Knight Sylvestre
Location: the Neighborhood
Fittingly, rain began to fall only moments after Cyril left the burning building behind. Though it didn't really matter to him either way, since nobody lived in this place anymore, it seemed that the fire would be drenched by the coming downpour. Using his glaive as a walking stick, he limped across the cul-de-sac and bashed his shoulder against the front door of another house. He found the lock uncooperative, and rather than risking further injury to try and destroy the door, he sidled around to a window and smashed it in with his polearm. The clouds burst just as he clambered inside, and Cyril plopped into a couch where he could watch the rain quench the flames that Jokaero began. “What a shame...” he murmured, thinking of the inventor. Yet, that statement didn't quite do his feeling justice. There was a gnawing in the back of Cyril's skull. This wasn't the first time he'd killed a person, but the others had been both very few and exceptionally loathsome scumbags. All Jokaero had been was a quirky if volatile man seeking a wish. Who knew what he had hoped to gain? Perhaps his wish had been nobler than the knight's, yet Cyril had decided in those heart-pounding moments that his wants were greater. As his hands moved around to strip off his armor, piece by piece, they shook; no matter how much he tried to relax, Cyril couldn't keep the choppiness out of his breath.
His time alone with his thoughts didn't last. Into the house, through the entry broken open by Cyril, flew the camera-drone of the announcer. The vanguard, holding his helmet in his hands, narrowed his eyes. In his eyes, the grisly proceedings -of which there were no doubt many among the other participants- made for a freakish combination with this fellow's upbeat attitude. Yet, when Oren's projector came online, his smile was barely visible and his eyebrows betrayed some kind of second-hand sorrow. “Ya did good, buddy. For all his doohickeys and traps, poor Jokaero couldn't quite match you in inventiveness. Even if he was a total wacko, it ain't good to see him go.” Oren reached out and pressed a button, hidden from Cyril's perception by the confines of the screen. The clasps on the drone's underside snapped open and dropped a wooden box onto the carpeted floor. “This is yours.”
Cyril breathed a heavy sigh and stood up, wincing from the renewed pain in his foot. After making a mental note to check the house for bandages in a few minutes, he made his way over to and grabbed the loot crate. With a resigned casualness he activated his saw shield, cut one end of the box off, and tossed the toothy metal disc aside. The sound of rolling metal came from within as Cyril upended the box, and into his waiting hand dropped a giant screw.
I got:
29.
ScrewIt could be his head wasn't screwed on just rightInduces extreme mental acuity, including perception, memory, calculation, and coordination, once painlessly jammed into one's head, and once it's been adjusted to feel just right
A moment of quiet, except of course for the riotous rainfall, passed while Cyril stared at the screw. “...What? How is this supposed to help me?” He turned the item this way and that, but couldn't discern anything unusual except for its size. A sort of square zig-zag pattern ran down its length, and he reached for the bottom of the screw to get a better hold of it so he could bring it closer to his face. Instead, the screw's end pushed straight
through his hand. “Wagh!” Panicked by the shifting sensation, which was freakish and bizarre but painless, he tried to drop the screw only to find it stuck in his hand. After a few seconds of flailing, he grabbed the screw's head with his other hand and yanked it out. With a muffled
clunk the screw hit the ground. “Yeesh. What a lovely little piece of crap.” He examined his hand and found it unaltered. “So...it just...uh, goes through flesh? Great. I couldn't ask for better.” A glance at the drone confirmed that Oren was snickering. “You have any idea what it's good for, genius?”
The announcer shrugged, his revitalized grin unwavering. “Not really. I was just thinking that you'd look like Frankenstein's Monster if you stuck it in your head. Guess you got 'screwed' on this one!” He laughed his irritating laugh. “Well, see ya in the morning! Your next opponent...ah, forget it. Just wait for my announcement tomorrow.”
As the drone left, Cyril muttered something dark and unintelligible before scooping up all his gear -screw included- and wandering around the house until he found a bedroom. Once there he stacked up his things, removed the rest of his gear, and threw himself into the empty bed. With the storm to sing him to sleep, he passed out in seconds.
The Lady in White
Location: Justice Hub – Amaranth Generator Adjunct
@LazoWreathed in magic for protection and illumination, Pithy braved the festering dark. In mere moments the ancient-looking passage opened up with corridors on either side, marking the hole as less of a hallway and more of a maze. Vile though it was, the odor of rancid meat guided her through, and though at times the shadows seemed thick and almost animate in their movements, the cryomancer's magelight beat them back. After many sandy but trap-devoid twists and turns, and a good few ups and downs, she found herself on the brink of two larger chambers lit by torchlight.
On the left was the source of the foul stench: a room littered with the corpses of
large, weirdly-shaped creatures, with bulbous black hide and all sorts of growths, including enough legs to make mockery of a millipede and enough fungal and plant life to shame a sloth. In the dim light, making out all of their details was night impossible, save for spearlike proboscises, but none gave a single hint of life. Furthermore, a sharp eye could tell how these oversized abominations had managed to fit through the narrow passages: great gashes all across them indicated that they had been carved up, carried through this maze, and reassembled—all some time ago. The floor was stained an odd bluish-green with their vital fluids.
The right room, meanwhile, could not have contrasted more. At complete odds with the barbaric, gory scene next door was a chamber arranged like an ancient study. Furniture littered it, and books and scrolls covered them. In the center was a fire pit, and on an intricately-painted stone bench beside it sat a
beast with piercing blue eyes affixed to Pithy before her magelight even grew close enough to reveal him.
“Good evening,” the terrifying monster said in a polite tone.
After a moment for the swallowing of surprise and the ascertainment of his nonhostile nature, he continued. “I mean you no harm, I assure you. I thought I detected a new aroma on the breeze, one far more refined than the malodorous repugnance of those bloated spindlelegs. Welcome to the humble lair of Actaeon. You must be here for the tournament. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
The God Hand
Location: the School's Library
@GreenGoatExited for an ear that could listen and an eye that could see, the kami swarmed Juniper. They brushed up against her, their whispers combining into an unintelligible babble, until the initial rush faded and a sense of unity was reached.
Outside, they agreed.
Go around the perimeter. The faceless ones have gone inside to escape the rain. A man has arrived in front of the school. One of the scholars. He brings medicine, food, and warmth. Look not upon his face, but upon his heart. Other than that, they had a lot to say, but little of it pertinent or even logical.
-=-=-
A bank of fog rolled through the School's parking strip, where cars would once caravan to pick up and drop off children. After it passed, the rain fell upon a new shape, and the strip was empty no longer. A vehicle the size and shape of an ice-cream truck, with a hooded lantern hanging from each mirror, rolled to a stop by the curb. The driver's-side door popped open, and from the van a bulky, bent-backed man extracted himself. Covered in a dark-green poncho, the huge man plodded toward the vehicle's rear and opened it to sort through the items within. In the lantern's light, his hidden features were illuminated, though it might have been better had they not. His was a hideous, misshapen face that appeared to droop to one side, with a bulbous nose twisted the opposite direction, a neck as thick as his head, and only a few teeth in his wide mouth. The doctor, having been informed of his soon-to-be patient's injuries, prepared his things as he waited for Juniper to arrive.
The Fungal Knight
Location: Amusement Mile
@BananaThough he turned around when spoken to, the clown looked more surprised than anything else. For a moment he stood still, staring at Bo-Bonesword unblinkingly, but after a moment it gave out a reverberating chortle. It then spoke in an unknown, garbled language as it put its hands on its hips and stared up at the ceiling. After a few moments of nonsensical murmuring, he looked back to the newcomer and said in a distorted, singsong tone, “How is this? Is the good language? Am doing the work for it. Hard, but...um, good for plan. If not talk prey language, not help Klowns catch prey. Though, good joke! Tough understand, but I like.” The clown bobbed its head, laughing again. After a moment, it composed itself to try and talk again, gesticulating as it did. “You should...” he pointed toward the exit. “Go with Klowns. Soon to leave. The prepare is...not done, but soon done. Then we fly into prey city, find strong prey, catch. Big fun, big fun! There, is good language!” Still giggling, the clown waved before turning back to his console. A few pressed buttons and pushed levers later, the clown nodded, grabbed the plastic gun, and span around once more to make his exit.
The Sentinel
Location: the Lake
@SentelTwo soft but distinctive beeps disturbed Ryan's silence, each punctuating a light on the surface of her own phylactery. The bottommost one came up stodgy green, and above it a white dot appeared. Then they both faded out, and for a while, Ryan was alone with her thoughts and the patter of falling rain.
A wet but tranquil half-hour slipped by before a familiar, tentative voice reached out to Ryan through her own phylactery. “Er, hello? Is this on? I...well, I'm sorry. Didn't want to disturb you. But it has been a while, and I got kind of worried you mighta died from hyperthermia or something. I have something for you.” Outside her mech, laying on the ground, was a wooden box.
You got:
37.
RayTout, tout, through and about, your callow life in dismay. Rentum, Osculum, Tormentum. A decade twice a dayScans the age of a target and calibrates the dial to have it at the center. The dial can then increase or decrease the number. The ray fizzles out after only a few inches, but on contact, it induces aging or de-aging to the specified age over the course of a few moments. Mental change follows, but is more gradual. Cannot go lower than three or higher than 97
The drone floated in the air, shredding drops of rain with its propellers. Clearly, it wasn't faring the best in this deluge, but the announcer seemed loathe to leave just yet. “Er,” his voice brimmed with unsureness. “There isn't much shelter out here. There's a place southwest of here that might work, but there's a couple people there that might be dangerous. I could try to convince them to leave you alone until tomorrow. Or, you might be able to find a cave in the waterfall mountain on the north shore?”
Not far from Sophia's current position, two dark forms began to take shape through the veil of heavy rain. One, spindly and indistinct, floated above and to the side of the other, a far larger and darker mass. For a short time it appeared that they were headed for the the angelic warrior, but they stopped around the spot in the mud where Clotho had fallen. The huge, round one landed with a tremendous splash in the moist earth, but its companion merely hung nearby like a marionette. Were Sophia to inch closer, she would be able to make them out in the rain. More easily visible war the brute, who closely resembled a gigantic, anthropomorphic shield bug. He could have been a heavy man in heavy armor, dark green trimmed with light green and bronze, if not for the disproportionate size and hunch of his back. When lightning flashed, it glimmered in the steel of that shell. His
head, meanwhile, was tiny enough to easily fit inside his bicep, and its eyes held an unabashed sadness.
His companion could best be described as a forest sprite. In a loose sense, it looked like an angel made of twisting wooden branches and roots. Instead of arms, it had wispy fans of twigs for wings, knotted together in a rough approximation of feathers. All across the wings, tender shoots hung down as strings to hold windchimes and the effigies of hanged men. Little greenish-yellow lights, the sparks of fireflies, danced within its split husk of a chest, and its head was a thick clump of roots radiating outward as a crown. Torn into the left side of the face was a single hole, and from within it radiated a soothing light.
”Frolic, if you would.”A soft rumble issued from the behemoth, and the sprite descended until it was essentially kneeling over Clotho's body. As if from an overflowing vessel, light poured from the cavities in its eye and chest onto the fallen queen. Her wounds closed, and her skin disappeared beneath her regenerating carapace. In only a few moments, Clotho was restored. A gasp of shock, drowned by the cacophony of falling rain, escaped her mouth, and she sat upright. Slowly, she blinked her eyes before looking back and forth between the two around her.
”IO,” she whispered, her voice weak.
”Take it easy, my lady. You don't need to say anything.” The giant bug's eyes were bright with quiet happiness.
Clotho shook her head, sending droplets flying from her hair.
”No. I must apologize for my actions. I betrayed him, and all of you. Stupidity, spitefulness, whatever. I had given up on Air Rave. I should have died here for the foolishness of thinking I could restore our pride alone, and again to have imagined I could wish all my problems away. I am sorry.”A great mitt descended to gingerly fall on Clotho's shoulder.
”Forget it. We're all made of greed and pride. Failure or not, you're still one of us. You should know we all forgive you. Even the Master you detest so much.”Another moment of quiet passed between the two. The forest spirit Frolic, having risen back to float like a flower petal on the breeze, watched with tangible gladness. Clotho stared at the mud, the gears turning in her head.
”...Is he here?”IO pointed upward. A flash of lightning revealed a colossal black shape, not unlike the silhouette of a bird, high up in the sky.
Shakily, Clotho stood to her feet and looked around. She could not find the one she sought.
”...You should know that in all likelihood I've lost my soul. A very irritating woman took it from me.” Her companions said nothing, though IO used his hand to help steady her. The shadow of a smile passed across the stolid swarm queen's face.
”Perhaps I should thank her for bringing me back down to earth. Though I'd rather like to gut her.” She experimentally flapped her wings, and a sharp grimace hinted at the result.
”It seems I am too weak to fly. IO, would you...?” Without a word the behemoth picked the queen up and deposited her on his back. Frolic, meanwhile, was a little apart from the pair, and staring out into the rain in curiosity. It could feel a life nearby.
The pair of College girls remained quiet during Teller's speech. Guðrún wore an irate look, but even she said nothing. For her part, Amelia looked downright nervous. When the soldier said that he could prepare to fire in a single second, she believed him. After he said his piece, the lack of conversation remained for a moment through the rain until Amelia found the courage to pipe up. “Your wish.” She raised her head to look Teller in the eye—or at least, about where his eye should be judging by his helmet. As luck would have it, he raised his face plate enough to reveal his hardened features, which Amelia couldn't say were more or less intimidating than his visor. All the same, she added on, “Not entertainment. You're fighting for your wish. The thing you want the most in the world. People like us don't even watch the footage, and I wouldn't if I could. I don't like killing.” She steadied herself with a deep breath.
In a more subdued tone, Guðrún responded, “We didn't come here to rendezvous with you. Meetin' you was just coincidence. We're headed to Blythe Towers, a condo just up the road near the top of the Village. That's where the surveillance drone picked up the disturbances. As for reward, we don't have it on us, or whoever we run into could just take it, but it's an artifact that completely hides anyone who uses it. We can get Oren to bring it out in the morning, 'cause rain damages it. And we are the recon; all we're doin' is checkin' out the place, recordin' what we can, and runnin' at the first sign of trouble. Happy?”
Member
Izurich,
MULTI_MEDIA_MAN,
Yankee,
Rezod92,
kapuchu,
Elite Minor,
Dark Cloud,
Tim the Yeti,
Tom66,
Xandrya