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Get a username and password and give this a whirl with me.

Would it help if I said "please?"

Chances are, you're talking to a Spider. As in, web crawler. XD

Actually, I first posted this when the forum index indicated 17 people viewing this forum, while only 7 registered users were online.

I hope they were not all spiders... that would be creepy.

They could very well be, some spiders have multiple clones that all scan the forum at once.

I was 'unregistered', then I logged in.

"*yawn* Sure is cold..."

Night's fall was coming fast upon the desolated railroad tracks on the desert's expanse. Trailing through their rusted lengths was a man, mid-twenties with a strong composure and a steady step, wearing high brown leather boots matched with used blue jeans and a light purple shirt over a matching leather jacket. A small, deep scar ran down his right jawbone and into his chest, marring his otherwise normal appearance: with dark black eyes and equally black short hair, plus his average height, he'd just been another man of the world in anyone's eyes. But as he lifted his right arm, snapped his fingers and produced two flickering flame orbs to gather at his sides, one would instantly dismiss any assumption of him being 'normal'... after all, spontaneous combustion is widely considered 'stuff of fairy tales and fantasy stories', and not something 'possible'!

But for Luthodiel Jackson... only two things never made sense to him: his name, and the meteor that struck him a few years ago, giving him supernatural powers. He had seen a movie about it once: the man who was also struck by a meteor and used his power for the good of his city, even going as far as becoming a 'superhero' devoted to protect the innocent and the oppressed. But Luth was no hero. He was a cursed entity-- a discarded remnant of a man who wanted to be a pilot, who had dreams of marrying the girl he dated, who worked in an influential company and who studied hard to get to the college of his desire. Everything changed for him the night of the meteor strike. When he survived despite what every doctor and nurse said. When he unconsciously incinerated his family and his lover in a discussion at the hospital.

Those memories stirred every time he saw those flames that came from his hands. Every time the meteor's core pulsated in his chest, he could feel it again: the hard impact from the heavens. The burning drilling of the rock into his being, scorching every fiber of his skin and fusing with his heart in bizarre, violent strokes. And the shock of how his life flashed before his eyes at the pain of that moment... Nowadays, however, all that was nothing compared to the pleasure that using his powers brought him... an ever-present sensation, almost sexual, intensely addictive, matched perfectly to a subservient flesh. The sublime example of power's corruption. But tonight, these fires beside him weren't enough to make him warm. Glancing at them, he made them bigger. The orbs illuminated the path ahead: the glimmer of the mineral rocks, the scurrying vermin, the dusted steel of the tracks that seemed to lead nowhere. He had come from a city where nobody wanted him, chased down to a desert of solitude. A fitting situation, the people thought. It gave them peace, that this freak had gone away from their lives. Perhaps they would never see him again. Perhaps they would. Either way, this temporal peace was welcome to them. The children became upset at his mere presence. This disturbed the parents, who rallied with the authorities to chase Luth away. And once he was gone, he walked.

He still walked. It was getting dark in the desert. He was neither hungry nor thirsty-- the meteor's strike had changed his bodily functions and needs, making him a completely independent, self-functioning being. Like a machine that never needed oiling, or its batteries changed, or its parts replaced. The fires kept on burning radiantly, illuminating a large radius. Walking on the tracks, anyone watching would just dismiss it as a train cart. They always did. If someone didn't, it was either someone extremely curious, or someone who was hunting Luth for the massive reward on his head. Laboratories everywhere wanted him. Governments everywhere denied him. And he always walked, never disturbing anyone, simply... exploring. He could fly to the heavens or dive into the deep blue sea, admiring the Earth he no longer belonged to. Was he even a human anymore?

Luth kept on walking in the darkness surrounding his fires. He sensed a presence, but he couldn't discern enough of it to make it into a threat or just another bystander. Either way, he would probably continue walking. Perhaps when he reached another city at the end of those railroad tracks he could find a bed to sleep in, a nice commodity. And maybe they wouldn't try to shoot him on sight... not like it ever worked on him, but it would be nice if people didn't try to rip his head off on sight for once. He could only hope...

Fire and Steel

“I'm gonna rip your head off.”

The impossibly deep snarl came from inside a rusted railroad car lying next to the track. A hairy face soon poked out from the cargo container, outlined by silvery gray fur and remarkably large canines.

So much for that...

Luth's hands barely moved as he turned to face the wolf man that emerged from the railroad car. In slow, easy steps, the wolf approached him, tapping its weapon against the open palm of its other hand. The wolf was carrying a disjointed piece of the track itself, brandishing the construction equipment like a club. Carrying a club was not so strange for a beast such as this; indeed, with his narrow, blood-red eyes and permanent unfriendly scowl, he would almost look out of place he did not have a weapon. The blue jeans and black leather jacket, however, were rather strange. His huge chest barely seemed to fit in the strained jacket, while the jeans looked snug all the way around as well.

The seven foot tall werewolf came to halt ten feet in front of Luth, still rapping its steel pipe against its other hand. His brown work boots unconsciously shuffled on the ground, nestling into the dirt as a dog might do in the grass. Aside from the jacket, jeans, and boots, there was no other clothing to distinguish this creature. Nonetheless, simply being a giant wolf man was distinguishing enough. Luth looked almost bored, as incinerating a flesh and blood opponent would require little effort.

“Hand over whatever currency you're got, human,” the wolf snarled. His voice was comically low, so deep that one would expect a body immensely larger to contain it. It sounded as though a building were speaking, reverberating the ground beneath them.

Luth ran his hand over his back pocket for a moment, feeling his own wallet, before looking back to the bandit.

“Well, it seems I left my wallet at home,” he sighed, “so I guess you'll have to rob someone else.”

The wolf snorted angrily.

“Don't play with me, human,” he threatened, "I can smell it."

“Don't play with fire, wolf,” Luth countered, "I can melt you." Along with his words, a spear shaped column of flame exploded from his hands, aiming to bore a hole directly through the creature's chest. The springy muscles in the wolf's legs uncoiled, launching him up and over the flaming tunnel, and placing him on a collision course with Luth's head. As the wolf descended, he struck down with his pipe. A direct hit would collapse Luth's skull with ease.

The flame wielder sidestepped casually as the wolf landed, but the landing was more momentous than he expected. The wolf shook the earth as he landed, giving an indication that he weighed far more than he appeared to. Luth was thrown off balance, stumbling backwards. The wolf looked visibly pleased as it lunged forward with amazing speed, throwing a right hook towards Luth's jaw.

Luth was more agile than the wolf anticipated. He regained his balance before the punch connected and ducked under it, rising soon after. Luth's right hand wrapped in flame as he drove his knuckles straight into the wolf man's gut with an uncontested uppercut. His fist met the wolf's belly with...

...a metallic clang?

Luth howled in pain as he broke two of his fingers on the steel skin of the creature. His howl came to an end immediately as the wind was knocked from his lungs by a swing from the railroad track. Luth's lower rib cracked as he was catapulted off his feet and into the side of the abandoned railroad car, leaving a visible dent in the shape of his body.















OoC: Meet Rekozul. His body adapts to whatever substance he is touching, taking on its properties. This only works for one material at a time, and if he is in contact with multiple substances, he can choose which one to mimic. Obviously, the pipe he is holding makes him literally hard as steel and significantly stronger than usual, not to mention virtually fireproof. Prying the pipe out of his steel fingers is no easy task, either. He can also mimic the leather and jean materials he is wearing, and should you strip him completely naked, he can still mimic the properties of whatever he is standing on. He is fairly muscular, however, and even if he is not empowered by any substance, he can still cause some serious hurt with his claws and fangs.

I have over one hundred characters in my repertoire, but this fellow I made especially for you. Enjoy.

Thank you. I shall partake of this experiment!

Luthodiel groaned audibly from within the rusted wreckage, coughing as he gripped the sides of his made hole to get out and unstuck. With a grit of his teeth and another cough, he split the old material as if he was pushing furniture-- it was a quiet, smooth motion, leaving him with enough space to propel his torso out of the empty car husk and back into the sand, where his knees buckled and trembled slightly as he stood back straight. He wheezed, trying to catch his breath as he touched his chest and abdomen: that steel strike reminded him of the time he was struck by a tank shell about two years ago... it propelled him into the air thrice as violently as this wolf person just did, and what's more, it had struck him straight into the meteor core at his chest. Though the thing had melted on impact, the payload had not, therefore the blunt explosion was quite painful. He was a little annoyed when he realized that, if this wolf guy had struck him merely half a foot higher, the impact would've melted that bar on the spot. Why did he have to be so precise in his striking?!

"Owww..." Luth coughed up again, wincing at the broken fingers of his right hand. It was always a pain to have broken bones and limbs... they took forever to recover back to normal. He looked at that wolf thing, already stomping and growling his way with steel bar in hand. With a flat face, he sighed, a motion which hurt his broken rib, and he raised his hand to the incoming blow, deflecting it with a combustion flash which caused the wolf to jump back as a reflex. Swiftly, the animal man lunged forward with a low strike, to which Luth attempted to dodge by doing a back-step-- only that, he had not moved from having the car on his rear, so when he did, he tripped over the husk and fell back into the same hole he had JUST been thrust into. It was almost comical. The stupidity of the act caused Luth to frown and the werewolf to grin momentarily before it raised the steel fragment again, moving in quickly for the kill.

Then it hit him. It hit him how to hit him.

In a moment, Luth grabbed the right half of the car's husk, and pulled on it heavily. A piece of the rusted metal ripped apart from the frame almost effortlessly, and he used the huge piece to swing it forward, parrying the werewolf's steel swing. Following, he grabbed another piece of the husk, and doing the same thing, he struck the wolf man square in the face with it. *CLANG!* Though he wolf was not even winded from that, the few seconds of staggering gave Luth a precious opening to quickly stand up from the car and smack the wolf once again with the car half on his right hand. *BLAM!* Hitting the animal in the chest with another metallic pang, and resisting the pain of his snapped fingers and the broken rib, Luth evoked flames into his left hand, almost instantly melting that rusted half of the car and tempering it into a solid steel bar that he used to swing at the wolf again. *CLANG!*

The wolf mugger struck the bar with his railroad piece, answering to the swing in kind. Locked in a quick strength check with Luth, who liquefied and tempered the car half in his right hand like he just had done with the left one, he roared as he drove his left claw toward Luth's right shoulder, attempting to tear a hole into it, but reacting quickly, Luth gave into the creature's strength check, causing it to lose its balance for a moment and barely miss the thrust. But that moment was, once again, all that Luth needed to sidestep quickly to the wolf's left and into an open area away from the old car. With a wave of his right hand's broken fingers, several flame orbs burst and scattered in a humongous circle, illuminating a large circle around the two. Stepping back with a single steady jump, he stood in the middle of the circle, once again wincing at the broken rib and fingers. Anyone who saw the scene would think of it as some sort of carnival, for the flaming orbs rose and shone in the night sky like fierce fireworks, and they were all over the place. Critters were unsettled from their sleep and slowly lurked away from the area.

Luth tossed away his own metal bar, which turned into ashes in midair, and grabbed his right hand, snapping the broken fingers back into place with a loud growl of pain. There was nothing he could do about the rib even if he wanted to, and it wasn't a complete fix by any means, but as long as he had his hand dexterity together, painfully or not, he didn't care about anything else. All he kept wondering for the past minute or so, as the wolf man started to progress toward him once again, was why was he still attacking when he had no money? He took a stance... and waited. It was useless to talk at this point, anyhow.. or to walk away, for that matter.

'*sigh* It's a pain, but this should keep me warm...'

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OOC: To reciprocate from your creation's information I shall share mine's. Luth's meteor core rejects any external matter that touches it with intent of removal or destruction by hyper heating it to impossibly high temperatures. He cannot command these temperatures on his own, but he can evoke enough heat to change the state of elements and cause both spontaneous and constant combustion, as demonstrated. In his mastery of heat, he can also take it away (how he cooled down the molten steel to make it solid), further expanding on his element-changing capability. The meteor core also grants him superhuman strength, above-average speed, and the power of flight-- you would say, Luth is an alternate version of Hancock and The Meteor Man, if you are familiar with the movies. For obvious reasons he is neither immortal nor do his wounds regenerate at a moment's notice like those 2 are, so let's enjoy our battle!

Clarification

OoC: I had meant to imply that Luth had money, but was being sarcastic. I worded it poorly. I will edit at once.

Now, I may have missed something, but did you ever actually damage my character in that post? Because I did not notice if you did.

OOC: I think I missed the memo on that one, haha. I didn't imagine Luth needing money since he was completely self-sufficient, but then it hit me that he wanted to stay in a hotel or rent somewhere with a bed, so that one made sense. It's all good.

And-- no, I do not think Luth damaged your character in my first post. The impacts delivered were intended to shake Reko off Luth, but they didn't do any major damage because of his current steel composition... I didn't figure he would take any significant damage from being hit with hard steel even with Luth's super strength, so I left that card on the table, so to speak. The method was poorly executed to begin with since Luth was in momentary disorientation from the surprise attack, so it further goes with the idea that Luth couldn't deliver proper harm given the circumstance.

I hope that makes sense. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions. :)
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