Lupe's Resolve

Criminal Activity

Lupe walks a terrible road paved with good intentions, Lieutenant Marshall becomes partners with Sannin Orochimaru and "the right thing" is constantly redefined in the climax of this Schemata's first emergence.

In the aftermath of Elijah Maxwell's arrest, a shift took place in Apollo City. The murderous maid, Sakuya, fought against multiple heroes to sate her bloodlust and desire for chaos, which lead to the death of Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright. Detective Keith Marshall was sent to recover in Hermes General hospital, where he met a nurse named Mary who, unbeknownst to him, was actually the Sannin known as Orochimaru. With several visitors came several warnings for the Montana-born detective that something about his nurse was extremely off. Although he himself was suspicious, Marshall's inactivity during recovery and teasing female body of Orochimaru's stealthy design led to multiple sexual sessions. It was only on their third copulation that Marshall discovered the truth about his nurse and about how Orochimaru required extensive medical supplies to survive or else he would have had to take someone else's body.   In the aftermath of their climax, and upon discovering that Orochimaru had been using his power to heal Marshall's arm completely, Marshall decided against putting Orochimaru in jail. Instead, he recruited both Orochimaru and Gwen as a part of the Red Shield Internal Affairs unit as auxiliary agents. This was bolstered by Marshall's promotion from Red Shield Detective to TOU Lieutenant at a town hall ceremony held by Supreme Dubois, revealing the metahuman nature of his regenerated arm and calling for humans and metas to protect the Arch in harmony. As part of Gwen and Orochimaru's parole, they were to be monitored by an APD official at all times, help with police business whenever asked and restrain themselves from committing any additional offenses.     This eventually led Orochimaru to be housed with Marshall, in which a budding relationship formed, and Gwen to be chaperoned by White Shield Officer Colbert. Their first assignment was to question current cult leader, Lupe Antumbra, concerning possible connections between the Cult of Achlys, the late Dr. Ode Akuji and the Dolos Serum. Although Lupe initially came across as peaceful, Orochimaru could sense that he was holding back details about his involvement, if not completely lying about not wanting to interact with people in Apollo City. Gwen pleaded for Lupe to open up to them while Marshall's more direct approach only served to make Lupe more emotional, claiming that he was being unfairly attacked for the acts of cultists he didn't order around, much like Hybris did. Only after thirty minutes of continued questioning did Lupe flex his power in a brief but shocking change in personality, darkening the skies and making the air dense with Nether.     Wary about starting a fight on his property unprepared, Marshall, Gwen and Orochimaru took their leave. Marshall was keen on getting a search warrant signed by Judge Titus to try and take the fight to the Obelisk for the first time in the APD's history. He decided to task Orochimaru and Gwen with going undercover to investigate three of the usual hotspots of the city to get information out of cultists who migrated --- Hermes General, Aphrodite Hotel and The Coliseum of Ares. Lieutenant Marshall and Orochimaru, disguised as a street punk and a gorgeous woman respectively, visited Aphrodite Hotel first. While Orochimaru kept a horny, arrogant drug dealer, named Dino Saltone, busy in the lobby with small talk and teasing, Marshall went in search of a washroom where cultists were supposed to be dealing out of. In the process, Marshall ended up riding the elevator with a group of cultists to the very washroom he was looking for, snatching one of them away for an enhanced interrogation session. After a few threatening gestures with his buck knife, the cultist admitted that, not only was Lupe directly involved with helping produce the Dolos Serum but he was also fully aware of what his cultists did due to the Mark of Theta acting as a primitive surveillance system.     Orochimaru had hoped to play on Dino's lecherous behavior and take him to one of the hotel rooms in order to interrogate him on the Stars situation in the city but he was swiftly taken away by Marshall once the drug dealer started to undress, signaling that he wanted to have sex in the public lobby instead. This led to a brief period of frustration and conflict between Marshall and Orochimaru. Marshall then took Gwen to the Coliseum of Ares to find a strange man dressed in a crisp, clean yellow suit and caught him speaking to hidden cultists among the crowd. Although Gwen tried to hide her identity and open up a discussion with the man, she and Marshall were quickly found out, leading to an intense questioning amidst a crowd of bloodthirsty onlookers. Unfortunately, the man got away, using the powers of the Nether to blast Gwen out of the coliseum and into the parking lot where she and Marshall decided to leave for the night. It wasn't until Gwen, Orochimaru and Lieutenant Marshall visited Hermes General to check security records on the day Dr. Akuji died that things went south. They started to question the head of security and moonlighting janitor known as Big Al, who led them to see the security footage and informed them that a private eye named Hidalgo Nunez had come to ask him about the same thing, only to investigate something in the morgue.     When he led the trio there, he locked them inside where they found Hidalgo bound to a steel slab and sleeping gas pumped through the vents. With the quick thinking of Orochimaru and Gwen, all three managed to escape the locked morgue with Hidalgo. As they rushed through the hospital in search of Big Al, they hear from a resident nurse that Big Al hadn't been at the hospital for months, stating that he'd taken leave. Soon after, the trio heard a commotion outside and Marshall caught a glimpse of Big Al smashing his car before shapeshifting into the officer who was responsible for monitoring Gwen the past few weeks, Officer Colbert. With both Big Al and Officer Colbert revealed to be a cultist Charade, the trio started to interrogate the childish creature on the hospital's front lawn. Gwen bound the Charade with her webbing, Orochimaru offered direct threats and Marshall gave the creature an old-fashioned spanking with his belt, prompting the cultist to start bawling and admitting that Lupe was involved with the Dolos Serum. He then stated that all of the cultists were ordered to remain quiet about it and that he had personally been offered some Cool Ranch Doritos for his participation, a part of the modern food craze that Lupe too had become invested in.     But before the Charade could say any more, Lupe disintegrated him and warned the trio to leave him and his cultists alone. With little options aside from an eventual confrontation remaining, Gwen, Orochimaru and Marshall started to plan on how to bring Lupe in to justice for his crimes, settling on creating a perimeter around Apollo and engaging him deep in Titans Range to minimize casualties should he become violent. But the plan was made all the more complicated when Hidalgo followed them back to Marshall's apartment. He revealed that his occupation as a drug dealer for Ivory was a cover and that he was actually an FBI agent who had been sent to help cull the rising desire to resurrect Savage Ken. He informed them that Dr. Akuji's Dolos Serum was just one sign of a terrible trend and that it was possible that Ivory's plan to develop a cure for Stars was one of the reasons things had escalated so much. He told them that, while Ivory believed shipping the organs of terminal Stars patients would be received by medical professionals, they were almost certainly transported to shadow agencies and trafficked through the cartel that also helped develop Stars - Los Zetas.     Realizing that Lupe could have very well been experimenting with a process to revive Savage Ken, he expedited the warrant order and sent a carrier pigeon to Lupe's doorstep, demanding that they discuss his criminal charges in the mountains. Leading up to the confrontation, metahumans ,who heard about Marshall's speech about human and metahuman unity, started to file into the APD Precinct 422 to apply for a position. Additionally, Orochimaru had become a balancing weight to the chaos around the APD, helping the younger and jaded recruits all the same to move forward with protecting the city. Gwen had emerged from her prison life as a stronger person and an even stronger hero. On the day of the confrontation, all civilians were ordered to stay home under curfew while APD White Shields and Lifelines flooded the streets to form a perimeter. Lieutenant Marshall, Augustus Griffith, Scathach, Gwen, Sol Badguy, Sesshomaru, Sakuya and Jeanne all banded together to help Lupe come to his senses. Initially, they tried to have him accept the truth and accept his punishment as his cultists had already confessed to his crimes. However, Lupe saw it as a great affront to try and bring him in to be imprisoned when he had been imprisoned his entire life in a much worse place, effectively denying to have his freedom snatched from him.     He postured that he tried to help the heroes every way he could and only wanted to be free while helping everyone else in their pursuit of true freedom. Marshall reached his breaking point and formally announced that Lupe was under arrest for his crimes, leading Lupe to tell the lieutenant that he would have to do so by force. A massive battle ensued between Lupe, two Elizas, and the group of warriors who were determined to take him down. In Apollo City, as their cult leader engaged in combat, the cultists who migrated during the Dark diaspora under Hybris' command, emerged from their hiding places, led by sound-based cultist Adrien Jackson. The youth claimed that the heroes had abandoned him to the darkness and murdered his closest friend, Niell, in the process of destroying Hybris so many months ago. Although he was determined to destroy Apollo in retaliation, Emeric, The Watchdogs, Orochimaru, Arthur, Carmen, Giest, Eldawin, and Hannah all banded together with the APD White Shields to cull the cultist insurgence.     Homemade flamethrowers, toxic sludge, and metahuman former baseball players were deadly threats that the warriors fought through, eventually leaving Adrien to activate the Nether Transformation known as Blackout. Breaking his limiters and becoming a young master of the entire sound spectrum, Adrien did everything from eliminating sound from Apollo City to using the power of his bass-filled voice to obliterate the warriors. However, their combined might, along with the fact that Adrien's sound-based blasts were slowly liquefying his own organs, led to the cult wunderkind's rather explosive defeat. Although, their victory wasn't without their own sense of loss, including the mysterious stalking of fiends who ate flesh off of bodies and a handful of cult corpses that went missing either during or after the fight itself. Additionally, Emeric's usage of Banewolf poisoning was questioned by several other warriors who found his methods questionable.     On Titans Range, the Elizas were taken down by Sakuya and Sesshomaru, both using their inner power of transformation and acidic claws to take them out of the fight. Lupe utilized a plethora of Greco-Roman wrestling techniques to slam some of the warriors through the mountain range, creating an avalanche of ice, snow and stone. But his might and regenerative capabilities weren't enough to stave off Sol's destructive Balefire, Gwen's acid webs, Jeanne and Scathach's superior spear skills and Sakuya's transformative strength. It was eventually the creation of a makeshift volcano with Sol's Balefire that led to the fight's end, rending ninety percent of Lupe's body eaten away by the element's destructive molecular properties. Snowy, who had been summoned to come to the mountain by a cultist in her library, quickly came to Lupe's side once the action had calmed down. She questioned why he tried to fight them with tears in her eyes and Lupe expressed that all he wanted to do was be free and to help others free themselves from the screaming, painful darkness that so many had to fight day after day.     Lupe was devastated by Snowy's crying, horrified that the person who taught him to smile would be the same person who suffered such emotional distress by witnessing his body erode away. Believing that he could still save one person in the throes of suffering, Lupe snapped her neck with his remaining arm and cradled her limp body against his. The final act of evil enraged the warriors, leading to Augustus bifurcating Lupe and Sol drowning what remained of his body in a Balefire pit. Shortly after their deaths, Lupe and Snowy's essences climbed the mountain range before fading away into the moonlight. With the Archipelago once again saved, and with heavy casualties once again suffered, the inevitability of Sinister's return loomed overhead. Even worse, Savage Ken's resurrection had become more than a possibility. It was a bonafide threat.