[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/27xik2o.png[/img][/center][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/X3HEnmq.png[/img][/center][hr][center][color=silver]𝕎𝕖𝕕: 𝕆𝕔𝕥. 𝟟, 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟘   / /   𝔹𝕒𝕝𝕕 ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕕 𝕀𝕤𝕝𝕒𝕟𝕕   / /   𝕆𝕗𝕗𝕤𝕙𝕠𝕣𝕖   / /  ~𝟘𝟝𝟛𝟝[/color][/center][hr]
Rainwater streamed off the wooden boards of the pier as Thi fiddled with the controls in the ferry’s wheel house. It was an old thing, despite its solid functionality, and the dashboard offered only two throttles and two prop rotators, along with the standard speed gauges, warning lights, and ignition switch. For a moment, the simple lack of a key almost became a miracle on the students’ behalf, but the woman was dauntless and by the time she had donned her strange, needling glove and mapped out the tumblers of the switch, the rest of the Amigos had reached the flooded deck of the ferry, the heater mage finally removing his hand from the wall. Steam still issued loudly from the surface of the packed sand and dirt, but already the temperature was cooling in the onslaught of rain and wind.

[color f7976a]“Get us going,”[/color] Nathaniel ordered entering the room well ahead of the other two and already remotely lifting the remaining Aberrations onto the boat. He dropped Angel’s cauterized, eviscerated torso in a corner of the wheel house, checking only briefly to ensure she was alive before returning outside to stand on the boat’s deck. A moment later, their surgeon had fashioned a grisly key from “extra” bone, the vestiges of her humanity that she had long replaced with her mechanical augmentations. Losing a metatarsal hardly fazed her. The boat’s engine sputtered to life, the lights flickering on inside the wheel house and along the front and back of the boat as the beams cast bright cones into the dawning light. A few moments of adjusting to the strange controls and they were off, the ferry veering clumsily away from the harbor until Thi seemed to catch on to the nuances of the levers. 

As they reached an appreciable distance from the shoreline, Orla released her power’s effects, the structures crumbling swiftly back into mounds of sand and rock while the trees and sandstorm broke down as well when the other Aberrations followed suit, almost in perfect synchronization.

And the sun was rising.

Dawn came with the storm finally breaking. Rain still pattered along the island stubbornly and a milder wind insisted on accompanying the weakening bluster, but nature’s boiling rage had died down to a simmer and the light illuminated slowly the wreckage of the lighthouse roof scattered across the beach as well as the battered faces of the students and surviving staff. Two broken bodies in black suits and one wearing the unmistakable frill of the maids’ aprons lay near the far edge of the students’ impromptu frontlines where the marching trees had carelessly crushed anything underfoot, including hapless staff who had tried to help in whatever way they could. The distinct visage of something large and winged towards what remained of the lighthouse’s head caught Nathaniel’s attention and already he was motioning towards it, calling the others to bear. Most of their powers were rendered useless at sea. 

Not his.

And Teitel’s orb had yet to be tested in real combat.

Nathaniel had never really believed in overkill; it was a sentiment the Father shared.

The dark blue orb pulsed in front of him, glistening like a jewel in the dim sunlight peeking over the horizon, like it knew what he planned to do, and this time he took it in hand, grim, because they had warned about the aftereffects of Teitel’s unstable creations. The man promised deadly results—guaranteed them, even—with equally deadly consequences if he were to be caught in the aftermath of the weapon’s use.

He didn’t trust anyone to have his back, nor did he trust them not to throw him overboard once they realized his weakened state. But to have a winged monster chasing them without any of their long-range offense was a problem he refused to have.

So the orb flashed bright blue in his hand and the ocean shuddered beneath him. 

[i][color f7976a]”For a brief moment, Natey, you might almost be a god!”[/color][/i]

It was Teitel’s grating voice, the man’s throat seared from a lifetime of chain smoking and relentless drinking. To be granted godhood from vermin who couldn’t cure his own lung cancer and would have surely died if they hadn’t found Thi was bittersweet at best.

The memory fizzled away with the surge of power that raced through him, rippling like the ocean below. Above and below. Around. The water that roared. An infinite cascade of energy that Teitel’s weapon unlocked and beyond that vastness a howling riptide that whirled like the darkest depths of the ocean come to bear witness. Something shook beneath his feet and he looked down to see the water rising, as far as the eye could see. Droplets drifting upwards, the rain falling back into the sky. Voices whispered something behind him and he turned to look at his allies, their faces slack with fear. It took the vague reflection in the windows of the wheel house for him to realize he was glowing the same blue as the orb, a beacon brighter than the lighthouse had been.

And still the suffocating ocean crashed onto him, unaware of the vessel’s limits. The orb screamed with the pressure, the sound a keening note in the air. Always imperfect—that was the unerring condition with everything Teitel created, though the man would be hard-pressed to admit it. Power beyond belief, but hampered here and broken there. It wouldn’t lift that segment of the island. Wouldn’t crush it. Too heavy, too dense. Unless Nathaniel wanted to drink even more of the dizzying ocean above. More and more until he burst. He fought not to give in. 

Water spiked into a wave a few dozen meters from the shore, the sea jutting into the sky and clawing upwards, growing higher until it dwarfed even the lighthouse high on its cliff. A tidal wave, building and building. More than enough to flood the beach and into the forest far behind it. The sky bled rain in twisting funnels of water that fed the coming disaster and just when the the rising wall of water and unwitting fish seemed to threaten the very clouds above, it slowed. 

Then fell forward.

Water slammed into the shore, sweeping all the students outside of the lighthouse into a flood of icy ocean and lifting them into the sea’s grasp. It threw them back with the current, sending them tumbling towards the forest where the trees stood fast as a breakwater for the tidal wave. Inside the lighthouse, the windows shattered with the force of the impact, rain and sea pouring into the damaged building and filling a quarter of it before settling back out slowly as the wave passed. Everything above the tunnels, up to the third floor, was buoyed upward briefly and then dropped unceremoniously into a scattered pile of wet debris and damaged furniture. Water rushed through the edges of the trapdoor and into the tunnels below, filling it up almost waist-high before the deluge stopped and drained further down the tunnel. The sturdy lighthouse withstood the attack, though worse for the wear, its decades-old construction made with the ocean’s anger in mind.

But not a dragon. Chris was slammed back against the lighthouse, cracks webbing out from the point of impact. His left wing had its comparatively thin bones snapped like twigs. Allison and Kusari were similarly thrown by the vicious wave, the Aberration obtaining a fractured rib as she was thrown back against the lighthouse while the immortal’s ankles twisted as the water hurled her backwards and head over heels. A heavy mass knocked Zoe off her feet in time with the rush of ocean, forcing a poor landing that snapped her wrist and left her bruised. The body weighed on the girl as the tide returned, black-suited torso thoroughly mangled from an encounter with the walking trees earlier. The remaining corpses of the butler and maid washed up beside a breathless Callan.

By the time the attack had passed, the ferry had already made it to a safe distance away from the shore, a bright blue light shining on its deck where Nathaniel stood. 

[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/3R5vYYi.png?2[/img][/center][hr]
[hider=OOC Notes]
A week deadline. As usual, for any questions refer to the GMs. 

Two maids are in the lighthouse lobby, swept off their feet but alive. A maid and butler are in the tunnels with the students who retreated.
[/hider]