Drifting Pollen

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

Monday, Tuesday and Thurday-Saturday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM PT.

Super Robot Tournament (Name Pending)

Tournament? I'm interested.

I played a kickass mech pilot on another forum that shut down a while back, so this'd be a good chance to dust him off for some more action.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

Tuesday and Thurday-Sunday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM PT.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

As soon as the first cloud made contact with the enemy, Lyra could tell that something had gone awry. The gas ate swiftly through his clothing, as expected, but the man's glowing form seemed unchanged. Another trick? Moving around at the speeds he did no doubt required some resilience, but even so, no conventional matter should have been able to withstand those lethal fumes- which meant he'd pulled out something new, a defense she hadn't seen before.

If the gas didn't work, there was no use in focusing on her intended assault. The spike she'd been driving at him from behind continued on its path, no longer requiring any steering. The ice surrounding the second bomb dissolved as it entered the first cloud, and its payload swiftly detonated, briefly adding to the the miasma. Briefly, because an instant later, the falling scaffolding was blasted apart by the glowing man's own detonation, which unleashed enough heat to scatter both clouds and disperse them into the surrounding air, leaving them diluted to the point of harmlessness.

Within her Shroud, Lyra frowned. Was that it? Had he blown himself up in a final act of defiance? No, because apparently there were now five of him. She didn't bother trying to attack these duplicates, however- she still couldn't quite tell what he'd done, so striking now would simply be a waste of resources. Better to wait until his move played out, or until he directly threatened her.

Instead, she busied herself with minor logistical adjustments. A forceful downdraft above the center of the chamber, pressing the gas released by the detonation there against the ground, keeping it hidden behind the slope. A quick dip of a hand into the pouch at her side, retrieving and priming one of three remaining bombs. Fragments of gathered ice moved together around her, fusing into larger structures. Meanwhile, the last of the strange field passed through the Shroud fragment she'd shorn off after the cannon attack, leaving the black mass free to form a simple sphere. That, she left hanging where it was, unmoving.

When her opponent revealed himself, she smiled, realizing what he had done. This one was well worth hunting.

None of the five golden figures were him, and- as made evident by the missing clothing -neither had the original been. She'd attacked a scarecrow, a dressed-up golden decoy. What she'd thought to be some kind of energy buildup had been him slipping away and leaving it in his place. Hard to tell exactly how, but those lines of power were evidence enough to let her make an educated guess.

As he began to charge his weapons, she split the Shroud three ways.

Its division was neither even nor clearly visible, for the parts of it that protruded out from behind the pillar remained more or less as they were. Even from behind, the cloud demonstrated no outward change. Internally, however, Lyra's mind began to carve and reshape, radically altering its previously simple configuration.

Technically, there were now four distinct pieces of Shroud, including the one that had split off earlier. Keeping it this way took some effort. The thing seemed to like her, in its own strange manner, and she felt almost uncomfortable forcing pieces of it to move independently. Nevertheless, she couldn't keep relying on its natural defenses alone to protect herself.

This took some attention, and thus she didn't immediately begin another assault. She had the means, but she needed a little patience. Needed to make sure, this time.

With the Shroud apparently stilled and no further machinations emerging from it, the chamber seemed at peace once more.

Alas, it wasn't to last.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

Tuesday-Sunday from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM PT.

Really sorry for taking such a long time, I'll try my best to get a post up before the weekend!

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8:30 PM to midnight PT.
May also be around on Friday-Sunday evenings.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 8:30 PM to midnight PT.
May also be around on Friday-Sunday evenings.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 8:00 PM to midnight PT.
May also be around on Friday and Saturday evenings.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This time, there was no immediate retaliation. A sign, perhaps, that Lyra's blinding attack had been at least partly successful, though her opponent did seem to be gathering power. Likely for an area attack, something that wouldn't require precise aim to be effective.

Whatever the case, the delay bought her a little more time to run quickly rightwards, positioning herself behind one of the massive pillars to the eastern side of the chamber. Her physical body would be completely concealed behind it, such that her line of sight to her enemy would have been broken had she been relying on ordinary vision. The Shroud, however, reached around the sides of the ancient stone edifice, its outer layers protruding around her makeshift cover and spreading out horizontally to give her a better view. Its current shape was something like a mushroom, two long dark 'wings' extending out from either side of the pillar while the bulk of the cloud remained concealed behind.

The adjustment was practically automatic on her part. She'd been moving steadily to the right for some time, and moving her Shroud to account for cover was as easy as turning her head to keep eyes on an enemy. Reflexive, almost. She had been bound to it for so long that movements such as this felt like muscle memory, familiar and comfortable even in the heat of battle.

At the same time, the fragment of Shroud that she'd left behind was growing into a kind of ring-shape. The center of the field left by the strange projectile had passed through, and the rest would gradually follow. She'd leave this where it was. It gave her another viewpoint, one she might well need if this next moment didn't go as planned.

That said, her main focus at that moment was on making sure that they did. Once again, the pieces were lined up for a deadly strike, not based on infection this time so much as stealth and distraction, the favorite tools of many an assassin and hunter.

The man in white had conveniently bought himself another tiny fraction of a second with his rapid movement, but that alone wouldn't save him. His bursts of speed outpaced the advance of the gas she'd released in her opening move, but he'd also stopped after the first dash, ever so briefly, and that gave her reason to believe he'd do so again.

Lyra's wind, by contrast, did not halt for an instant. If anything, the gust only grew stronger and faster as it went, still pushing the devouring gas towards her enemy, its course changing just slightly to keep it moving straight towards him. The man wouldn't get so much as an instant's respite from this particular cloud.

That wasn't the one she intended to eat him with, however.

She had two more bombs out on the field, their movements controlled by small cradles of frozen blood. One had stopped at the upward slope near the center of the chamber, and she let it drop to the ground there, seemingly abandoned. The other had flown over her enemy's head just a moment ago. It would be this latter weapon that threatened him first. She'd snuck it by with height and speed, positioning it above and behind him where it was least likely to be seen. Its moment was nigh- but she had yet another card to play.

Whatever the man in white had intended by moving beneath the scaffolding, he'd made a dangerous mistake. The structure wasn't dense or sturdy the way the pillars were: rather, it was a relatively small amount of material stretched out over a relatively large amount of space. Even in natural conditions, a scaffolding could be blown over by a strong wind, and Lyra was capable of unleashing more powerful, more directed gusts than any such edifice was designed to withstand.

So she did.

Even as one stream of air carried the deadly cloud towards her enemy, another would slam into the scaffolding up above him, pushing it hard enough to make the entire structure bend and then fold, collapsing in on itself and coming to pieces in the process. A mess of metal beams, breaking apart even as it fell, threatening to crush the man cowering below.

Of course, she didn't expect him to be squashed so easily. The point was to engineer a situation as chaotic as possible, full of dangerous moving objects- all to conceal the rapid approach of the true threat.

The attack was the same as her first: a gas bomb embedded in a spike of ice. As she'd planned, the one that had flown past above him would strike, the ring of blood that had carried it reshaped and bolstered with frozen water vapor to form a sharp, aerodynamic point. Even as it transformed, the weapon shot downwards, homing in on the man from behind, seeking to intercept him if he tried to move away again, to catch him right when his attention would be divided between the threat of the cloud and the collapsing scaffolding. His mind was fast, to be sure, but that was why she'd moved to cripple his senses, to make noticing the hidden threat all the more difficult. If his defenses behaved the way they did before then she wouldn't be able to get the bomb all the way to him, but she only needed to be fairly close- the inevitable detonation and release of the deadly payload would cover a wide enough area to account for some minor error.

Whatever happened, both bombs would detonate in the end of that moment, one of them far from either combatant and the other as close to the man in white as Lyra could bring it through force of timing and preparation. Ugly, in a way, their sickly green hue desecrating the quiet beauty of the tomb, but then murder was rarely a pretty thing.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

8:00 to midnight PT on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Other days are a maybe.