kapuchu

The Crucible - Winner Take All

Brucie got back on his feet unsteadily, groaning like some drunkard recently awoken with a mountain of a headache. He looked the part, too, Lily decided watching him cradle his head. No matter, if he was giving her an opening then she would not be so ungrateful as to not take it. She dashed forward, electricity once more jumping between her fingers.

Arm out-stretched, she lashed out, expecting to meet metal or flesh and see him wracked with lightning again. Only, no such thing happened. She had only moments to register that he had blocked her with the rubbery parts of his arm before pain flared in her left side and she was sent reeling. Jumping back, she sought cover behind a large machine of some description while cursing her own recklessness. She had seen a moment of weakness and just rushed in, and now she paid for it with blood and pain. It wasn't the first time she had done such a thing, and every time she did it in the past she had been admonished for it - not only by her superiors, but by Tsukiko as well. And if there was one thing she feared, it was making that woman mad.

Resigning herself to being more careful, she went about inspecting her injuries. She still had that cut on her right arm, which was to be expected, as well as an assortment of lesser bruises and scrapes. Her newest additions were at series of cut along her rib cage. The bones kept it shallow and had protected her, but they still bled enough to make her worry. If she did find a way to close the wound, either by cauterization, bandages or thread and needle, she would be in trouble.

"Come out, come out wherever you are!" the Shark's voice rang out, making Lily jump. That kind of voice coupled with sing song tone like that were eerie at best.

The fact that he calls out to me instead of going after me tells me that he is either expecting an ambush, or just not want to get in close. So far he has only engaged in melee whenever I have gotten close myself. Conclusion? He is superior at close quarters but prefers to stay at range. He is powerful at range, but so am I. I should stay at range, at least there there's no disadvantage.

That decided, Lily ran out of cover. She did it again, and again, and again. Soon there were at least a dozen images of Lily standing hodgepodge around the room, some in plain view, others half in cover, and even some crouched on top of machines and pipes. Brucie looked much as she had expected; confused and unsure where to aim his cannon.

He knew that all but one were fakes, having blasted through a few of them already during their fight, but even that knowledge could not keep his instincts from screaming at him that he was vastly outnumbered. Sapient though he may have been, she was still very much a shark, and his animalistic side told him that a single shark could not beat twelve beings such as Lily, not at the same time.

Luckily, he was not just a single shark. He was so much more. The remaining three tubes opened on his shoulder, spewing out a rocket each that immediately went for three separate clusters of Lily's, causing each and every one to seek shelter. The rockets exploded causing shrapnel, both metal and not, to fly across the room, ricocheting off of various surfaces, denting and puncturing even some pipes. Only three Lily's remained, and only one of them bled. A flying piece of metal had almost hit her in the eye, and only superhuman reflexes had allowed her to dodge it in time, leaving a bleeding cut across her cheek to show for it.

"There ya are. I can smell yer blood, y'know." Brucie grinned, looking the real Lily straight in the eyes; meeting her glare with as flippant a look as a shark could muster.

[i]So he can smell my blood?[i] Lily almost smiled. "Good to know," she replied, and threw her hands outwards, covering a large portion of the room in the scent of blood. She wasted no time in getting back into cover, from shadow to shadow in an effort to throw off Brucie. She was successful to an extent, but not completely so as evident by the jets of water hitting places frighteningly close to her, both in front and behind.

She couldn't afford to get hit. Too much water and her ability to generate friction between her tails would be lost. She jumped behind a thick pipe, coming to an immediate stop but sent forth the sound of a pair of feet running across the concrete floor. Metal groaned and snapped some distance ahead of her, a pipe having been punched clean through by a jet of water, clothes to where the sound of footsteps originated.

So he is going by sound now? He is working out what I can do. He knows I can mimic smell and create images. He probably suspects that I can also render myself invisible. Not untrue, but he went for the sound.

An idea started to form in Lily's mind, one that was sure to earn the ire of Tsukiko were she to ever find out, but nonetheless one that she figured might actually work.

She let the footsteps continue to circle Brucie, but had a second set split off in the opposite direction. Another set of footsteps sounded from Lily's current position, running out to the left. She didn't stop until six sets of running feet could be heard circling Brucie, both going in and out of shadowy areas.

Now comes the reckless part. Lily stepped out of into the open, facing Brucie, and started to slowly make her way towards him - tails undulating behind her. She didn't muffle her own steps or turn herself invisible. She played on his paranoia, on his expectations that the real one was among the phantom sounds surrounding them. Each step saw another ball of cobalt fire wink into existence around her

The shark immediately aimed his arm-mounted gun at her. He looked triumphant for all but a second, before suspicion took hold and his eyes narrowed. "Are you the real one?" he asked, metallic fingers flexing, fidgeting.

"I am," Lily replied, fighting to keep her expression neutral. It was a gamble, telling him the truth, but hopefully he would take it as further misdirection. So far he had been easily fooled, falling for each and every trick she threw at him. There was no reason he would not beli-

"I believe ya."

Water rushed at Lily, and once again it was only her superior reflexes that prevented her from sharing the same fate as the metal pipe from earlier. Barely the words had left the shark's mouth before she abandoned all pretence of being an illusion and threw every single bit of fire she had at him.

Fire and water met in a roar of sound and mist, the resulting explosion sending both of them flying back. Lily ricocheted off of a pipe, landing face down on the concrete floor.

Brucie had fared somewhat better. Instead of his own body taking the brunt, he had just managed to turn in such a way that has metallic limbs absorbed most of the blast and the resulting collision with the set of stairs.

"That one actually hurt," he groaned.

The faint sound of Lily's groans echoed his assesment.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

I have been working on a posts today, but my nose is stuffy and I am too damn tired to finish. Expect and update from your favourite Floof tomorrow instead.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

I feel like I owe everyone here an apology. As some of you may have noticed there was a, shall we say, abundance of strange wordings, missing words, typos, and an assortment of other mistakes in my latest post.

Only a few of you know, but I use a voice to text program to write because I suffer from tendonitis. What that means is essentially that it is painful for me to type anything on a keyboard, or mouse, for any length of time. It is by no means 100% accurate, and me not being a native English speaker makes it a bit difficult for the programme to decide what exactly I am saying.

So there you have it, the reason for my errors and mistakes. I will endeavour to be more thorough when making my posts in the future.

Also, you can think Lazo for helping me go through and finding the mistakes in my most recent post.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

Lily V Brucie: Round One

Lily remained quiet and invisible even as her opponent entered what was to be their arena. Even as someone living in a world where demons and fire breathing lizards roamed the land, what she saw come through that door perplexed her. She had seen mechanically augmented people before, but this was something new. This was a hammerhead shark in what amounted to a mecha-like suit, giving him both arms and legs as well as an assortment of weapons.

As Brucie started walking along his walkway in search of Lily, she took her time to think. Orel seemed to have a habit of making puns directed towards whoever he was near, as evident by his endless stream of nicknames referencing her tails. He had done much the same with Brucie, saying "Water" instead of "What are", leading her to believe that maybe Brucie had something to do with water. The question, however, was whether or not it was a reference to him simply being a nautical creature, or if it actually had anything to do with his abilities. On the other hand the rocket launcher on his shoulder was a dead giveaway of at least one type of attack. That left only the contraption on his right arm. She could not immediately determine the nature of it, but given its lack of sharp or blunt edges she assumed it to be another ranged weapon.

Lily squinted, talking a few steps towards the railing separating her from a twenty foot drop, getting a better look at her opponent. So, summed up. Rocket launcher on his left shoulder: Minimum of six rockets, possibly more. Unidentified weapon on his right arm, probably ranged in nature. Mechanical limbs, seemingly powerful and processing claw-like tips. Can they be disabled? And what are those things and his lower jaw? He is a shark on land, and would normally be unable to breathe. Maybe that is how he avoids suffocation? It was worth considering at least, she decided, taking a few more steps along the walkway to avoid losing sight of him.

Now, how to defeat him? She smiled, an idea quickly forming in her mind.

With a small exertion of will, she created a copy of herself stepping out from cover some distance in front of Brucie. Immediately it caught his attention, "There ya are!" He shouted, laughing in his guttural manner. The copy of Lily raised its hand, balls of cobalt fire materializing all around her before firing off towards Brucie, who retaliated with a blast of high-pressure water from his arm mounted cannon, even as he dove out of the way of the fire.

The water jet tore through the illusion, dispelling it and the flames as well. Confusion reigned only for a moment before bolts of very real fire struck him in the back, each exploding with the force of a small rocket. He whirled around aiming his right hand at where the attack had come from - Lily, invisibility gone.

She darted out of the way of the speeding water orb, satisfied that it was slow enough for her to dodge. Barely had the thought finished before water and concussive force struck her, throwing her against the wall at an angle. Ears ringing, she stood up to see a duo of rockets coming her away. She met them with a blast of concussive force, detonating them in midair. The explosion allowed her to run for cover, a copy of herself running the opposite direction.

"Come out an' fight!" She heard the shark shouting, sounding almost playful somehow. Two more rockets were fired and found targets - one some distance behind her and another where her clone would be.

Lily didn't reply, but kept running, tails moving rapidly against each other. She dispelled the clone, jumped out of cover and over the railing, down to the concrete floor from where she sent a barrage of cobalt fire. Brucie met the onslaught with his own, extinguishing most of the fire with blasts of water. The torrents that did not hit fire instead came for Lily, forcing her to dart and weave.

A deep growl came from above her, the sound of something powerful and angry, followed by the sound of metal hitting concrete as he, too, jumped down. Lily only just managed to get into cover before a jet of water put a dent in the machine behind her.

"Don't be a li'l scaredy fish," Brucie growled, something that sounded suspiciously like glee in his voice.

"I'd rather not," Lily replied, stepping out of cover. She threw a hand up sending a lance of invisible force at Brucie and battered his right hand out of the way, sending the water jet wide.

Seeing her chance, she darted in, blinding him with a flash of illusory light. Sparks of electricity danced between her fingers, the electric humming unmistakable. She lashed out, her palm impacting with his torso, unleashing a powerful blast of electricity, enough for his entire body to violently convulse and throw him back several metres.

She righted herself, holding her arm where one of his claws had torn at her, as a result of his involuntary movements - It was shallow, but it still hurt. "You wanted me to fight instead of run?" She smiled grimly, teeth showing and tails whipping about behind her, her hands to her side and fingers crooked in a way that made her nails resemble wicked claws. "Well then, come and fight."

The Crucible - Winner Take All

@Lugubrious
The issue is that it's a LOT of clutter. Like, anyone coming in here and reading this stuff will be very confused. Heck, it'd prolly be difficult to find old posts and such, because you don't know which is Canon and which isn't.

I'd suggest just sticking the "Loser" in a Hider in the bottom of the Winner's post, but otherwise deleting the content of the Loser Post. That way the only "Visible posts" are the Winners, and thus we know the order of events.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

@Lugubrious
Speaking of Voting, a thought just occured to me. Since we all make our posts in the IC, we'll end up with 50% of the posts not even being actual Canon. It might be passable right now when there are only 2 people fighting, but when all of us suddenly have to fight... that's a lot of redundant posts that won't be "canon".

Are we to delete the content of the "Losing" posts, (adding it as a Hider in the Winner's, as mentioned in the Rule set), or what? We can't actually delete the posts entirely after all.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

The appearance of the smoke did not bother Lily in and of itself. They had already used a storm to transport them between Realms, so what more was a bit of smoke?

Even then, however, she didn't know exactly what was going to happen, so she adopted a more defensive stance, flexing her fingers with erect ears and undulating tails. And that was when it happened. The sound of air rushing by something moving quickly, came from behind her without warning. She whirled around ready to electrocute whoever it was that was attacking her, only to just catch a glimpse of Guðrún's frightened expression before the Lantern shattered at her feet and Lily disappeared.

---

The lightning bolt struck the railing with an audible Zap, singeing a portion of the metal black. Sparks still jumped between her fingers for several more moments before she finally managed to calm herself down. She lowered her hand back to her side, breathing deeply to calm her nerves.

Of course they had to send them off with a fanfare like that. Why could they not just have done it seamlessly? A fraction of a second later and Lily might have killed someone innocent. And if there was one thing she would not stand for, it was the murder of innocents. If anything that was what ten years of war had taught her: Leave the innocents alone.

She took a final deep breath and started to look around. She stood on what could be called the sort of balcony, with a set of stairs on her left leading up, and a door behind her. She couldn't quite determine the function of the building, but she was but it was not living quarters of any description. Beyond the guard railing in front of her was a metropolis; towering skyscrapers, monolithic apartment buildings, and lights everywhere. It was impressive in a way only possible through sheer size, foregoing interesting and aesthetically pleasing designs in favour of bulk and mass. Still, it was impressive but not the kind of thing that Lily valued.

She was about to turn around when the whirring sound of small motors caught her attention. A small drone with something akin to a tiny television strapped to the bottom of it, rose up from beneath the balcony she stood upon. It had no visible weapons so Lily relaxed, waiting to see what it would do. She was not surprised as, in short order, a holographic image of a man appeared on the screen. 'Oren,' as he called himself, was an aggravating individual it seemed. Too energetic and fully under the illusion that he was funny. She allowed him to speak and kindly ignored his crude attempt at a joke about her tails.

So her opponent was nearby? Relatively speaking anyway. That meant that he or she would most likely be found inside, a place with many hiding spaces and more than a few opportunities for misdirection. The perfect place for someone like Lily to fight. But she still needed to know as much about the building as possible, and heading inside now might only results in her getting lost. So she turned to the stairs and started climbing them. The stars turned out to simply circle the exterior of the building, which in turn also gave her a better idea of the purpose of the building. The higher she climbed, the more she saw, which in the end made her realise the best was a power plant of some sort.

Primitive, Lily thought, snorting derisively. Back home we got rid of this kind of of polluting trash centuries ago. What would the dryads say if they saw this? Nevermind that dryads, Cernunnos and Terra would be furious. She continued further up until she reached the Peak. Or rather, peaks. The "Silo", as it appeared to be one, ended in a pair of twin peaks, essentially splitting down the middle once you reached the top and continued to taper further, individually. It also offered the opportunity of a better view of the entire complex.

Far more than one building, she saw now, crisscrossed by massive pipes and dotted with smaller silos and tanks. It might have once been as impressive as the rest of the vicinity, had it only not been so run down. As it was rust dominated. Having become this experience and sight richer, Lily shows to head down the stairs once more and start exploring the Silo she had appeared on.

---

The inside was about as industrial looking as she would have expected: Garish and ugly, mottled brown and greys started with rust on far too many surfaces. A yellow light illuminated in the room she stepped into, in no way helping with making the place any more welcoming. Who ever had designed this room had had in mind solely function. It was a room filled with pipes and dials, various metres that Lily had no frame of reference for. Essentially everything in the here was as alien to her as she must be to some of the other competitors.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the drone with the small screen strapped to its bottom side hovering just outside the door, its one purple "eye" focused on her. He had mentioned that he would be her guide, but to what extent? Was he supposed to simply supervise or could he also be used as a source of information? There's only really one way to find out, she thought to herself, and turned fully around to face it.

"Oren!" she called, fully expecting equipment from a college capable of teleportation, to also be more than sufficient to pick up a voice from a distance. "You said you would be my guide. So guide me. I have some questions I would like answered."

A few seconds passed before the telltale whirl of fans carried on the breeze made its way to Inari's prominent ears. In no time, the drone popped over the edge of the Fuel Plant, its display already active. "What it is, Fluffybutt! Speak of the devil, and he will appear. Doncha think it's a bit...kit-'soon' to be asking for help, though? Neheheh!" Oren rested one hand over his other's knuckles, holding them in front of his chin. Even with eyes that appeared completely shut, his was an intent gaze.

"I'm not asking for help, but information. That lady, just before we were sent off to our individual positions, she mentioned a way to extract the soul of opponent without killing them. I want to know how."

A slight furrow of Oren's brow did not compromise his merry demeanor, though it did give his genial grin an edge of bemusement. "Well, that's awfully nice of you given the sneak preview you got of all this tournament's freakazoids -one of which I informed of your general whereabouts roughly twenty-five seconds ago, by the way- but what makes you think I know how those little hearts work?"

Lily was getting tired have the Clown's dodging the question. The frown on her face did compromise her merry demeanor... Had there been one, at any rate. She was about to start demanding proper answers when he started speaking again.

The bespectacled commentator gave a shrug, a chuckle, and a placating gesture. "Well, I do, of course. The artifacts in this place really are amazing! Tell me: ever seen a mosquito feed? Little bastards just can't get enough of sticking their little pokers in people's skin and sucking out their good stuff. Of course, contrary to what ya might expect, the one getting sucked is never happy about it. Guess you could say it really 'bugs' 'em! Neheheh. Good luck, Fluffer!"

And with that the screen turned off and returned once more to Black. At least she was rid of his ceaseless jokes. Nevertheless he had given her a very important clue. The phylactery out from under her shirt and looked it over. Barely an inch in length, constructed of rubber and metal, it was a strange, small contraction. Not like anything she had ever seen, and as someone who lived in a world where all manner of creatures, both wonderful and horrifying lived, that meant a fair deal. Near where the chain connected the the thing itself she noticed and number of small protrusions, much like needles or syringes, except there was no holes to speak of. Then again, if stabbing her opponents phylactery then she supposed that it could be something ethereal, and not physical. Sort of like electricity, perhaps?

She stuffed the thing back under her shirt, its weight against her breast much smaller now that she knew she did not have to kill to effectively win a round. The only question left, then, what what would happen to the who had their soul taken? Lily knew that she left an empty, lifeless shell back when she did it that one time, but the lady had explicitly said that the soul would be taken without killing. That must mean that it definitely did not take the life if you ever lost their soul. She had to wonder what else did happen, because something like that could not happen without some changes to the person.

But that was a question for whenever she had to try it. Oren had mentioned that he had informed her opponent, of her general whereabouts. A fight would happen soon then, so she had to be alert. This room however wasn't quite to her preferences. She hoped the next room did.

She strode through the room and opened the door on the other side, coming into a cavernous room filled with pipes and machines and walkways, and so many potential hiding spaces, corners or pipes that could momentarily break line of sight. She felt a tiny smile tug at the corners of her lips. This place was ideal. Thiswas where she would stand her ground.

She stepped out of the way of the door and bent the light around her, rendering her invisible. Now all she had to do was wait.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

@DracoLunaris

fox human. Is she from fenris? Quite gorgeous heretical,

No one can resist the charms of a Kitsune! Not even a fanatical soldier! Surrender to the Floof! Surrender, and all shall be well!

Ianus Congreatio: Secret societies, horror, and mystery in the shadows of Prague.

@MacabreFox
I'm really sad about that :< I liked having all 5 of us here.

Well, if things lighten up do you think maybe you could come back? You don't have to promise anything, just asking if it's possible :3

Ianus Congreatio: Secret societies, horror, and mystery in the shadows of Prague.

@MacabreFox
even though updates are so few and far between? You really don't have time to write a little bit once a month? o_O