Apex

Darkness. A neverending abyss if inky blackness. Without the guiding light of the moon, the entire island had been covered in a eriee, unsetteling veil of shadow that kept most content to curl up in the beds and await the light of the morning. However, there is no rest for the wicked and Alice Mordrake had certainly been a -busy- girl. Through her computer Inaba she had traversed to one of her colony worlds, one of many industrial hellholes that where a sea of factories, filth, suffering and despair. To most, what Alice did to her worlds would be a virtual horror show. sunless skies choking on foul smog clods that filled the air with a noxious diesel smell. Oceans turned to putrid, rancid green toxic lakes with the decaying carcasses and bones of sea animals floating among the foul sludge and garbage. Miles and miles of nothing but hellish factories and mines where everybody from the most proud of former warriors and mages to innocent toddlers and children worked day in and day out; hopeless, tied, weeping husks who's emaciated, overworked bodies looked like skeletons with a thin lair of skin stretched over them.

It is in these nightmare worlds that Alice thrived. The suffering, she knew, was all so her greed could be fed. Countless people, countless worlds, all sacrificed so Alice could live a life of gluttony, excess and overindulgence. As her holdings decayed and people starved Alice herself happily gorged. While countless slaved away in poverty and starvation, Alice stuffed her face with gourmet meals and sweets while playing videogames and watching anime in the comfort of her massive, gluttonous palaces. Servants and sycophants tended to her every whim while the masses of countless worlds lived in a never-ending hell induced by Alice herself to assure she got everything she wanted.

Alice loved what she had done. All the suffering, all the pain. She loved her work, but alas, all things must come to an end. After overseeing the quelling of a revolt on one of her many worlds, Alice had finally returned to starlight.....to be greated by nails aimed squarely at her throat....

Konishi had threatened the young tyrant, and this intrigued her. Even further, Alice could see the blood on the ground and the corpse laying dead behind Konishi. Having been bored out of her mind with the school, Alice immedatly saw the potentinal for something much more...entertaining...to come out of this chance meeting. Fate, perhaps? Alice didn't care, she just knew that she wanted to get her greedy little claws on Konishi and her dark mind. So the game begins.

She has talent... Alice thought to herself as she eyed Konishi's work. The academy had long become boring for Alice. While she initially thought this school could hold the potential to help her forward her larger goals she quickly found that most of the students either didn't have the temperament or where too weak for it. This girl, though...she was something. Yes...she was fierce, dark.....and fun. Yes..what a lovely toy this one will make... Alice thought to herself.

"What do you want? Make it quick, my period gets really bad around this time..."

So, she wants to know what I want. Heh. This should be interesting.. Alice continued in her out mind. She giggled a bit, a girlish yet disturbing, unsettling giggle that was jarring considering she had sharp blades within an inch of her throat. "What do I want? To have fun of course!...and it looks like you're having a blast! All the blood...the body. I only wish I was here for the murder!" Alice exclaimed with twisted glee. "As soon as I heard the screams, I could not help but try and find out what the hell was going on...and I think the two of us could have a lot of fun together after seeing what you did....

While there was no corpse, nothing can be hidden from Alice. While standing there with the nails to her neck she had zoned out and right back into consciousness in the instant before Konishi first spoke to Alice. With a simple examination of her recent memories Alice quickly found out about the murder, seeing the whole thing playback like a twisted horror movie. That was the reason for her question. However, Konishi was far from receptive to Alice's desire for fun, and Alice already knew her next move. A little bit of blood didn't intimidate specter's leader. While normally she would be quite uneasy, her jaunt into Konishi's mind had confirmed that she would not attempt to kill her....at least not yet. Alice, however, was one step ahead, and in the case a fight broke out she'd simply teleport her fragile young body away from the fight with the same technology that brought her here. In fact, to be assured that death was not a possibility while Konishi posed her second question Alice sent a mental message to Inaba...

"Very well, if you want to talk business we can, but please excuse me while I change positions." Alice said. With those words a portal opened beneath her feat and she fell down into it. Above Konishi, on the ledge at the far side of the roof Alice appeared again, sitting casually, her long blond hair flowing over the ledge as her brown eyes locked gazes with Konishi's.

"Now...what I want is simple. You're a murderer, no? Well, I want to see people murdered. I find this school boring as it is and you have the potential to make things interesting. I have a lot of resources, and I'll lend you some of them so long as you use them to murder people for me. Consider me your 'benefactor'....Should you agree. So, is there anything else you'd like to know or can we call it a deal?" Alice asked.

Konishi would not be swayed by promises of power, or so it seemed. Her words where sharp and her nails even sharper. Alice knew that if she slipped up she'd be at risk. Usually, the pint-sized tyrant navigated dangerous situations flanked by minions or robots. Now, she was vulnerable and alone, and while she could summon Inaba to her side, she was unsure how quickly Konishi's reaction time was. For all Alice knew, she could have a nail through her throat before she could even impute the commands to call her AI assistant to aid her. She had to be fast. Knowing she could not control Konishi with a promise of power, she decided to try something else. Without saying a word Alice immediately forced her way into Konishi's mind using her power.

She made no attempt to be soft or subtle with her invasion. She attacked Konishi's mind hard, and more importantly fast, paralyzing her body before she could react to the mental assault. With the "legwork" taken out of the way, Alice proceeded to delve into Konishi's psyche, looking through her thoughts and memories in the hopes she'd find something of use....

(On Loan) Alice Mordrake

Triumph flooded through Alice's body as Konishi fell to the ground and the young tyrant couldn't help the snicker that passed her lips at the sight of that proud teen on the ground. She had known, of course, that there would be something devilishly devastating hiding under Konishi's cool airs but she hadn't thought that it might have been something as delicious as this! Alice was never one to take wrong guesses gracefully but this one, she could easily accept and relish.

Now why didn't I just do this sooner? Alice wondered, a frighteningly large feline grin coming over her face. She stood over the fallen teen, digging deeply into old memories. Not just bringing them up from the darkest corners of Konishi's consciousness, no. The serial killer -Alice sneered at the pride in that title. After all, what was a serial killer to one who had committed genocide?- was just a walking mass of contradiction, just like so many other ordinary humans. The uniqueness that was found in the depth of Konishi's mind, however, was that of messy self delusion. And there was nothing more that Alice liked than toying with an already scarred over mind.

"Now Connie," the young girl said, her tone affable and sugary, "we are going to have a nice talk now, okay? The speech I was planning is just too long so I'm going to give you a crash course on my organization. And then we're going to get down to the serious stuff elsewhere. Security reasons, I know you'll understand. " She had this one caught, she knew, and as much as she would like to go all out and take this delightfully woven mind apart, this was not the place for it. She did not come to the one place in the universe free from SPECTER control just to get caught giggling over a single victim on some pissant school rooftop.

"I think you'll be very interested in the special deal I have for you, don't you think?" The giggles were so threatening to overcome her that she bit her lip a few times to get everything under control. She let herself have one final chuckle before slipping back into innocent calm. "After all, your father... Wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to him? The place he works, the place he lives, the people he knows." Gleefully, she listed all of those out loud.

She paused for a moment, pretending to think. "Child grooming is frowned on in most places, you know," Alice remarked casually, with wide eye innocence. "It's a terrible, terrible thing. For a parent to do it to their own child, well, they'd be ruined for life, huh? Even afterwards, too!" Though Alice hadn't seen anything overtly sexual actually happen in any of Konishi's interactions with her father, it wasn't too far fetched of a conclusion to come to. Relatively speaking, it was quite rational. It just took stretching the truth a little, no big deal at all.

Which meant that it was also so simple to give a mind a nudge or two to make it real. Maybe not Konishi or her father, though. Alice did want the teen on her side, after all. Terrorized and awed by her power, yes. Ruined in public eye, not so much. That would kill all of poor Konishi's worth.

"Planting ideas in certain law official's heads is easy," Alice told the teen cheerfully. "Mhm, child's play, you could say." She nodded a few times, still grinning widely. "So now that we have that out of the way, here's that crash course I promised."

"So anyways, hello! I'm Alice Mordrake. You can call me Alice, everybody does except for the slaves." Which wasn't true but dang, it sounded cool! What was the point of being an overlord if she couldn't do cool things and look cool doing it? "I run a certain organization. We are about ninety percent lawful. And by lawful, I mean that we own ninety percent of everything in existence."

She shrugged in a what can you do? fashion. "I know," she said earnestly, "it's awful. You just can't find good enough help these days."

"But you!" Alice pointed straight down at Konishi, one hand on her hip. "It's your lucky day because I want you to join my organization! Together, we'll probably kill a lot of people and maybe take over a planet or two, depending on how much work you put into it."

The tyrant leaned forward a little and hummed a little. "And boy do we need to work on it."