BCTheEntity

No Hope, No Glory, No Problem - A No More Heroes RP

Frankly, the look Zzyxx gave to both Able and Abigail could not have been more sour. It was as if he were trying to kill them with his glare - or indeed, trying to hold himself back from doing so - though it could also be misconstrued as severe constipation on his part if one saw the expression out of context.

Mister Person’s reaction to Able’s dramatic entrance was more subdued, at least visually, only taking another drag from his cigar. To Kimber, he offered but a shrug, and to Omnivore’s enthusiastic greeting, he responded ’Well, thank you. I’ve been working with some other agents on this for a while, so I’ve been a bit busy.‘ He nudged his head over at Zzyxx and Rutabaga as he mentioned the other agents, just as Rubert was gifted a box of apple juice by Vincent, much to his confusion.

‘Uh… thank you, Vincent,’ he muttered, accepting the gift somewhat hesitantly before poking the straw through the covering and taking a sip. Admittedly, he felt himself calmed just a bit by the notion of an assassin wanting to get on his good side - and it was at least better than the actual weedkiller Abigail seemed to be drinking.

Everyone else ultimately took their positions as necessary, gathering roughly around the three agents who’d called them there that afternoon, at which point Rubert double-checked his phone for something, before frowning and putting it away as he began to speak, more exuberant than he felt.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the zeroth day of… let’s call it a job within a job, shall we? You see, my fellow agents and I have had an idea. You all want to reach the top, do you not? Rhetorical question, of course you do. The upper echelons are where the money’s at, after all, moreso the number one position than any other, and that’s true no matter what your business is - assassination, corporate work, military, whatever.

‘And yet what some people don’t realise is that humans evolved to cooperate. They try to get up there on their own, taking all the weight without considering the benefits of allies, especially assassins. But you know what benefits you folks would get out of working together? Take a guess. Go on, take a guess-’

‘Money.’

‘...thanks, Person,’ Rutabaga deadpanned, his mildly drunken annoyance back to its former level after a brief inhalation. ‘But yes, money. Turns out, if the top few spots in the United Assassins Association actually unite their earnings, from odd jobs and rank defense and so on, they can actually earn more money per person than they would even if they simply held the number 1 rank. I know, I found it unbelievable too when I figured it out - but the math fits. Agent Person, you’re up.’

‘What doesn’t fit, more frequently than not, are the personalities of the assassins,’ Mister Person continued dryly, pointing at the assassins gathered round him. ‘You guys don’t like playing nice with one another. We even have examples present - The Heretic, right now, and Omnivore, just a moment ago. Left to your own devices, you’d probably all tear each other to shreds before getting anywhere near the top fifty, let alone-’

He was interrupted by the door being kicked open again, this time by a rather angry man in ragged gear with a beam katana already drawn and blazing, his other hand immediately pointing in the general direction of the entire group and screaming ‘KILLSTEALEEEER!!!’ at the top of his lungs. He proceeded to ignore everyone else as he stamped over toward the Killstealer in question, and held his weapon up against the agent’s throat, the hand holding the sword visibly juddering.

To his credit, Zzyxx didn’t lose his cool as he replied. ‘It’s pronounced “Zzyxx von Killstealr”,’ he insisted. Mister Person simply stared through his box at the newcomer, whilst Rutabaga barely held himself back from having an apoplectic fit, perhaps with the notion of Zzyxx’s over-timely death in mind to help.

‘I don’t care how it’s said! I care about what you did!’ the man ranted, angrily waving the weapon around without care for where it went. ‘My brother, a man whose life would have been spared… and then YOU come in and end him where it isn’t warranted, you BASTARD!’

‘Live by the sword... die by the sword,’ Zzyxx quipped, flicking his hair again, then unsubtly leaning back from the beam katana to grab the headgear off the floor again. ‘Mine, if not his foe’s... or, mine anyway. I take my dues, much like the Grim Reaper... you never know when I shall-‘

‘Okay, no, shut up, shut up!’ the guy raved, seeming rather unhappy with the direction the edgelord was taking. ‘You’re a fucking fool, do you know that?! What, do you think you’re DEATH now or something, in your stupid coat and dumb hat? Oh, well aren’t yuuurck.’

It wasn’t quite clear what had happened to make the man’s neck suddenly spray blood over the bar, and his head to come away from his shoulders. At best, the keener-eyed assassins might have seen a slight flicker of light, and maybe a hint of motion from Zzyxx’s arm, before he turned to his fellow agents and giving what he surely believed to be a cool smirk.

‘I guess that’s what happens when you… lose your head oh shit,’ he uttered, his hat now falling into a puddle of his would-be opponent’s lifeblood. As he picked the item up for the umpteenth time, he made to swipe the blood off, thought for a second, then evil eyed everyone around as he stood and placed the cap back atop his scalp. Apparently, having someone else’s blood dripping into your hair and down your face was a price he was willing to pay to try to look like a badass, even if to everyone else, he just looked like a lunatic.

‘...moving on,’ Mister Person sighed quietly, ‘as you can see, assassins dislike working with others. That’s what we’re here for: we’ve gotten special permission to shift you fellows up the ranks a little, just in order to practically test our theory. In exchange, we will be performing the murderous equivalent of herding cats. Not all of you at once, though, no no no. You’ll be split into teams of three: Heretic, Kraken, Chroma, you'll all be working together under Agent Zzyxx, as will The Savile Fist, Omnivore, and Whiteout under myself. Maiden of Bones, Silver Prowler... you ought to be in a team together under Agent Rutabaga, and in fairness, we might have somebody else showing up late; if they don’t show, we’ll figure something out.’

‘I assume you will know what to do from there,’ Zzyxx promptly butted in, for some bizarre reason contorting himself in a practically ballerina-ish fashion as he spoke. ‘Then again, if you need… help with your jobs, I would be most gracious as to offer my services in training you... for a certain price.’

‘We’re all willing to help you folks out,’ Rutabaga confirmed. ‘If you will, consider me a strength trainer: harder, better, stronger, that’s this Rutabaga’s goal for those of you looking to boost yourselves. Zzyxx, admittedly, is not entirely incompetent-’

‘I have never been incompetent shut up.’

‘-and he’ll be focusing on speed, and… shall we say weaponplay? Sure, let’s go with that… and Agent Person will be covering more general combat skills, martial arts, and the like. Maybe stealth, I don’t know. All, of course, for a price - but I think you’ll all appreciate the assistance.’

With all of that said, Agent Rutabaga finally leaned back on his stool and took another sip of apple juice. ‘Any questions before we go, boys and girls?’

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

@Jbcool I've been biding my time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

@ArisenMoon That looks like a good plan to me. Looks like Act 2 is starting off with a few hints of daemonic activity anyway, so a guy with the capacity to fight daemons would be a good call.

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

@ArisenMoon Most Ecclesiarchy entities are valid. One of the characters is a priest.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

@Lugubrious@ProPro Posted as Motley. Huzzah.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

Well, Now...

Frankly, that plan had gone far, far better than he’d anticipated. Not only had he reached the shoreline at last, landing in a perhaps-stereotypical fashion as the ground cracked under him, but he’d also seriously injured his enemy, drained some of her energy and likely deafened her to boot. She was in a bad state.

However, being in a bad state did not mean a foe was defeated. Not when it came to Stand users. And if he knew Stand users, it was that they frequently came up with their most ingenious solutions when backed against a wall. In other words, this girl was still dangerous, even with the damage she’d sustained. That said, it appeared that the Boys of Summer had yet to dissipate - if anything, there were even more of them than before, and their danger lay in how easily they could prolong a fight until a lethal solution could be found.

Even so, he had his lethal solution still brewing inside him. He began to pressurise his gut, preparing for-
And never mind. Apparently, Runch was calling off the fight. You know, like that was at all feasible in this case. He even launched some of his Bloodberry recipe at their foe, apparently an effort to help make amends. How adorably foolish.

'With all due respect, Captain, I highly suggest you stop trying to interfere,' Motley suggested disapprovingly, his voice unnervingly cold. 'Whilst your sentiment is perhaps a rare and appreciable trait in your world, it’s a death sentence in mine. Think about it - this girl and her brother came after us, unprovoked, with the intent all along to slay us, and it is simply our luck that their Stands were insufficient for the task despite our group’s relative lack thereof. If they are allowed to leave, as I imagine you’ve allowed the brother to, they’ll simply come back for more later, and will likely return with greater preparation against us.

'They can’t reasonably be allowed to live. I, for one, am going to finish this girl off, whether or not she’s the more dangerous of the duo.' As he spoke these last two sentences, Motley began to run in the target’s direction, taking a leap into the air at around two hundred meters from her to give himself the height he needed to enact his ultimate plan - though, bearing in mind her nature as a Stand user, prepared himself to dodge midair if she managed to fire yet more rockets at him from an unexpected angle. Perhaps he’d sacrifice a shoe to launch a nail harpoon from his toes toward the ground as a way of forcibly pulling himself downward should a set of rockets barrel toward him. If he needed to, that was.

His stomach began to churn, compress, contract; bile rose in his throat, all his teeth retracted into his gums simultaneously, and with a vile and disturbing retch, he produced a wave of projectile vomit aimed directly at Aralynn. Stomach acid, functionally, was hydrochloric acid, dilute enough not to burn a hole in the stomach’s lining as it recovered itself; with a boost from his Black Ripple and his own vampiric regeneration, the glands producing the acid could effectively be supercharged without risk to himself, allowing a far more concentrated and deadly acid to be produced with enough time. With similar compression tactics as he’d just used in his eyeballs, indeed practically the same mechanisms as vomiting usually required, that acid could then be launched a great distance toward an opponent with decent accuracy. He imagined some practice might let him focus the acid blast into a sort of lethal cannonball; for now, the focus needed was a bit beyond him, but the acid itself would dissolve her body with ease if it made contact.

But he wasn’t done yet. It was painfully clear that the single burst would be absorbed by the brother’s Stand if he just left it be… and so, he needed to increase how many shots he’d actually fired. And wouldn’t you know, he had exactly what he needed to do just that: aiming his fingers at the stomach blast, he fired out ten beams of blood simultaneously, directing them to pass through the stomach acid and shred the singular attack into an oversized cloud of discrete acidic shots - each of which, he hoped, would require one bodyguard to absorb to ensure they were stopped, plus extra guards for the ten blood beams aimed at Aralynn herself to boot. And if not enough guards were left, well, that would just be a darn shame for his target, wouldn’t it?

@Lugubrious@ProPro

Into The Dark: Tales of Maroleth

@POOHEAD189 Cool beans. I was tempted to ask earlier whether we were still going; I'm glad to see that we definitively are.

Capes of Denver: A Worm RP

Alessa Heather: Trainyard

On the upside, it sounded like Epsilon was moving in without trouble at the moment, having been allowed to make headway in order to keep her from negating her own abilities, and Tulpa’s projection was finally about to see combat. On the downside, the gunfire and crashing indicated that Overlook’s drone had been destroyed… and Chatterbox’s speech was still doing something to her. She could almost feel his words prodding at her mind, threatening to dissuade her from her chosen role… but she was a hero, wasn’t she? As long as that held true, she couldn’t just let herself walk away from this!

The sound of yet more gunfire caused her to flinch, though. And that was uncharacteristic. For now, she couldn’t see where it was coming from, but she found herself wanting surprisingly little to find its source… why? Surely this was part of Chatterbox’s power, which would make him a Thinker of rather potent proportions - a notion shortly reinforced by the cape himself.

And shortly after that, two of the enemy capes finally came into view, just as one of them hurled a crate in her direction. Hers, and perhaps the other two in the warehouse with her. Damn it, who could just chuck a crate like that?! Reacting quickly, Messiah aimed a finger, and fired out an extremely potent beam of heat, slicing the crate and its contents in half to land on either side of both her and everyone near her.

That distraction, that unlikely moment of diverted attention, should probably have been the death of her. Or at least the knocking out of her. Either way, the other cape- very likely Headhunter- had had her in his sights, with every opportunity to take his shot, and she had no time to figure out why he hadn’t taken it before luck took pity on her, and Tulpa’s projection finally burst through the- wow, that was certainly a beast she’d created! And good timing, too.

‘Nicely done, Tulpa!’ she cheered, pursuing steadily as at least Headhunter began to flee, ducking behind another pile of boxes as he fled. Alas, she couldn’t follow on so readily, for Epsilon’s nullification field would render her powerless if she wandered into it… huh. Maybe it wouldn’t be so silly for her to carry a gun around after all, then. Especially if her energy beams weren’t viable; she tended to make them reasonably damaging to begin with, but what if she couldn’t control their strength? What if she killed someone accidentally? What if her actions did more harm than-

No, NO, that was the Thinker’s words getting to her. Maybe his power was like a reverse version of Captain Morales’, then, inducing a lack of confidence the longer he had it active? No, that’d be too easy... maybe. Either way, it wasn’t fun to be around.

...that loud roar from the far end didn’t sound so brilliant either. What was happening with Lillian? Who knew? Screw the effects of the field, she needed to get over there and help the dinosaur girl! Messiah promptly forged ahead, noting the feeling of loss as she entered Epsilon’s field again, and this time making sure she could duck behind something if another crate was thrown in her direction.

No Hope, No Glory, No Problem - A No More Heroes RP

@Old Amsterdam@Dogematix@Gardevoiran@A Lowly Wretch@Lady Selune@Irredeemable@TheRedWatcher@AngelofOctober@Keksalot The next post has been made. Please have your characters move over to the three agents as soon as possible, and/or arrive in the Dirty Babe if they haven't already been present for any notable amount of time; the "special assignment" is the one your characters are there for.

No Hope, No Glory, No Problem - A No More Heroes RP

Quite abruptly, the doors to the Dirty Babe burst open as if violently kicked, drawing the attention of anyone who wasn’t used to sudden loud noises - and in particular those of Rutabaga and Mister Person. The silhouette in the portal, features partially obscured by the light streaming in from outside, was nonetheless recognisable by their clothing, and by the overdramatic pose they promptly took, arms crossed over their head and legs crossed beneath them. They looked quite silly indeed.

Half a second later, they seemed to explode into a shadowy cloud, spraying blood across a wide area of the room and sending ethereal bats flying everywhere; at the same moment, a second cloud of shadows and blood coalesced into a humanoid form, joined by a few of the bats to ultimately form the same figure, now clearly masculine and seated upon the barstool right next to Rutabaga and Person. He promptly raised one knife-toed boot, and slammed the heel hard on to the counter, cracking the surface with the force of the impact.

‘Nice to see you care about showing up on time,’ Rutabaga quipped angrily, scowling at the black-clad form of Zzyxx von Killstealr. He always had to make a scene, didn’t he? The nearest barmaid seemed to share this impression, sighing as she went to grab a mop and bucket to clear up the mess the newly-arrived agent had just made.

‘I am never late,’ the edgelord replied, kind of snarling his voice in a way that would have been cool if he’d actually done it correctly, or looked the part, ‘nor am I ever early. I arrive... precisely when I mean to.’ This last sentence was accompanied by an exaggerated hair flip that only really served to throw his hat off his head.

‘Ripping quotes from Tolkien’s work isn’t safe when they’re still popular decades later,’ Agent Person replied as Zzyxx bent down to retrieve his headgear. The red-eyed glare he received back rather implied that Zzyxx either believed he was being original, or was trying to hide the lack thereof as he slowly placed the pseudo-fedora back atop his head.

‘Anyway, we’re an hour late to start,’ Baigo continued, ‘and we still don’t have everyone here. At this point, I can’t be assed to wait any longer. Hey!’ he yelled at the bar, drawing everyone’s attentions again. ‘If you were called in for the special assignment, get over here!’ The relevant assassins would know whether that was them or not - not least because for plenty of them, they’d had direct prior contact with at least one of the trio leading this particular assignment.

‘That includes you, too, Omnivore,’ Mister Person uttered to what was apparently thin air. ‘You’ll have to get to know these people sooner or later, it might as well be now.’ He took another drag from his cigar before noticing the weird looks his fellow agents were giving him, perhaps due to the box covering his peripheral vision; he elaborated ‘One of my assassins has hacked into one of our phones remotely. I know that because she’s done it many times before.’ The words “to me” went unstated. ‘She’ll be right along.’