a resistance to heat-seeking and infra-red, as it was able to change it's internal and external temperatures. Meaning that on the inside it can adapt to the wearer's body temperature, while on the outside it mimics the external climate, blending in perfectly with the heat of it's surroundings.

It was now that Kestryll stalked the darkness of Hyde Park. It was two minutes to midnight. Willowy and lithe, her frame clung to the shadows with extraordinary ease. The warm weight of her hair had been lifted from her shoulders and twisted up into a glossy knot at the back of her head, and smoothed in a way that not even those annoying strands could fall free.
With the knuckle of her right index finger, the Hunter pushed her dark glasses a little further up her nose. Dark glasses at night? Why yes, Kess was smarter than that, which was why the glasses worked as infra-red night vision goggles. Clever. Plus they had the advantage of looking like your average (albeit slightly futuristic looking) pair of shades that wrapped around her face to grant her infra-red peripheral vision. They also hid her eyes, making confrontation that slight bit more intimidating, her expression occulted by screens of reflective black.

As she moved, the world moved with her in a myriad shades of green and black. She was accompanied by the whisper of her matte black suit, the barest suggestion of footsteps moving across the dead and dried grass.
There were very few people around at this hour, but those who were, were identified by Kestryll immediately. Humans showed up on her lenses as shapes of yellow-green. Werewolves presented themselves as having a slightly higher core body temperature and heart rate, and they were persimmon. Vampires, however, with no heartbeat, were represented in blue. Thus, it didn't take long for Kess to find one. She'd slipped into the shadow of an ancient leaning tree. The longer branches pressed against each other and grew out at strange angles. Other branches sagged from the weight of their leaves, providing a thick, leafy veil of greenery under which Kestryll could sufficiently hide. It was there, under the relative cover of the tree, that Kestryll peered from over the top of her reflective glasses and drew out one of her twin handguns.
Not too far away, a Vampire moved soundlessly across the park. It was likely that they only wanted to travel from point A to point B, but Kess was in hiding with a weapon trained on them. She positioned herself and pulled back, drawing her body even tighter into angle between the ground and the tree trunk. She rested her weapon-wielding hands against the rough bark, easily tracking the slow-moving target. She aimed, thumbed off the safety catch, and fired three times.

The gunshots tore through the silence and echoed across the city.

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_{((Ack! That's a bit long.))}

[zeke]

Tonight was a slow night. Normally at this time Hyde Park and practically the entire Greater London area would be crawling with those ‘creatures’. But again, tonight was a slow night. He started off the evening pretty much like he did every night. After gathering his equipment he started off, however instead of taking the normal armored van he was forced to being along his Lamborghini after a rather ‘crushing’ blow was dealt to the vans hood not two nights ago.

Starting off with his ‘carefully’ chosen route unlike most nights he found no ‘paranormal’ activity whatsoever and that unnerved him greatly. Minutes later he decided to ditch the car and continue on foot. It was faster to travel along rooftops, so he did just that. While keeping a watchful eye on the street below him, it wasn’t long before he neared the end of his route Hyde Park, “Perhaps their all still asleep?” A wishful hope but foolish. But something must have frightened them away, but what it obviously wasn’t him.

Just when he was about to abandon his hunt for the night he heard a scream, a woman she was in trouble. Diving off the building like some ‘caped crusader’ he flipped off several different objects present to help cushion his fall. Sprinting out of the alleyway and across the street he effortlessly hopped the fence and searched for the source of the scream.

“I really need to get some night-vision goggles or something…” It’s been on his to-do list for ages his just never had the time considering his asleep during the day and out at night, well he could order it. Reaching a clearing next to a small pound he stopped. Ducking behind a tree he found he was too late to save the woman but could still avenge her death. Activating his duel switchblades he leapt out of his hiding spot and attacked the creature, it was dark he wasn’t actually sure what he was fighting werewolf or vampire all he knew is that it had to die.

The fight was actually a quick one jab here parry there and just when Zeke thought he was going to win a gunshot rung out sending him a good ten or so feet back slamming the unexpecting human into a tree cracking it slightly. “Son of a…” He cursed eyeing the creature as it took off obviously disinterested in being shot next. Now Zeke’s heard of other hunters and respects them for taking up the ‘trade’, his even worked with several when raiding a blood bank or something else big.

However with this it made him like then severely less. Letting out a pained groan he was glad tonight he wore his armor or else the bullet would have done much more damage enough to kill a human that’s for sure. Still he was angry, or at least irritated at the supposed hunter missing his mark so he pulled out his ‘baby’. Creatively called the staker one could only image what it did. It fired several inch long stakes at high velocities. How he wished he could see though the dark so he could see his target, but he couldn't so he did the next best thing.

He fired randomly.

[aether]

The echoing gunshots had barely died down when Kestryll was suddenly aware that something had gone terribly wrong. In the seconds where Kess had readjusted her grip and her stance against the tree, she had glanced down in just that split second before she fired. It had been a mistake, for she hadn't seen the yellow-green shape of a Human male loping quickly across her visor, and by the time she had noticed the two locked in a mêlée, the trigger had already been pulled.

With the ringing gunshots, her mind fell numb. She'd shot a Human... It was all her fault really. She had trained thoroughly, radically; she had wielded almost every weapon on the planet and spend days perfecting her skills. She should have known her gun by now, but looking down had been that habit, an imperfect habit, and that wasn't nearly good enough for Kess.
Somewhere in her mind, the voice of blame piped up.
Keep your eye on the target, woman. Always keep your eye on the target.
Things like this don't happen if you just keep your eye on the target.

The yellow figure had been tossed backwards by the sheer power and velocity of the gunshot. The blue-appearing Vampire had remained unharmed. Kess shifted in her location amongst the branches, stirring with unease. Her mind was torn between going over to the man and firing again at the fleeing Vampire.
Within moments she had made up her mind. Kess anchored her shoulder against the tree trunk, and aimed after the blue figure. She rang off several shots. The first one caught the vampire in the back, lunging him forward into the grass. The second and third were sent off in some direction far left of the Vampire, because Kestryll's body had been sent careering off the tree and had been tossed to the ground.

This is what had happened: The first shot had hit its mark just as the Human male had pulled out his weapon. As the second and third shot had been fired, several stakes tore through the air in her direction, ripping through leaves and splintering wood and twigs. Kess had ignored it – by now her one-track mind was hell-bent on not letting this bloodsucker go. But two of the stakes had hit her; one in the upper stomach and one on her right thigh, and although the Magnetorheological Armour had protected her, her flesh beneath still felt the force of the blows and she was thrown away from the tree and into the dry grass.

Her mind was telling her to keep her eye on the target. The Human wasn't the target.

Her line of vision broken from being dislodged, Kestryll writhed in the grass and ended up on her chest, both arms outstretched before her holding her twin handguns. The Vampire was getting up, and she fired madly after it. Ten bullets found their mark in the Vampire's flesh, and then her weapons ran out of ammo. Empty clicking produced no bullets.

She let her hands fall, and for a second she listened to silence. The Vampire wasn't moving. Kestryll allowed herself to relax, and she groaned with the dull pain in her torso and leg. She propped herself up on her elbows, concentrating on her biofeedback in order to control the pain she felt, and it quickly ebbed to a low, barely noticeable throb. She then picked herself up, determined not to be debilitated and as she set off at a jog, she hastily reloaded her weapons with fresh magazines. Her dark, armoured shape fluttered through the darkness as she raced across to where the Vampire lay dead. She reached him, flipped over the corpse, checked him.
Yep, dead.

Kess made no effort to try and shift him elsewhere. Come sunrise the UV rays would crumble the cadaver to ash and dust anyway. Thus Kestryll chose to return to the Human's location, holstering one of her guns at her hip as she strode towards him. She halted several metres away and peered at him from over the top of her visor. Her arm was half-raised between threatening the guy and helping him up, but the anger that she read on his face stayed her hand. She'd long decided she would not ask if he was okay, if he could find the strength to fire stakes at her he obviously couldn't be that injured, could he?

She stood before him, and said nothing. If he wanted conversation then it would be up to him to speak.

[zeke]

Zeke watched as the stakes flew though the air shattering anything that might have been in their way, trees , rocks it didn’t matter at the speed those things where going one would be lucky if they didn’t die instantly when hit with one of those. Did he mention they where poisoned? He’d taken several vampires for study and after several tests he found that their bodies where immune to any sort of bacterial disease, an interesting discovery to say the least. It would no doubt help him create a cure for vampirism, though Cure III, the third experimental cure in the series when used on a vampire it only managed to poison the blood resulting in death, interesting.

Returning his mind to the present via an unsatisfactory clicking indicating he had to reload Zeke made no move to do so and instead sat there. He didn’t expect whatever might have shot him presumably a hunter to survive his staking assault so he proceeded to dig out the bullet from his armor, at least it didn’t penetrate anything important, though he couldn’t move his arm at all. Holstering his weapon his jaw clenched as he heard leaves crunch underneath an unknown weight then he saw the outline of a figure. His still usable arm tightened ready to unleash his hidden switch blade if needed.

But then the figure offered a hand, raising an eyebrow warily he simply stared at the offered assistance. Seconds passed between the two obviously neither where wanting to be the one to break the silence. Raising his hand over the figures as if he where about to take his hand but instead dropped the hunter’s bullet in his hand. “You missed…” Zeke said simply before standing up by himself not bothering to hide his discomfort as his right arm moved in the process.

His face loosed once again returning to its cool stoic nature before he moved past the man without another word. Well that so much killed the night for him, with this arm he’d be lucky if he’ll be able to go out tomorrow yet alone continue tonight. Rubbing his face as he walked Zeke made careful note to dowse the wound in alcohol when he got back to his car. Not exactly comfortable but he’d need to do so anyway to remove his scent the last then he need was a bunch of bloodsuckers to know where he lives.

Making his way out of the Park he began walking silently down the street to his car. It had taken him only a few minutes to reach his car, immediately he opened driver’s seat and sat inside. Sighing as he pulled out the medical kit, flipping on the cars headlights who where replaced with UV lights previous to his outing. While the car didn’t possess as many toy’s as the materialistic billondollar playboy might have liked it still possessed something’s, though the only thing that would make much of a difference now was its sonar. By letting out low sound waves it worked just like a bat anything that moved in its range would be known by him.

Minutes later after cleaning his gun wound the sonar picked something up, Sighing he looked outside and aimed his recently reloaded gun. He didn’t feel like dealing with another vampire tonight.

[aether]

Kestryll's hand remained quasi-outstretched, expecting the man to take it and pull himself upright. It wasn't everyday that Kess offered any form of kindness, and the least he could do was accept it.
The seconds stretched and still her hand remained empty. He refrained from speech and as such, she said nothing either. Then he shifted, lifting up one arm, his hand hovering inches over hers, and just as Kess prepared herself to put all strength into her arm and haul him up, he dropped something into her palm. Kess retracted her hand, gazing down at the thing he'd put into her palm. It was her bullet.
So much for a helping hand...

You missed.

The fact that he'd given her back her bullet without a trace of blood showed Kess that he'd been protected. It was Kevlar, most likely, as it was more available, but Kevlar vests didn't cover the part of the shoulder that she'd accidentally shot. In the darkness, she examined his attire, and although she didn't recognise it, she did deduce that it was probably custom made. This guy was good.

Kess glanced up at him, her pale eyes narrowed behind dark lenses. She watched him as he picked himself up, seemingly making a show of his arm. Kess exhaled silently through her nose like a wounded rhinoceros. When he shot stakes at her, did she make a big deal of it? No. She'd had a job to do, and she'd been determined to do it, so she took the pain like someone who actually had a spine and got back to work. One little bullet and he was turning it into something life threatening.
The fucking cheek.

He proceeded to walk straight past her without so much as a goodbye. Nothing to show that his mother had ever taught him any manners. Well, that just clinched it for Kestryll. Fuming silently, she stared after him as he left.

Silence followed in his wake. Kess one-handedly balanced the bullet on her thumb and flicked it into the air. It flashed and winked as it caught the light, and then was lost to the darkness of the night sky. It would have descended after a moment or two, but where it came to fall would forever be a mystery.
Standing still, Kestryll surveyed Hyde Park for a second through her visor. By now the park was empty, not even the Vampire's cold corpse showed up vividly on the lenses now. She stripped them from her face and pinched the bridge of her nose where they'd rested. She smoothed back a non-existent strand of loose hair and holstered her remaining weapon. Then she left the park.

The outskirts of Hyde Park weren't that far away, but it took Kestryll a good few minutes to reach it, not least because the route she took was a deliberate zigzag, just in case any more cadavers turned up. She actually found a dead human woman with puncture marks on her neck that Kestryll identified as a Vampire bite, but nothing else turned up.

Her visor dangling from the fingers of her left hand, Kess stepped out into the road, looking up and down along the street. The only thing that caught her eye was a parked car, the headlights shining not yellowish grey, but a clear white-blue that betrayed it as being ultraviolet. Kess scowled in thought, and set off towards it.
She recalled the custom-made bulletproof suit the man had worn, the skill of his switchblades, and the attack on the Vampire. The man had obviously known what the Vampire was, and although Kestryll's mind had been quick to piece this information together, it had never glared at her in the face quite like those headlights.

Kess approached the car without trepidation, and soon enough she stood so close to the vehicle that her feet skimmed the bluish light.