Rise of the Omnimage

Kyrain walked through the doors of the Black Rifle Coffee shop and didn't see the mask of Eclipse. He looked around until he caught someone with their hand in the air. It was woman with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. "Erebus, over here." The woman said with a slight southern accent. Not quite southern bell, but definitely southern and with some force to her.

She pulled out a chair next to her and pushed a cup over to him. She looked around and saw nobody was looking or even around. "Take off the mask Kyrain." She said.

"Eclipse?" He asked spreading his aether sense out checking for anyone. There was one person in back doing dishes and a few people in a break room eating and drinking, but other than that, nobody was paying attention to them, So Kyring pulled his mask off.

"I was told to report here to you ma'am." Kyrain said.

She took a drink then looked at him. "Just Emma for now. I am being a human for a bit." She said as she took a bit out of the grenade burrito the place serviced.

"Mmm! You have to try this stuff Ky. It's awesome, but anyway, to business." Emma said growing serious.

"You saw what we wanted you to see in the lab yes?" She asked.

Kyrain nodded his head then took a drink of the coffee and then looked at it. It was sweet, but not too sweet with that coffee punch to it and something extra, that he couldn't nail down.

"Good right?" Emma asked seeing his approving look. "Besides good ole fashioned American made; it has a few ingredients in it they keep to themselves that gives users a boost." She explained.

She took a drink then started in.

"We have a problem in the country, more so than the monsters we deal with. There is a serial killer, and we think it is connected to these vampires. Are you familiar with the story of Jack the Ripper?" Emma asked

Kyrain shook his head. "I only know he was a serial killer in the 1800s."

"On top of that, he was only in action for a few months before he vanished never to murder again, as far as we know. However, if you happen to look into the era, you will find a lot of gothic, vampire, and occult activity at the same time. Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897. It was an extremely graphic for it's time and the abilities we have seen from these vampires are extremely similar to what Stoker talked about in his book concerning Dracula." She explained.

"Are you implying that Jack the Ripper could be Dracula?" Kyrain asked.

"Not entirely. Dracula is often associated with Vlad Tepes also known as Vlad the Impaler, Stoker named his main character Dracula after Tepes as he had found out that Tepes was sometimes called Dracul or Dracula which means "Son of the Dragon" or "Son of the Devil." Emma replied.

"So, what does that mean for us?" Kyrain asked finishing the coffee he had been drink through the explanation.

"For us specifically, groundwork. If Jack the Ripper is Dracula and a lot of the vampire lore is accurate, we are absolutely no match for a vampire that old and probably system empowered. So, we will leave that monster for the top-level hunters, while we focus on the thralls, like you saw at the lab. If there are lesser vampires, they would be level 3-4 targets anyway, and I'm not going after a level 3 without back up and certainly not going after an almost guaranteed level 5 as not only, am I not qualified to do so, but i would be absolutely murdered by that. If it is a level 5, my dad might have to get involved." She said.

"That makes sense. I tested my ability on being able to cut through those things and the scalpel I used sliced through easily enough when I added my skill to it. With my level of control, I can apply my skills to most objects and allow them to do serious damage making their flesh nearly pre-system human soft." Kyrain stopped for a moment and frowned after realizing what else she had said.

"Your dad is a hunter that strong?" He asked.

"Mmhm! My dad actually founded the Bounty Hunter program." She answered.

Kyrain's eyebrows went up. "You're the daughter of Todd Robinson, the grandmaster of the program and former SecDef who single handedly crushed the early cartels when they tried to invade the southern border of the USA?" He asked.

"That's the one. Big shoes to fill right? My sister, Mads, didn't want to be a hunter so she is just a regular adventurer like my stepmom Jess." She answered with a cheesy grin.

Emma wiped down the table she was at, wiped her mouth with her napkin, tossed it away in the trash before putting her mask back on. "Back to business Erebus." She said taking her usual tone that he had come to know.

She pulled her phone out and opened up an application showing a map. "We are focused on the ports, from what we have gathered many of the thralls are being brough in from the ports. We have other teams getting set up around this city with our most powerful hunter's getting set up in Santa Fe and LA to wait for the big one. With the thralls appearing all over the place, we believe he has made a few lesser vampires, who have made the thralls. We will keep track of the thralls and kill them, then the level 3 and 4 hunters will do their best to kill the lesser vampires. Understand?" She briefed.

"Yes ma'am." He responded.

She began walking out the door as Kyrain put on his own mutant skull mask and began to follower her out to a car that was waiting for them.

When they arrived, they moved into the port of Seattle and began to move from container to container, inspecting the bills of lading for anything out of the ordinary. They had found a clump of containers off to the far-right corner of the yard that seemed to stand out to them. Kyrain opened up his aether sense, to see if he could see anything, but what he found was a lot of dark green and black aether around the clump of containers.

"Ma'am, those containers, are giving off seriously wrong aether." Kyrain said as they approached and then the smell hit them. Blood, rot, and feces combined into a mix of putrid disgust.

Eclipse had been carrying a case with her, which Kyrian thought was just equipment. When she opened it, it was a disassembled rifle. "This is my baby...M82 Sniper rifle." She held up a magazine with blue coated .50 caliber rounds. "Depleted uranium. Armor piercing, self-sharpening, pyrophoric rounds able to turn most heads into canoes if they are even there at all afterward." She said as she finished putting it together and vanishing into a shadow.

"We need to open that thing up! Seal it off, open it, then run!" She shouted as she sighted in on the front of the container.