King Cosmos

HEROIC

two child sized heroes

@ThisIsFine

Kitsune is literally taller than him.

Bouncer is child-sized though.

HEROIC

Should I double post with the gang rolling up at the clinic?

@ThisIsFine

I don't have much to add at the moment. Just waiting on something from Joel or Bouncer.

HEROIC

Kitsune

“…wait, hold on.”

Kitsune came to a stop when the others did, taking the slight break in proceedings to finally catch up on everything that had happened since this stranger and Bouncer had shown up to drag her along. All of this information being thrown her way wasn’t doing her impending concussion much good and the disjointed manner in which it was being delivered didn’t help either. She thought she had made out the pertinent parts though; the group of mad scientists conducting experiments she had already figured out herself, along with the fact that this was all a distraction or an attempt to deal with them. The ceramics factory might have been the place that she had been heading to earlier tonight, using the GPS from the van, but the rest was just gibberish. This guy had been burned alive, healed, was actually dead for three years and his deceased wife used to be super hero.

The whole thing was crazy sounding enough that it had her looking the man up and down to see if he had an anklet like all the other escaped or released experiments she’d seen tonight; he’d already admitted to being worked on by this same ‘doctor’ that the others had mentioned. He didn’t have one, but that wasn’t enough to assuage her suspicions.

“Who are you?” Joel, apparently, but that didn’t tell her anything useful. She didn’t know who Mindraker was either and the fact that it felt like she was supposed to was irking her. Kitsune turned to Bouncer but she didn’t seem to know much more than she did, but given how little information she’d been able to get out of the other woman earlier than wasn’t really a surprise. “Do you know him?”

Pokemon: Ascendancy

Sebastien Tomas

Well, there was his answer. The gym challenge would continue on as normal, at least up until the tournament itself, and they would just hope that Ryker turned up safe and sound. They weren’t to get involved, leave the investigation to the police and perform their roles as gym leaders either until everything was resolved or they had no choice but to cancel.

That was all fine with him; Sebastien had no intention of interfering in whatever investigation was currently active. Some of the other leader didn’t agree of course and making their position vocally known; they wanted to cancel the whole thing, or they wanted to go out and look for Ryker themselves, take out whoever did it if it was actually a kidnapping and not something else. He got that, he really did, but unfortunately he couldn’t share their sentiment. They all knew the kid, Sebastien didn’t; he’d only met the guy last night and while he liked the champion well enough he wasn’t about to go charging off looking for trouble for someone he barely knew. And as heartless as it might sound, he wasn’t so torn up about this that he couldn’t just get on with his job like he was being asked to. The fact that they were being asked to keep an eye on each other just in case was worrying, but that was just more reason not to become a part of this.

Ryker seemed like a good guy, Sebastien hoped he was safe, but if he was being asked to just do his job as normal and let the police handle then that’s what he’d do.

The situation in the room was tense though and would likely continue to be so until someone stormed out or was kicked out. Rather than stick around for that Sebastien decided it was best to make an early exit and prepare to receive the challengers who would expect the gym challenge to still be running.

“If that’s all, I’ll be heading back to my gym now. I still have to get things ready.”

HEROIC

Kitsune

“…ink she’s dead?”

Akeno opened her eyes behind her mask, or tried to at least; one of her eyelids clung to her cheek, like it was early morning and it was clogged with sleep crust. Her head was killing her and through her one good eye she could see why; the blood staining her white costume and dripping down through the narrow eye hole of the Kitsune mask she wore proof of the open wound on her scalp. Behind her she could feel something solid pressing against her back, propping her torso up; a wall or, more likely, the car she remembered being pinned against during the fight. Beneath her she could feel the rough tarmac of the road she had collapsed onto.

“Maybe. We should… no, wait, she’s still breathing.”

Her head hurt, because someone had tried to kill her with a length of metal pipe. Her neck hurt, because she had been sitting like this for who knew how long after being knocked unconscious and was starting to develop a crick. She didn’t move to take some of the strain away, because someone had tried to kill her with a length of pipe and now she was being woken up by voices she didn’t recognise and given that she still remembered what she had been doing before this, she could only assume they were dangerous. The fire, the fighting, people with powers and modifications crawling out of the woodwork, even the person who had done this to her; it was all mostly clear in her mind, though everything after she was grabbed by the mob of copies was a bit hazy.

“Did you see who did this to her?”

“The clone guy I think. I saw him, well, them walking away.”

“Ugh, that guy. He really creeps me out.”

“They all creep me out. All of them.”

A man in multiple bodies all wearing the same clothes, copies that didn’t feel pain or stop trying to attack her even when she broke their bones or burned their flesh; that much she remembered. The people, the things roaming the streets were varied but there were clear similarities between some of them; multiple people with jetpacks, multiple muscle-bound hulks, multiple animal-human hybrids. Amidst them she had seen a few unique people that had reeked of danger that she had chosen to avoid; that was probably the they being talked about. The clone guy should have been one of them, but he looked too innocuous for her to think much of.

Her mistake.

“She’s one of them right? The ones we were told about.”

“Yeah.”

This… this had been targeted at her, everything that was happening. Why? No, not just her, her and the others; Grim and Bouncer and whoever else. They were looking into that human trafficking group, they’d burnt down a building just to cover their tracks and now they’d done this? Released… all of these things, these people.

All those people… because of them.

No… because of them.

“So… we should kill her?”

“…yeah.”

Her head snapped up then and the owners of the two voices jumped back. Turning her head so that she could see both with her one good eye, she hooked her foot behind the ankle of the nearest one and then pushed her other foot into the pivot point of his hip; she pulled with one and pushed with the other and toppled him to the ground. Kitsune rose to her feet, back pressing into the side of the car behind her as she fought to get her legs back underneath her; it was a slower process than she would have liked, but the person she had knocked down was even slower to get back up and the second person was backing away instead of taking advantage of her weakness.

Once she was standing again she stalked forward and they both scrambled to get away from her. The one on the ground crawled backwards and raised a hand in front of himself placatingly, until she jumped forward and slammed his head back against the street with the heel of her foot, dealing with the problem a little more viciously than she normally would. Behind them, the second person hesitated before turning around and running; she was quicker, lunging forward and kicking a leg out from under them to send them sprawling to the ground.

Rather than try to pick themselves up and run again, they rolled over on to their back and held their hands out to ward her away. “Please, wait! We weren’t going to kill you! We’re not killers!”

Raising a hand up to her mask, Kitsune reached under it to try and rub away some of the blood caking her eye shut. Once she could pry her eyelid open again she stopped, though once she had some more time she’d need to do something about the wound itself.

“Who did all this?”

“Please, I just want to go home. They said they’d let us go home.”

Two steps forward and she was able to place a foot down on their chest and start applying pressure. Akeno wasn’t one for torture, not one for inflicting pain at all beyond what she needed to, but right now she was feeling like she could stomach it.

“Who is they? Who did this?”

All of this chaos, all of this damage and pain and death; just to help hide the kidnappings and the kinds of experiments that led to people boiling themselves alive and losing all semblance of humanity to their powers. She was starting to get the impression that these guys were as much the victims of the people behind all of this as anything else, but they were also guilty for the part they were playing in it.

The city was on fire.

Normally she’d say it wasn’t her place to deal with things like this. All she ever wanted to do with her powers was help a few people, stop them from getting hurt. It wasn’t her job to fight villains or even to catch the bad guys; she helped the would-be victims get away and then either ran away herself or knocked the criminal out and called the cops to deal with them. She wasn’t a hero, more like a vigilante or just someone who made a habit of being in the wrong places at the right time.

“The doctor! The doctor let us all out and said to cause as much trouble as we could!”

But this was partly her mess, caused by a situation that she had tried to ignore and not become a part of. Her getting involved sooner probably wouldn’t have stopped any of this, she wouldn’t put the blame for this on herself like that, but clearly she could no longer take a half-hearted approach to this. She was all in, she was getting to the bottom of this and she was taking the person responsible for it down.

“Tell me everything you know. Everything.”

HEROIC

What you kids up to

@ThisIsFine

Working on a post, it's just taking me a while.

HEROIC

But mind dude froze everyone professor x style

@ThisIsFine

I assumed that was just around Joel. Would our characters be caught in that as well? Or the people around them?

Pokemon: Ascendancy

Sebastien Tomas

Sebastien felt that he wasn’t properly dressed for a meeting of this severity, but given that none of the others were either it seemed to be okay; at least he wasn’t as hung over as some of them seemed to be. Keeping his drinking light and alternating between alcohol and water had done wonders for that, though it also meant he was one of the few people sober enough at the end of the night to be roped into cleaning up after the rest of them before he could go home himself.

Following up on all of that by then waking up early the following morning to have enough time to get ready for the opening ceremony the next day had him questioning why the drinks had been scheduled the day before the second biggest event of the year for trainers across the region. It couldn’t have been because they had expected people to show some restraint, given how some of the other leaders had immediately gone for the heavy stuff; it felt ill-conceived from the get go.

None of that mattered much now though; the opening ceremony was cancelled and though they didn’t say as much, he had to assume that the gym challenger and Galar Cup were as well. There was much point to hosting it with Ryker missing after all; you couldn’t have a championship with no champion, not to mention that carrying on as normal and holding a tournament to take the crown of someone who’s fate was apparently up in the air would be callous to say the least.

Would the minor gym challenge also be cancelled? The trainers challenging the minor league weren’t fighting for entrance to the Galar Cup, but rather than chance to take part in the gym challenge next season; technically you could beat all of the minor gyms and try to challenge the major league straight after, but doing so put you at a huge disadvantage so most trainers would just let their free ticket roll over to the following year. It could feasibly continue with the champion missing.

It felt rude to ask. The other gym leaders were more concerned with what had happened to Ryker than what was going to happen to them or their roles; rightfully so, since they all knew the kid and were worried for his wellbeing. Stepping in to ask about his job in the middle of all that seemed crass, even if he was frustrated that the whole thing would be cancelled during his first year.

“So what happens next?”

HEROIC

Also I should probs ask. Are either Kitsune or Bouncer gonna wake up before Wraith finds them? If not, are yall skipping your turns?

@ThisIsFine

I was going to have Kitsune wake up by herself.

Pokémon: Rust

Sorry for the wait, I completely forgot it was my turn.

We should probably figure out how we're going to end this battle. Unless you guys want to just play it out naturally.