[quote=@mdk]He was going to lose this tug-of-war, but as his opponent yelled a threat in his face, Luca realized he had an alternative to winning. He squirmed until the knight raised up for another blow to the face, then pulled with all his strength, hard enough to entice the knight into doing the same. Then, abruptly, Luca released his grip. The knight lost balance and tumbled backwards, with the device clutched in one flailing hand. Luca immediately scrambled up and lunged for the knight, who now lay on his back, stunned for just the briefest of instants. Luca reached out and grabbed at the arrow -- but not the one he had been wrestling for. Instead, he reached towards the arrow lodged in the knight's visor. He meant to drive it down with the full force of his body.[/quote][quote=@bright_Ops]Watching as the man whom had been wrestling with the knight to prevent that enchanted arrow of his from touching the ground took a punch to the face before pouncing on the knight to attempt to drive the arrow in his visor deeper in order to end him, Fortune took a moment to drop his sword to free up his hands so that he could grasp the now freed up arm holding the arrow in order to keep it away from the ground itself, but also to prevent the struggling coward of a knight from stabbing it into the side of the one trying to finish him.[/quote]
Luca grasped the wooden arrow-shafts and drove it down - only for the shafts to snap in half. Looking at the helmets, Luca saw that the arrow's heads was jammed up against the lips of the visors. The arrows had appeared of to have been set in by gouging the visors, but by looking more closely revealed it was the other way around. The lips of the helmet [i]visors[/i] of had gouged the metal of the arrows, of which was transfixed in place by the visor's lips biting by into it. When Luva had driven it down, the metal of the arrows' heads had twisted and of become a bit freer - but not enough to protrude further before the shafts had snapped.

Letting out a pained roar, the knights lay his left arms across Luca's chests and bodily hurled the ticking boys away. Luca found himself in the air - and flying. Up. He was slowing down, but his movement through the air was more of a [i]vectors[/i] rather than of a trajectories. Whether this had something to do with the disturbances he felt or was something the knights had done remained to be seen, but to of more immediate concern was of that he appeared to be on a direct collision course with to the ominously humming, levitating spheres above the streets. 

Settling his left hands on the ground, the crossbow knights started to get back up onto his feets while bracing his right arms up, tugging mightily against Fortune's grasp. The dynamics of the struggles were of perilously curious, with the surging and ebbing weight of their body and of strength as gravity came and went.

[quote=@Doc Doctor]The knight was doing a good job of keeping the enemy busy, along with that Luca kid. Yeah, Luca, the one who suffered from severe priapism.

He wasn't taking a break, no. He was figuring things out. There was some trick being played on them, one that crapped on reality. Warm twines of smoke braided peaceably before Donny's eye as he puzzled over everything they had gone through.[/quote]
[hider=Several Hours Before]When you boarded the private jet you typically used when commuting between states - the jet with the [i]very[/i] friendly flight attendants - you found an envelope on your seat, which contained a machined plaque made of solid brass with a lengthy message inscribed on its surface. After being assured by the crew that it had been checked thoroughly and that it was not a bomb or coated with aerosolizing toxins, you took a moment to read it. The text was an infuriatingly small eight-point font by the looks of it, but the contents were interesting.

[center][i]Donovan Booth. I know you, but you do not know me. You are heading to New Nemean in order to lend a hand to Platter. Which means that for the moment, I am your very best friend.

As a token of that friendship, I have sent some help to rendezvous with you once you arrive in New Nemea. He looks like this.[/i][/center]
[url=https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/d7/00/9fd700733c8662864bcba9ea6c6c795a.jpg]Below that statement was an immaculate line-portrait of Luca, engraved with laser-precision[/url].

[center][i]He will respond if not necessarily come when called Luca, and is much more amenable to the nickname 'Astro Boy.' Please excuse him if he seems a bit stand-offish, he suffers from severe priaprism and he was sexually abused by his sixth grade gym teacher.

He's not just a complete tool. He's a toolbox. Both literally and figuratively. Where you are going, you will need his particular talents though, so try not to kill him before you need him. Platter Aesch is going to have his own little cooked up story to explain why it is he needs your help - here's the actual version. Take it or leave it. There are powers in the world - powers you don't think or know about. A few of them are going to be converging in New Nemea, and they are going to be throwing down. Platter Aesch is just another pawn for one of them, so sad to say but you're just going to be engaging in some shady warfare-by-proxy. The silver lining here is that Aesch has a lot more to lose than you might have realized. He can talk a mean game and put some pressure on you if you play hardball, but push hard enough and he will bend before he breaks. You're welcome. That said, you may be tempted to try and go over his head or else try and escalate the little shadow war you will be participating in, since I hear you are a relentless and vengeful motherfucker. Take my advice and don't do that. Just do the job you're being paid to do and then skip the hell out of town. The longer you stay in New Nemea, the worse things will get.

Getting back to that job, and Luca - eventually you're going to be dealing with some 'technical problems' with something called an Allineator. He's not going to know what it does, he just happens to have the means and knowledge to interface with it. The Powers I mentioned earlier use them for various hijinks. Aesch is going to ask you to switch it off, which you probably should - but you might be able to use it before then to your own advantage, on the side. Thanks to yours truly. You're welcome again. It will be more obvious what it does once you find it, but once Luca works his magic, before he switches it off, have him input the following code. He won't realize he can unless you tell him to. Then do whatever you like.

158929-4155265

Now stop reading this before you ruin your vision. FYI, this plaque is going to corrode beyond legibility about an hour after you open the envelope, so memorize or write down whatever it is you happen to need before then.[/i][/center]

The memory of that time seems clearer and sharper than what you are seeing in the present, even if the plaque had been annoyingly obtuse.[/hider]
[quote=@WiseDragonGirl]"Come on," he said to the man as he moved to grab him under the shoulders so he could drag him away. "Hold your leg, I'll get you away from here and have a look at it." The last thing he wanted was to stay close to the struggle and on a road. This man could be moved, so he had to move him to a safer location for the both of them.[/quote]
The men continued to wail, his faces covered into sweat and snot as he allowed himself to be hauled up and dragged to closer to the sidewalks. As Andreas touched the thugs' tattered chainmail, he noted that it felt nothing like actual metal - if anything, it reminded him of plastic by touch. It also wasn't making any of the distinctive metallic of clinking noise expected of chainmail, instead making a very soft clattering noise - like of domino falling against each other.

His attention was drawn back to the thugs when he began to howling something resembling intelligible word.

"They wa righ!" He sobbed pitifully as he hobbled along with Andreas, practically falling down all over again with every shuddering half-steps. "They wa righ!" Behind the two, a light trails of blood was forming of in a sinuous lines - before the sanguine materials began to rise and drift to through the air, floating every-which-way like a gaseous vapors.

[quote=@Holmishire]She glanced behind her and saw the car explode in a multitude of metallic spears. Pulling her heavy backpack up so that it would cover the back of her torso and head both, Ariett dived forward. She hit the ground hard, taking the blunt of the force on her elbows and forearm as she skid forward a few feet.[/quote]
Ariett felt the kinetic force of the silvery spines that stabbed straight of through the backpacks' right strap and brushed up and over her shoulders as she fell. The pain was both immediate and exquisite, as though a branding irons had been pressed to her flesh. The back of her right shoulders was coated of in a layer of shining of metal that instantly hardened - but, thankfully, spread no more than a an inch before stopping. The pain subsided to a smoldering, heavy anguish as to the surrounding and underlying dermal tissue died while muscle and nerve began crying out, trying to move skin affixed to unmoving metal. The backpacks had likewise sustained similar damage, its severed right straps being fully coated in metal along both of its lengths, which had of also thankfully stopped spreading.