GDR
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Post by GDR on Aug 13, 2008 20:20:28 GMT -5
Redux of the idea of a Shadow Clan TV Show. Because I'm too lazy to write out actual fanfics, so I just write out ideas. Anyways, this is the idea for the hour-and-a-half origin special that goes out before the actual show. By the way, this one is better than the other one because I actually thought it out a bit first, as opposed to random story-telling. I revamped most of the characters to make for a story slightly (but not completely) more rooted in reality. ~~~ Episode 0: Seven Deadly Sinners An unnamed man loses everything when he is possessed by a demon called Armok. Bargaining with the demon in a mirror, he agrees to allow it possess him without resisting for exactly one year, at which point the demon must leave his body. Armok agrees, and so begins Armok’s year on Earth. The wise and calculating demon uses both bad luck and dark powers to his advantage to amass a monetary fortune almost instantly, and soon he begins looking for anyone who can help him stop a prophetic influx of demons from Hell. After being taken from their tiny Amazonian village by a European slave trade that eventually leads them to America, Isaac uses his warrior-training to break himself and the princess of his village, Hawk, free and escape their forced service. They slowly try to filter into US society, but have no connections and are soon forced to live in peoples’ homes while they are away. Though Rose has lived in a small town her entire life, her love for fantasy leads her to a strange story book. As she reads from the book every day, she soon realizes she has the same magical abilities that its main character does, as well as the main character’s need to journey to the corners of the earth to find an unknown magical artifact, or the world will become covered in darkness. The child of a well-known Armenian mobster is captured several years ago by an old-fashioned gypsy family in Eastern Europe and raised in the art of fortune telling and celestial divinity. After watching his father’s men kill his “adopted” family, he moves to America and takes up the task of finding anyone who can help him kill his insane father. He uses the cards to find six other people whose fates are intertwined with his. One day, a woman wakes up and discovers that she has been spending the last three years of her life as an assassin being mentally controlled by a strange drug. She tries to kill herself during withdrawal, but when she cuts her own neck, her body heals it instantly, and she regresses into a violent cat-like creature. After a few more mishaps as the cat-creature, she seeks the people who gave her the drug so she can learn to control her transformations. A nameless lawyer working on a case is partially killed by the mob boss who he is trying to persecute, and then thrown into a grave and buried alive. As he lives out his dying moments, his repressed second personality makes a deal with the devil - he can be brought back to life better than he was before, but he must get close to and kill a possessed man on Earth. Rising from the earth as a zombie, he is now twice as strong and unable to be killed. All he has to do is deceive and then betray the man that is possessed by Armok in less than a year. ~ A week later, the seven of them are all looking around at each other from a large hallway, in a building that they will live together in. They are the Shadow Clan, each of them pulling for their own cause and agenda in a tentative alliance with the other six. Armok Powers: Enhanced strength, durability, agility, and fighting abilities; manipulation of darkness and raw shadow energy Personality: Cold, manipulating, ruthless Isaac Powers: Training in extreme fighting abilities and use of tribal weaponry Personality: Quiet, cautious, intelligent Hawk Powers: Religious rites give her mystic healing powers; training in acrobatics and use of tribal weaponry Personality: Energetic, kind, somewhat naïve Rose Powers: Manifestation of raw magical energy; limited teleporting; sensitive to magic Personality: Curious, stubborn, street smart GDR Powers: Precognition through stars and cards; psychometry; sixth sense; intermediate use of modern weaponry Personality: Brash, aggressive, indecisive Kat Powers: Lioness transformation catalyzed by physical injury; advanced healing factor Personality: Sarcastic, neurotic, distrustful Michael Severs Powers: Enhanced strength; regeneration and animation of body parts; death sense Personality: Split; either innocent and peaceful or cruel and opportunistic ~~~ Who will live? Who will die? Well, I made sure everyone whose characters were in this was still here. Hopefully you guys don't dislike the changes I made too much: Just know that some peoples' characters will be altered in certain ways as time goes on. Other SC members will also be added the way they were in TV Show 1.
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GDR
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Post by GDR on Aug 14, 2008 18:40:10 GMT -5
Episode 1: Colorless Seven, Part 1
A month after their meeting and living together, GDR has been spending time teaching Isaac how to use more modern forms of weaponry, though he has not been able to break the man’s passive-aggressive silence. Hawk and Rose have formed a friendship, while Michael has befriended nearly everyone with his calm gregariousness. On the outside of any friendship circles is Kat, who feels quiet contempt for the others, and Armok, who is parasitic in his use of the other Shadow Clan members.
GDR predicts their first task through a card reading, which involves stopping a terrorist plot on a nearby city from going into effect. GDR is sent to make a claim to the city’s police force, but his claims are misinterpreted as threats, and he is locked up. Isaac and Kat, on the other hand, make a connection through the city’s underworld, which leads them to a terrorist cell hiding, in all places, in the city’s sewer system. When the terrorists try to shoot Kat repeatedly, her wounds heal and she transforms into a violent cat-beast, in the process seriously injuring Isaac. As she rampages through the sewers, she discovers the terrorist’s plot, which involves literally blowing the entire ground in and sinking the city into the cavernous depths below. She discovers this too late, however, as the terrorist plot is set to go off right then. Several explosions take place around her, and the entire city crumbles down on top of herself and Isaac.
Episode 2: Colorless Seven, Part 2
GDR, Isaac and Kat wake up to Hawk healing them, after Armok used his shadows to save them from being crushed by the city. Kat is immediately angry and prepares to leave, but a sudden convincing from Rose makes her stay, against her better judgment. Rose, Hawk and Michael believe their mission has failed and they are doomed, but Isaac believes otherwise, as does Armok secretly. GDR explains and understands that the nature of his powers is theoretical, not concrete. Later, GDR sees the future in the stars, one possibly involving an assassination in the SC group very soon, but he hides this from them. Kat receives flashbacks of her formerly forgotten assassin days in a training session with Isaac and soon after breaks a mirror in frustration. The cuts sustained cause her to become the lioness again, and Kat ends up slipping out of the base unsighted in search of blood. Elsewhere in the base, Rose is knocked out by a gas attack, but her magic powers teleport her out of harm’s way mysteriously before it can kill her. Michael is also attacked, but does not need to breathe and therefore does not get affected. As Armok, Hawk, GDR, and Isaac gather onto the front of the base to avoid the gas attacks, somebody gets Armok’s head in their crosshairs and shoots.
Episode 3: Colorless Seven, Part 3
Armok is not killed by the bullet, only stunned, and in the confusion GDR, Isaac and Hawk find cover in the nearby forest, where they find an incapacitated Rose. Armok uses the shadows to draw out his assailant, who turns out to be a Japanese assassin named Hikari. Her Plan B, a close-range bazooka attack, is foiled by Michael’s detached and reanimated body parts. In the forest, Kat in her berserk form appears to the four SC members in hiding, but, despite none save the KO’d Rose having any offensive powers or any weapons on hand, they manage to outwit and out-maneuver the lioness. Hikari blows up Michael with a grenade, sending his body parts all over the SC lawn, and Armok is simply forced to match her technology blow-for-blow. She eventually flees, and Armok turns his attention towards caging in Kat and saving his teammates. For the first time Armok displays emotion towards his team that isn’t fueled by purpose or profession. Hawk later tries healing Kat while GDR and Rose track down Michael’s scattered body parts and talk about the team. Isaac tries to convince Hawk to leave, but she refuses. Armok has a conversation with his host body in the mirror, and determines that somebody on his team is going to have to be sacrificed for his eventual cause, and he already knows who that is.
Episode 4: Colorless Seven, Part 4
GDR uses psychometry on the bullet, and he and Isaac go to track Kari’s location. Kat has come back from her cat form more subdued and quiet, while Michael has more of an edge after piecing himself back together. Rose and Hawk go out for a walk in the forest and fall prey to a Minotaur creature. GDR and Isaac track Hikari to a large building in an unknown city, where she is begging her superior for more funding to catch Armok’s host, who apparently amassed massive mob debts before being possessed. Rose attacks the Minotaur in the forest with magic and recognizes it from her story book, where the main character is in a labyrinth and tricks it with its own maze. Isaac and GDR manage to take the building by storm using only a handgun, a few knives, and GDR’s sixth sense to lead them to Hikari. Isaac sorely beats her at a physical fight, and when she looks ready to give up, she reveals she was planning to blow up the building all along if she didn’t get the money, and she detonates her bomb. Hawk manages to get the Minotaur lost in the forest, and Rose uses a magical energy attack to destroy the ground below it, which sends it into a group of catacombs from an ancient civilization. Curious and sensing magic inside, Rose drags Hawk along with her and the two go down inside.
Episode 5: Colorless Seven, Part 5
Both of them feeling different and renewed, Michael and Kat make a connection for the first time, but Armok tells them that they are both going to have to go on a plane to find GDR and Isaac, who he believes are in a dire situation. Hawk and Rose discover that their catacombs are the tomb of a warrior-king, and that the magic Rose is sensing comes from the sarcophagus itself. However, a danger presents itself to them when the magic in the tomb resurrects the king’s angry guardians. Rose is teleported out by her own power, which leaves Hawk to escape the undead attackers by herself. When they are reunited, Hawk is pissed at Rose for leaving her. Later, Kat and Michael have found the building where GDR and Isaac have seemingly been killed, but further inspection reveals them to have survived through GDR’s sixth sense. Hikari, who also survived, suddenly appears, steals GDR’s handgun, and shoots Kat in the head, knowingly activating her cat transformation. Rose and Hawk both separately decide not to tell Armok about the ancient tomb, despite the dangerous magic Rose sensed inside it.
Episode 6: Colorless Seven, Part 6
Though Kat’s berserk form is at first rampaging all over the ruins of the building, it hesitates to attack the group, specifically when it sees Michael. Instead, Kat simply maims and kills Hikari and then returns to her human form, unconscious. A few days later, the four of them return to a very quiet base - Armok doesn’t talk to Rose and Hawk, and they aren’t talking to each other. Alone in a mirror, Michael reveals that his current dominant personality is actually the evil one, and he is masquerading as the good Michael. Hawk now wants to leave the SC, but this time Isaac refuses her. GDR gets a prediction from his cards of more cracks forming within the group. After studying her story book more thoroughly, Rose decides to go on a journey alone similar to the main character’s, and she says her goodbyes to most of the Shadow Clan. GDR warns her against it privately, but nothing will stop her from leaving. Armok is apparently planning to put his members to work in helping him achieve his goal.
Armok -How do the Shadow Clan members fit into his twisted plan, and which of them will be his sacrifice?
Isaac -Why doesn’t he want to leave, and what about his former slave ring?
Hawk -Will she ever be friends with Rose again? Oh, and what about that ancient tomb?
Rose -What sort of great or terrible things are going to happen to her on her solo journey?
GDR -Will any of his predictions of danger and disaster come true?
Kat -Who is in control, Kat or her transformation? And how did Hikari know about Kat’s transformation in the first place?
Michael -Will the good Michael ever regain control, and who will find out about Mike’s evil assassination plot?
NEXT: Rosette in Horrorland!
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Post by Achtung Katie™ on Aug 14, 2008 19:24:39 GMT -5
HELL YES
ahahahahahaha oh my god I love this
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GDR
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Post by GDR on Aug 15, 2008 16:51:20 GMT -5
A more descriptive run-down of everybody's powers and abilities.
~~~
Powers/Abilities
Armok: Because of his demon possession status, Armok has superhuman attributes. His skin is hard enough to deflect bullets without being punctured, he can leap distances that normal humans cannot, and he has a moderate degree of superhuman strength. In addition, he can take control of areas with a certain degree of darkness and solidify them into a special type of “shadow” that he can manipulate very easily. This solid shadow can be expanded or contracted and can be used to grab things in a form of telekinesis, create barriers or prisons, or can also be turned intangible and used as a form of transportation. These solid shadows have a unique relationship with Armok himself, as he can surround himself with the shadows and use them to teleport himself to another place within a short distance that is also covered in shadow, though he cannot do this with others. It is thought that Armok sees everything in a degree of darkness and therefore has complete nocturnal vision, but by contrast can be blinded easily by a large degree of sudden light.
Isaac: Isaac has gone through a strange and unspecified degree of warrior-training in the Amazon, and in the process he has gained an almost inhuman degree of accuracy, reaction time, strength, speed, stamina, and focus. He can scale a normal-sized tree in two seconds and has the combat training to defeat eight ordinary men at the same time. He is well-versed in the use of blade or spear weapons and, as of recently, has learned how to use firearms as well, with his already-present accuracy putting him on the level of somebody who has been training in firearms for years.
Hawk: Amazon religion for years has been depicted with the ability to heal people through the use of prayer and ritual. Hawk is the 73rd in a long line of princesses within her particular tribe, and the 13th of her family’s dynastic rule, which is unusual because most dynasties in her tribe traditionally are de-throned at 12. She has been trained in the art of ritualistic healing, a method of healing which works very quickly and whose secrets have eluded the scientific world for years. In addition, a princess is also required to learn the arts of archery and javelin throwing thoroughly for her own protection, in addition to extreme gymnastic and climbing training regimens that are easily harsher than those of the Olympics performers. Hawk is no exception.
Rose: Because the origin of her powers is unknown, the extent and limits of her powers are equally unknown. It is know that the bright, colorful, destructive lights she produces are raw magic, and that she does not have the ability to produce an unlimited amount of it. She cannot shape or control it, only produce it from her hands, but it can easily destroy steel or a material of similar solidity at the very least. She has been attempting unsuccessfully to redirect the magic into a usage that is less raw and unfiltered, but she has no literal training in magic, so all of her attempts are amateur and based on approximations. Recently, her powers did manifest themselves in a more complicated way, though it was done subconsciously, when she was teleported from one place to another not far away by her own magical energies, which suggests she could one day learn to use her magic differently. Also, she has the ability to sense magic when it is being applied elsewhere. Though she can sense different levels of magical density, she cannot necessarily tell the source.
GDR: GDR’s abilities are vaguely undefined even to him, and are possibly even fraudulent, as they are based totally on assumption. According to his assertions, he has the ability to see glimpses of the future in the stars within the night sky, and he can also interpret figures on his tarot cards and equate them to things in every-day life in a way that allows him predict future events. Thus far his assertions have always been partially but not entirely true, mostly due to himself drawing rash conclusions about his own predictions. GDR is also affected by his “sixth sense” ability. This complicated skill gives him an intuition towards things that are about to happen and how he should react. While his precognition often shows him the effect but not the cause, his sixth sense often guides him towards a cause but doesn’t show him the effect. As part of his training, GDR can also glimpse strong thoughts or emotions off objects that have been used by people previously, a psychic ability called psychometry. Man-made objects tend to hold psychometric residue more often than natural objects. Rose does not sense any magic whenever GDR uses his power.
Kat: Because of the interactions with a strange drug in her system, Kat has a long-term memory loss which causes her to be more disconnected to her emotions as well. Because of this, she does not leave any psychic residue wherever she goes, and mind abilities have no effect on her, including illusions. Her body works at a super-fast pace, which means any wounds she sustains heal within a few hours where most people would take months healing. The drug Kat was on causes her to have a strange reaction with injury that causes her body to change. She grows fine, tanish hair all over, her physiology changes from humanoid to feline, and she becomes much larger. She grows cat ears, a tail, pawed hands and feet with claws, and a completely rearranged bone structure that, in the end, leaves her transformed into a very large cat. The species she would be most closely related with would be that of a female African lion, although there are noticeable differences in size (she is much bigger, with a shoulder height of about five and a half feet) and the size of her teeth, which bear a resemblance to a saber-tooth tiger. While acting under this lioness form, Kat has no control over her actions and is reduced to animalistic thought patterns. She is very aggressive towards any human she sees and does not have any sense of mercy. Recently, however, this was proven somewhat wrong, when she abstained from killing her allies while focusing specifically on her enemies. Kat seems to have a limited memory when acting under her cat form, but is not completely disconnected. In fact, her transformations sometimes uncover Kat’s previously forgotten memories.
Michael: Michael is not alive in any literal sense, and he does not require oxygen, food, or water to act. He has no sense of pain, and his mental activity goes on in a separate entity from his body, so he cannot be affected by mental abilities, including illusions. His body parts can be removed from each other and act on their own, and they can then re-attach themselves semi-seamlessly, as long as they are placed near enough to each other. His mind controls all of his body parts simultaneously, which is how he can control his hands and feet from a distance, but if his eyes are removed or diverted, his body parts are blind. Despite brittle bones, he is granted a degree of superhuman strength which appears to transfer into all parts of his body. In addition to this, Michael has the ability to sense the residue of death, and he can see and speak to dead spirits psionically, which is known as his “death sense.”
Remember, children, nothing is as it seems... One of the Shadow Clan members is about to find out that everything they thought they knew is a lie. Or, maybe all the lies were more true than they thought.
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Post by Achtung Katie™ on Aug 15, 2008 17:02:01 GMT -5
/fangirls
also fuck you you made me later for dinner.
LOVE IT. LOVE IT. LOVE IT.
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GDR
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Post by GDR on Aug 15, 2008 22:11:56 GMT -5
Episode 7: Rosette in Horrorland, Part 1
Rose travels in a car towards her unknown goal, but ends up lost on a desert road that stretches on endlessly. Her car runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and she has to walk. As she walks, the desert slowly turns to grass, and she meets three strange characters - a black talking rabbit, a super-fast turtle, and a backwards-talking unicorn. As her journey gets increasingly strange, she falls down a hole in a giant golf course. She appears re-dressed in a giant forest, and is declared queen of a colony of odd bug-like tree creatures, but they secretly plan to sacrifice her to a local dragon. She catches wind of their plan and flees, but they begin to chase their former queen. She is offered protection from an old lady living in a tiny house, and the old lady offers Rose a pill to ease her headache. Meanwhile, Armok starts trying to find other people to join the clan, and Isaac starts to teach Kat about his martial arts training and his meditation techniques, which she uses to calm her confused and troubled mind.
Episode 8: Rosette in Horrorland, Part 2
Rose takes the pill and wakes up in a giant bizarre dungeon, with a man in a top-hat taunting her endlessly while she fights her way through an endless influx of unique and whimsical creatures. Her three followers from before also taunt her, as does the old lady. As she reaches the end of her dungeon, she teleports out the window and ends up riding on a giant comet-pill in space. She crash-lands on a little planet covered in mushrooms and moss, and ends up getting assaulted by laughing butterflies. She slowly realizes, however, that whatever is happening to her is a mixture of dream and trick, and she starts to manipulate the illusions with her mind. As she does so, however, they grow increasingly demonic until she herself starts to fracture like a mirror. As the last piece of her completely shatters in her imagination, Kat and Mike wake up and find the other four SC members gathered together in a zombie-like state.
Episode 9: Rosette in Horrorland, Part 3
Armok, Isaac, Hawk, and GDR have become medieval adventurers in a forest. Armok is a brave knight, Isaac a stealthy ninja, Hawk a gentle archer, and GDR a mystical wizard. As they walk further into the forest, they are attacked by a host of woodland creatures. In the real world, the four of them are attacking Kat and Mike, who flee in confusion. Evil Mike sees this as a chance to kill Armok, but his detached hand is not strong enough to damage him. Kat goes through hell and high water to avoid getting injured and transforming into her feline form. Rose wakes up trapped in a warehouse by a much older version of the man in the top-hat from her strange journey. He reveals that her “journey” was a mixture of a hallucinogenic trip and a telepathy-induced dream. She attempts to use her powers, but he tells her that she’s never had any powers, and that her trip was merely a tool that he used to broadcast his mental control over the Shadow Clan without getting close to the members himself. At the SC base, Kat stumbles into Rose’s room, where she finds her story book and discovers that its pages are completely blank. Armok uses his shadows to tear Mike apart as much as possible, and the other three corner Kat. Knowing she is trapped, Kat closes her eyes and starts meditating, and GDR takes his shot at her.
Episode 10: Rosette in Horrorland, Part 4
Within her feline form, Kat fights for control of her animal instincts and manages to stand rigid as the other Shadow Clan members attack her. Rose discovers that she can mentally go back into the mind of the man that is holding her hostage, and discovers that his name is Ion and that he knows her from before her “tool” days. Regardless of this connection, she cuts off his control over her mind before learning too much. Because his control over the others’ minds is through Rose, they stop attacking Mike and Kat, and are left confused and dumbfounded while their trips give way to reality. GDR receives a psychometric sense of Rose’s location through her storybook, and Armok transfers to Rose’s warehouse through shadows and finds her alone and emotionally broken. Armok’s host side feels for Rose emotionally, and he calls for one of the other Shadow Clan members to drive there and bring them home. Back at the base, Rose is vacant and emotionless. GDR, Kat, Mike, and Isaac reason out that Rose’s powers were also fake the whole time, and recalls that Kat and Mike never actually saw them actively, because they weren’t affected by Ion’s illusions, which included the minotaur that attacked her and Hawk. Hawk becomes more sympathetic towards her plight, but Rose overhears their conversation and is left more depressed.
Episode 11: In Praise of Failure
It is a week since Rose’s hallucination, and Rose has suffered an emotional breakdown from her discovery that everything about her adventure was fake, but Hawk and later Kat manage to convince her to stay, despite being powerless. GDR, who seems to be able to sense something else, however, is unsure if she IS, in fact, powerless, but does not elaborate because he becomes distracted by his own OCD when he finds one of his tarot cards missing, which somebody has actually hidden. Hawk leads Isaac out onto a walk with her, with her planning to declare her love for him, but he seems aware of this and leaves her behind preemptively. Mike pieces himself together again, and this time comes back as the good Michael, wanting to leave to protect his friends from the evil Michael. Armok goes through the profiles of several soldiers for hire before finding one he likes, and he makes a phone call. Rose comes out of her room with a new look and style, her sense of wonder and curiosity dead, and she asks Isaac to teach her his martial arts skills, but he refuses, which makes her very angry at him. The episode ends with each of the Shadow Clan members except Armok, standing alone and isolated: Hawk still in the forest looking to where Isaac walked away; Rose broken on the floor of her room, with a lighter to her storybook; Isaac smoking and isolating himself from everybody on the roof; Mike looking at the base from his car, his suitcase packed; GDR looking down at his scattered pile of tarot cards, counting each one over and over obsessively; and Kat watching all of the others with a distant, nervous concern.
Armok -Who is his newest recruit, and how will his host affect his judgment in the future?
Isaac -Why the sudden distance? And what about his original slave ring?
Hawk -Without a friend in the house, where does she stand in the group, especially with Isaac, her only connection to her past?
Rose -We know her curiosity is dead, but is she really as powerless as she thinks? And what is her strange connection with Ion?
GDR -Who hid his tarot card, and how will it affect his telling of the future?
Kat -From being the least function to most function in the house over the course of an arc, how will Kat handle the sudden cracks formed in her group?
Michael -Is he really leaving? And what connection does his body separation have with his personality switching?
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Post by GDR on Nov 22, 2008 12:22:47 GMT -5
This thing has been in the oven for a LONG time.
~~~
Episode 12: No Desert for Young Men, Part 1
A week later, Mike has left the Shadow Clan, and the group is fractured and in ruin. Isaac has had little to no contact with any other members, and Hawk has fallen into a depression about it. Rose has directed her anger towards joining the biker gang of a local town, and now she rarely appears at the base at all. GDR is unable to make even simple decisions without his complete tarot deck, and Armok is spending hours on the phone with his newest recruit.
Kat meditates every day, and one day decides to take Hawk on a shopping trip to lighten her spirits. Hawk is definitely brightened eventually, but strange events conspire to separate them at the mall. Kat is eventually led onto the mall roof, where a trap goes off that instantly injures her and transforms her into her feline form, at the same time dropping her through the glass portion of the roof. Her feline form struggles to resist attacking the innocent mall-goers, and eventually she gives in and starts to massacre people. Hawk plans on stopping her, but another trap goes off that injures and incapacitates her. She is dragged off, while a police assault team surrounds the mall to try to contain lioness Kat. At the same time, Rose wins a bike race that results in her winning a large sum of money, only to find a group of blindfolded people “watching” her. At the mall, Kat is finally shot full of sedation enough that her body tires and she goes into her human form. The police are dumbfounded but take her in nonetheless. A government agent somewhere watches her capture on the screen and grins. Isaac is meditating in the forest when he gets a flashback and realizes something is horribly wrong.
Episode 13: No Desert for Young Men, Part 2
Hawk wakes up in a run-down mobile home. She heals her wounds groggily but is incapacitated. Her captor tells her she’s always been his favorite captive, and she recognizes the person. At the base, Isaac first tries to get GDR to make a prediction for him, but when GDR says he cannot, Isaac produces GDR’s missing tarot card, the Puppeteer, and leaves, to GDR’s shock and awe. A man arrives just as Isaac leaves the base, and Armok greets the soldier-for-hire enthusiastically. Isaac tries to convince Rose, who just came back to the base, to take him to the mall on her motorcycle, but she refuses coldly, just before the two of them are surrounded by the blindfolded watchers. In jail, Kat is visited by a strange man who quickly tells her that he is the one who set her trap. She threatens to injure herself and attack him as the lioness, but he produces two things - first, a photograph of Hawk, crying, with a bomb stuffed and taped into her mouth, and an open vial, which produces an odor that Kat recognizes very well. Rose displays new knife-fighting abilities against the blind watchers, and together she and Isaac dispose of them pretty quickly, until one of them steals Rose’s bike and crashes it into Isaac, albeit at a relatively low-speed. Rose surrenders to the group before they decide to run them both over. GDR shuffles his deck and sets up a tarot formation, then comes to a shocking realization and runs into Armok’s office, where he and the new recruit are talking. Kat has been removed from the jail and is now being driven by Hawk’s captor. It is clear he is forcing her to make a decision she hates.
Episode 14: No Desert for Young Men, Part 3
It’s sunset, and Rose and Isaac are being marched through the woods by the blind watchers, who are actually not blind at all. They eventually come to a halt, and all face one spot, where Kat suddenly appears with a gun. Rose and Isaac are shocked, but Kat merely apologizes and literally shoots herself in the foot, activating her cat form. Rose and Isaac flee while the lioness begins devouring the blind watchers, who literally allow themselves to be eaten. The lioness chases them and they seem doomed, but the twilight shadows swallow them up and they are protected from Kat. Where she is being held hostage, Hawk is watching her captor silently, who himself is watching the forest activity from a hidden camera. He tells her that he is in control anyways, and that the both of them know exactly who this is all about. Armok appears and crushes the remaining blind watchers, in addition to weakening Kat enough to force her into her unconscious human form. He tells his team members that everything is under control now, as long as his new soldier is on the job. GDR and the new soldier stand at the site where Isaac left Hawk, and he picks up enough mental residue to discover Hawk’s whereabouts currently. Despite some awkwardness with the two of them and Rose’s bike, they take it and set off to the trailer home in the nearby desert. Back at the base at night, Armok, Rose, Isaac, and the KO’d Kat arrive, and Rose is angry that her bike is gone. Armok puts Kat in the med bay, and Isaac reveals to Rose that he knows exactly who is behind this, and that they need to get a ride as soon as possible, or Hawk is in certain danger. Rose takes out her cell phone and makes a phone call. The new soldier and GDR come to the trailer home in the early morning, and the soldier loads up on his assault weapons, but GDR predicts that this won’t be a simple shooting game. The two burst into the trailer to find the insane hostage-man has his vitals wired up to a detonator, and there are bombs tied all over Hawk’s body.
Episode 15: No Desert for Young Men, Part 4
Isaac and Rose are riding on back of a pair of Rose’s biker friends’ bikes. They are unsure of where they are going, but they are hoping they will find a sign of Hawk’s presence somewhere on the road, and Isaac is confident they will. The psycho is holding GDR and the new recruit at bay with his detonator, at the same time asking Hawk to reveal who he is.
Hawk tells the story of another villager, a warrior like Isaac, who is picked over Isaac for the role of God-warrior, and is taught abilities that nobody else even knows about by the village elder. During a hunt, the villager comes upon civilization. He is spotted by a very rich and powerful man while defending himself when a group of thugs try to beat him as part of an anti-native hate crime. He becomes the man’s personal bodyguard and assassin, at the same time completely cutting all ties with his village. Eventually, the rich man comes upon an Eastern European slave ring and decides to go into a new arm of business, with his True Assassin leading him to the various Amazon villages and his men rounding up and selling the natives illegally. This is how Hawk and Isaac are roped into the ring, separated from their family, and shipped around the world, eventually arriving in America.
The True Assassin tells GDR to make a prediction with his cards. GDR nervously complies and discovers that Rose and Isaac will be here soon. It soon becomes clear that the True Assassin already knows this, and he pulls out another detonator and presses it. On the road, Rose, Isaac, and the biker gang are caught in an explosion. Rose and Isaac are on the tail end of it and survive, but are left surrounded by the dead bodies of all of Rose’s friends. Rose is heavily unaffected, to Isaac’s shock, and the two of them see a trailer home nearby, with Rose’s bike parked outside. GDR and the new recruit hear the explosion but cannot go anywhere. The True Assassin taunts them and then, he points his used detonator at GDR’s deck of cards and puts a bullet through it, to GDR’s horror.
Episode 16: No Desert for Young Men, Part 5
Kat is in the desert. She stops in front of a rock, takes out the vial the True Assassin gave her, fills a needle with the liquid, and shoots up. She is happily unaware that the drug use makes her features more feline. At the same time, GDR is emotionally incapacitated, and the new recruit is stunned and unable to do anything. Rose and Isaac arrive at the trailer home but are apprehensive about going in. Eventually, Isaac forces Rose to take her bike back to the base and tell Armok about the danger Hawk is in. He steps into the trailer home to discover the situation. The True Assassin happily explains that he figured out the variables perfectly and set up a situation in which they were forced to meet. Rose is about to take off on the road when she looks back at her dead biker gang, stops, and begins burying them each, one at a time, as best she can. In the trailer, The True Assassin suddenly puts a bullet through the new recruit’s eye, leaving Isaac and him, for all intents and purposes, alone. Isaac reveals that the True Assassin had never truly won the right to be the tribe’s God-warrior, and that he and Hawk have been wondering when they would get their revenge. He also reveals that he got a vision of the True Assassin returning when he touched GDR’s deck once, and stole his card in hopes that taking away the Puppeteer would somehow change the future, as well as to keep GDR from predicting it. The True Assassin produces swords for the both of them, and drops both of his detonators in the process. The new recruit, whose metal eyes deflected the bullet that would have killed him, sends a signal that Armok receives. Isaac and the True Assassin face off with swords, but Isaac instead disconnects the True Assassin from his detonator in a single slash.
Episode 17: No Desert for Young Men, Part 6
Catatonic GDR, hostage-held Hawk, and the fake-dead soldier are all deadly still as The True Assassin kicks Isaac out of the mobile home door and the two of them have a sword-fight outside. Rose stops burying her dead friends to watch the fight, and Armok appears in a nearby shadow but does not interrupt. The fight is fierce and goes on for quite a while, until The True Assassin gets Isaac down and is about to plunge his sword into Isaac’s heart. In the door of the mobile home, the soldier shoots The True Assassin from behind. Isaac is furious that his revenge has been denied, but Hawk stops him from attacking the soldier, and for a second they hug each other as they realize they are alive. Armok identifies his soldier as the Lone Wolf and he and Rose appear to the group. Hawk turns and gives a violently angry speech to Armok on what he has done to ruin all of their lives, and for the first time Hawk and Isaac simultaneously agree to leave the Shadow Clan. They steal The True Assassin’s car and drive off, away from the four remaining Clan members. Wolf drags GDR out of the mobile home, and the four members leave, deciding that they’re simply going to have to extend their membership a bit now. At the base, Armok names Rose his new second-in-command, despite her getting distracted during the hostage crisis, and GDR is left catatonic in the med bay. Rose doesn’t even want to stay around due to her lack of obligation to Armok, but Armok offers her a large sum of money as payment, and she sides with her own greed. With only three active members, the Shadow Clan optimistically looks onward towards building a new team. In the desert somewhere, a drug-ravaged and more feline Kat collapses in the middle of the road. The True Assassin’s car drives up to her, stops, and Hawk and Isaac get out in awe.
Armok -Who will be in his new wave of recruits to the team? What is their ultimate goal, anyways?
Isaac -Where will his new road trip take him, and how will his failure to exact revenge affect his psyche?
Hawk -How can she possibly help Kat to cope with her newfound addiction?
Rose -Will her darker attitude help or hurt her in her new role as the second-in-command?
GDR -What will get him out of his current unresponsive state?
Kat -Will she ever escape her addiction, and what will be the lasting effects of her drug use either way?
Mike -Where is he now, anyways?
Wolf -How will his status as a mercenary affect his tentative placement on the team?
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