Up next was Xilia, using her Hero name LadyFell. Like me, she had two different suits, one which matched my Xipher Suit and then her hero suit, but since she was dawned in bright emerald, I will save the other one for another time.
Ima be totally honest: when we were designing her suit, it felt more like I was making a Villain outfit instead of one worn by a hero, mainly due to how provocative it was, not in the sense that it showed a lot of skin, but it definitely left little to be desired.
Extremely tight and form-fitting, every curve of her outline was accentuated; in a single word, Sexy was the first thing that would come to mind when people saw her.
Like many before her, she went the route of using her fatal characteristics, but instead of typical jiggle physics, everything surprisingly stayed in place thanks to the outfit.
Visually, it looked like a typical one-piece spandex outfit, with a belt, stylish gloves, and high-heeled boots. Belts and straps covered a large portion of her outfit, and everything she wore screamed style, even her catlike mask, which covered her eyes, ears, and nose, leaving only part of her cheeks, chin, and forehead exposed, revealing the pale flesh underneath.
Having scrolled some online forums lately, I already knew about the extensive fanbase she had garnered thanks to going out on patrol around the country, and frankly, she was approaching Idol status.
And then…there was me. When I first sat down and tried to figure out what to do for a hero persona, I found it extremely difficult to bring my thoughts into reality.
I had been considered a villain for so long that every stylistic choice I would come up with reflected that point. Making something like my Xipher outfit came as second nature to me, but a hero one? That was when I realized, why don’t I just do the opposite of what I’d normally wear?
Sure, it would be uncomfortable and borderline embarrassing for me. Still, if I wanted to keep a distinct difference between my alias, it needed to be done, so using the same Golden theme as I had before, I set about combining the traits I thought looked appealing from all the known Hero suits I’d encountered or seen before.
Taking a play from the Detect Comiks book, I went with something tactical, with plated Kevlar armor in the shape of external ab muscles, combat gloves, and boots. Then, I went ahead and dyed it in varying shades of dark gold with some silver and black accents to break up the monotonic color pallet.
To top it all off, I had a solid helmet, unlike everyone else, that completely covered every part of my head. The eyes were blackened with white lenses, and for the final touches, I centered a jagged N with an X behind it on the center of my chest.
With the two back mounts for my Eskrima Sticks, I looked damn fierce and could easily join up as a member of the BatFamily, considering I took a lot of aesthetics from Redh**d and Nigh*W*ng.
Pressing a button at the base of my helmet, it opened up at the mouth and retracted over my head before disappearing into my collar, revealing a standard eye mask.
"So, what’s the plan, Tay? We’ve been watching the news all night, so we already know about the heavy military presence, but if we were only meeting 10k Players, that kind of thing shouldn’t be necessary…what aren’t you telling us?" Brenden said while flapping out his cape and crossing his arms over his chest.
"Really….was the cape flap necessary," Xilia complained while rolling her eyes.
"Says the bitch who exposes her cleavage for the whole world to see; I mean, come on, you have a zipper for a reason, USE IT!" With a huff and snort, Emilia fought the urge to drag Brenden closer to her so that his eyes wouldn’t wander toward the vixen in green.
"Hear that Taylor, sounds like little Emi is jealous that her tits haven’t grown in yet, heh."
"Xilia, knock it off, Emilia, play nice, Brenden, stop playing with your cape, and Taylor, get to the point." Having heard enough of the bickering, Dad stepped in and scolded all the "children," causing a round of Sorry, Dad, to echo through the command center.
"As I was saying, if we only had to worry about the players, I wouldn’t have created a blockade around the entire mountain. I have reason to believe that not only will Draven make an appearance, but there will be an Instance Break as well."
"Shit….how many Returner squads do we have on our side," Brenden asked while Emilia nodded her head beside him.
"Right now, all eight of the American Evolver Squads are present, but the issue is with less than a hundred people on our side, some more reluctant than others, the odds of us containing tens of thousands of undead are slim." Bringing up a three-dimensional rendering of the Undead Tower and its surrounding areas, I began pointing out the position of the new exit gates, along with the military presence and where I had stationed the other returners.
However, the more in-depth I got, the less optimistic the situation appeared. Running several simulations on screen, I noticed the faces of everyone except Xilia stiffen, especially when I showed the Worst Case Scenario, involving over a hundred thousand Undead swarming out at the same time as the Players.
It looked like Armageddon, a zombie apocalypse, if you will. With our limited numbers, even if the Military bombed the entire area, thousands of Undead would escape the encampment and move out into the United States.
I spent some time going over the many different situations we could present, from full-scale war between the Returners and the Players to a battle with Draven and his cronies; no box was left unchecked, primarily since I had taken the time to draft up all the 3d renderings on the console, but more so because I needed everyone to understand the stakes.
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It had been far too long since any of us had been involved in a large-scale situation like this, one that exceeds even the Columbine incident, with the only similarity being the potential for casualties.
And that was when I dropped a bombshell on everyone…the fact that I had handed this very same information over to the US Government, an act that supposedly went against my anarchist ways to their very core.