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Forever and ever, amen
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Calling out from Scatman's world
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Bio

Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.

Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.

Most Recent Posts

Slayer
Level 4
Day 2
Location: Platform City Subway
@Zarkun @Majoras End @Tenma Tendo @ONL
Experience: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| (0/40)


No small amount of curiosity compelled Slayer to examine every detail of the haunting locomotive, but his fascination did not render him ignorant to the approach of four strangers. At the sound of footsteps, he glanced over his shoulder. A well-dressed man with long white locks, whose getup colored his own style of class with a sort of grimness, walked his way at the head of an extraordinary entourage. Though Slayer had not yet had the pleasure of introducing himself to this Alucard fellow, his manner of address indicated that his reputation proceeded him. The momentary sight of the black-clad noble's sword did not warrant so much as a batted eyelash from the gentleman, for the newcomers interested him far more. He could not help but marvel at the sort of phenomenon that could bring such disparate beings together. Around Alucard stood a brawny truck of a man, slender youth with bright spectacled beneath tousled black hair, and a tiny child in a yellow raincoat. A task awaited him, it seemed: guide these new heroes through whatever thrilling seasonal surprise awaited them on the other side of a ride from the Doom Train. All that remained was to stop gawping and start talking.

”Oh! Of course, where are my manners?” He joked, his accented though properly enunciated voice genial. ”My name is Slayer. Most excellent to meet you all!” Holding his right hand over his heart, he gave a polite bow. ”Please forgive my slowness. I shall endeavor to be quicker on the uptake. Heavy Weapons Guy, was it? I assure you, I am no spy of any kind, though now that I consider it, isn't that just what a spy would say? If I might be so bold, could I refer to you as simply 'Heavy' instead?” He gave a chuckle. ”Akira Kurusu...if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that you're Japanese, correct? I am unaware of the situation in other worlds, but in the realm from which I hail, there are precious few such persons remaining in existence. Were you to visit, I can only image you'd be lauded as a national treasure. Either way, you may rely on me in whatever missions we undertake, Joker.” After that, only the most enigmatic member of the trio remained. Quiet and unassuming she seemed the type of be easily missed, and though Slayer could not see her whole face, she bore a harrowed visage. When this little girl 'spoke', she communicated via sign language, and the gentleman furrowed his brows. ”Oh, dear. I'm afraid my signing is very rusty...I should have known better honestly, such a shortcoming is a hairs-breadth away from inexcusable...” While he missed much of what she was trying to say, he got the message of her second sentence, though understanding it was another matter. Six...six years old? While a child might in fact say that, I shall go out on a limb to make this assumption... Kneeling to make himself seem less tall and imposing, Slayer gave the child a bow of her own. ”The pleasure is mine, Six. Welcome to the team!”

He rose to his full height a moment later as he stepped back, but his smile did not diminish. ”Twould seem we have a good lot here.” Stepping to the side, he indicated the Doom Train's nearest door with a flourish of his hand. Your first adventure awaits. Shall we depart?”
For the Wards, just let me know if you'd rather be skipped since there's not a lot happening at this precise moment and you're just going over the final plan before showing up. If you'd like you can buff a potential post with their before-mission preparations too. Just a suggestion.


Apologies for the late reply, but yes, please count me out for this turn.
Type 0011 “Severa”

PL 910 Human Cyborg
Location: VR Training World “Gehenna” / Secret Facility in Central Capital


In seconds Severa's grisly handiwork faded from both sight and mind, the whole encounter a predictable and forgettable interlude. Lacking in subtlety, it left no impression, but nevertheless accomplished its function of adding another layer of reinforcement to the untold thousands that defined the girl's fighting ability. When the last trace of torchlight was minutes away, Severa allowed herself to slow down. Her face, mired though it was in the near-total darkness, bore the hollow sort of indifference that this world trained upon it; not an ounce of fear polluted her being, not necessarily due to her conditioning, but instead a product of the simple fact that nothing in this place was scary. Boring but lethal was not so much as a hell but a grindstone, a nightmare that rendered its occupants dead even if its repetitive horrors did not kill them. No courage could be gleaned from Severa's stride as she made her way up an incline that led out of the twisted forest—just drilled-in efficiency. When the hill gave way to a sudden drop high above a basin, she sat upon the black grass at the edge, her legs dangling off the precipice. Beneath the starless black sky, she held her head in her hands.

The tingling took a little longer to fade. For as long as she could remember, every time that something died by her hand, an undeniable sensation of pleasure had blossomed in her brain. There had been a time that she reveled in it, riding the high of slaughter for days on end, but something had changed. Severa could not remember what, or why, for in this place all memories grew hazy save for those forged in the rush of combat, but she learned that this jolt of euphoria did not come from inside herself. She knew it to be a manipulation, though she could say nothing else about it with certainty. From the day of that revelation, Severa learned to keep those impulses under control. In doing so, she found in time that she saved herself from the only truly frightening thing in her reality: the killers.

A light in the distance seized her attention, forcing her to displace all other thoughts as she hastened to process the unknown stimulus and assess the threat. Across the empty space of the water-filled gorge, something metal reflected the stark glare of the moon. It appeared to be attached to a dark shape, and as Severa, watched, it made a slight movement, and the sound of a bell filtered across the gap. One of us, she understood, and in reply she lifted her hand. Around her palm, the air began to spin, forming a bright blade that revolved for a second before she let it dissipate. Her signal given, she continued to observe as the stranger seated itself on the opposing cliff.

While the possibility of a threat remained, the person across the way shared much with her. Whoever it was, it wasn't a killer, though defining what a killer was in the first place led to much trickiness. Every individual like Severa, every survivor, needed to kill and kill and kill again just to make it to the next day. As far as her scattered encounters informed her, Severa felt sure that each one received the same stimulus as she for the act of murder. Then there were non-survivors who fit the mold of murderer with extreme precision, but they were allied, so to speak, with the monstrous things in this plane; their status as enemies could not be questioned. The difference, then, had to be in awareness; some of the survivors, during their wanderings, knew that something was wrong, that a true mystery and a true danger dwelt beneath the surface. Then, there were those who did not care about what might be going on beneath, those for whom the carnage was everything. Their quest for gratification, for the rush of blood, consumed them completely. Severa knew from experience that it wasn't intelligence or cunning they lacked; the only difference between she and they was that she could bury the drive to maim and slay, and they could not. But why did she bother? Why did any of the abstainers? Really, she had no idea. The bell-ringer, across the way, probably didn't either. Still, here they were, a couple hundred feet apart yet altogether close in spirit.

Soon, this little rendezvous would have to end. It wasn't her first, and with any degree of luck it wouldn't be her last. Another constant, observable by the abstainers: if several lingered too long in any one place, whether or not they engaged one another in combat, monsters would appear from the woodwork. This, Severa felt, happened too predictably to be mere coincidence. It served to further her ideas about the existence of some manipulator, who contrived to keep the abstainers apart. This did not dissuade her from trying when the opportunity arose; meetings like this, where the most eventful communication might be a distant wave from each party, kindled inside her a strange sensation like the fiery joy that ignited in her when she killed, but much, much weaker, and smoother. It felt like a more natural good, rather than the good that struck her like lightning to incentivize further bloodshed, and Severa assigned to it value for that reason.

Rallying her weary muscles, she forced herself to her feet. “Live on,” she whispered, her voice a croak from lack of practice, though her words lost in the warm breeze. Severa gave a stiff wave to the unknown stranger, and the bell rang out once again. Then, she started to move in the direction the water flowed far below. A horde could appear at any moment, and in an effort to establish her own self with what little power she had, she wished to avoid further combat if at all possible.
Once again, my apologies. I'm more or less free from attention-compromising concerns at the time being, and I will endeavor to reply on an individual or two-person basis for those who put out responses quickly, so that the pace of the smaller fights can increase.

If you have questions about foes I'm throwing your way, do not hesitate to ask.
Knight Sylvestre

Location: Oldtown


Cyril's capture galvanized the remaining fighters into action. Whether or not they knew or liked him, they knew that as soon as they started getting picked off, this arduous struggle would be over. As the darkness began to close in on the pinned vanguard, Souta became surrounded by a fiery glow, and before the eyes of those still able to see a powerful blaze consumed him from nowhere. Juniper stood agape, wondering if her last standing ally had been somehow immolated by this unknown force, until a surge of water followed the flames to give off a burst of steam. When the breeze carried it away, the smith looked nothing like himself. A strange stone armor, haphazard in its forming enough to make him resemble a demon, now covered Souta.

With the ample weight and protection the power of his unique, unknown power, the enigmatic metalworker stepped forward into the cascade once more. Yet, as easily as before, he was carried off his feet and thrown back. The voice echoing from the jagged, asymmetrical helmet afterward managed to convey its immense disappointment and frustration despite the strange headwear's distortion. “Are you kidding me? This water can't be physical. Nothing like that should be able to move me when I'm in Trigger. Must operate on different rules...” The invisible foot of Howell's vengeful entity crashed upon him again as he stood, but this time he practically shrugged it off. All that defense would not save Cyril, however, who appeared to have blacked out.

Juniper clenched her fists, mind racing. Hotheaded as though she might appear, she had been paying attention. These two appeared to be using some sort of magic that completely disregarded conventions, but she got the nagging feeling that the trick for the vortex specifically was actually quite simple. There wasn't time enough to puzzle it out, but as much as she wanted to, she couldn't let Cyril be crushed to death. The pettiness of revenge aside, he did have her soul, after all. Concerning the problem at hand, she could rattle off a few things about it. First: the torrent was not insurmountable, for somehow some progress had been made. It had only been when she got back into the fight that Souta and Cyril suffered a reset of their progress. Second: the torrent cared not about the weight of objects introduced to it, nor the effort with which they strove to conquer it. Third: when the flow didn't repel an assailant, it was only when two of her trio were fording it together. Maybe it has a set amount of force it can bring to bear at once, and when confronted by several enemies, it has to split the force into multiple, weaker ones. There were holes in her theory, but it was better than nothing, and time was -of course- of the essence.

“Souta! Let's jump in at the same time!”

Even without his face visible to show his feelings, Souta appeared desperate enough to try anything. “'Kay!”

“Now!”

One of Juniper's new metal legs went down into the water, and though the push was there, it felt terribly weak. What. It's that simple!? She took another step, then another. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Souta doing the same, and as their confidence waxed, their speed picked up.

In the eye of the storm, Raleigh and Howell shifted from one-hundred-percent self-sure to surprised and fearful in a second flat. Their foes were employing some sort of strategy that seemed to be working; no countermeasure had come up during the afternoon of testing. “How could you have figured out a weakness when we couldn't find a single one!?” The sunken man demanded. Still floating overhead in the grip of Howell's entity, Cyril was suddenly cast down to tumble along the ground. At one, two forces descended upon the assailants, but the moment they hit the water, they were repelled. Souta's stony facade and Juniper's outstretched hand breached the eye of the tempest at that moment, and in a splash of ethereal water the cascade dissipated.

Raleigh's scream was cut off by Souta's fist which, alongside bloodying her nose and teeth, knocked her out instantly. In a flash, Juniper delivered a snap kick to Howell's jaw, flooring him. He hit the cobblestones first, and Raleigh's limp body fell on top of him, but his eyes remained open. Pressure closed in on Juniper from all sides, and before she knew what was going on, the invisible hand yanked her toward the sky. All became a blur as she shot upward at impossible speeds. Blue became black in a matter of seconds, and she could focus on only one thing: a star in the far-flung reaches of space, just a twinkling speck to someone on Earth. When it started getting visibly larger, she began to brace herself, and the next second slammed into something blinding and yellow.

When her head stopped spinning, Juniper opened her eyes. She was laying on a hard, flat, brilliant surface that expanded infinitely in every direction. Dumbfounded, she could only look around. The incredibly brightness of the ground met the pitch-black void of space at the horizons, and as she scanned the sky, she could see a single star glowing brighter than the rest. In silence she considered what might have happened, pondering the ludicrousness of the idea of being snatched and taken to a star untold googols of miles away, until she became aware of two shapes on the ground nearby that looked just a touch darker than the rest. Their outlines gave the impression that they were feet, and as Juniper stared, something began to move. Only detectable by the shimmer it gave off its ghostly body as it moved, it was gargantuan, on par with the titans of myth, yet strangely emaciated. Though humanoid, its head could only be described as some sort of grotesque, immense flower, and from its back there extended a huge, curved protrusion that resembled a crescent moon. It raised its hand to crush her, but before the shimmering mass could descend, everything dissolved into a blur once again. Juniper's last fleeting look of the thing was as she zoomed by it, in the direction of the bright star. Still shocked, she glanced over her shoulder, but all that remained of the bizarre plain upon which she lay for but an instant was a sparkling dot in the unnamable distance.

In a few seconds the blur faded away once again. The martial artist could see the cloudy sky of late afternoon, and feel the cobblestones at her back. An outstretched hand appeared, the last chunks of sorcerous stone turning to dust, and she reached out to take it. Nearby, Cyril was making a laborious effort to stand up himself, and while he worked at it Juniper glanced at the bodies of the College employees. The woman still breathed, albeit through a destroyed mouth and nose, but the man sported a skull that had evidently met the wrong end of Souta's hammer while Juniper had been...'away'. “He cast some sort of illusion...a hallucination. It must have been.” Juniper told him.

Tired and confused, the smith shrugged before turning to walk in the direction of a restaurant. “C'mon,” he told both Cyril and Juniper, “We could use a few drinks after whatever the hell that was.”

The Fungal Knight

Location: the Big Top
@Banana


BoBonesword's revelation -that the egg timer affected the gravity of the user- proved exactly correct as he began to fall upward. The hammer that he clutched, however, remained decidedly in the purview of its wielder, affixed instead to conventional gravity. Thus, when the skeleton-turned-clown's grip failed, he found himself on the ceiling of the Big Top's capture chamber in a matter of seconds. A handful of meters below, sporting a quizzical expression, the ogreish clown stared up at him. No clear avenue of attack remained for the freak now that his enemy lay out of his reach. A few moments passed before an idea popped into the carnie's head, and with the hammer in hand he shuffled to one of the wacky-colored doors. Its motion sensor activated as he drew near to let him pass, and the clown made a beeline for the nearest wall-mounted weapons catch. Several goofy-looking ray guns and one flamboyant bazooka hung there, but given his build the clown could not be said to be making good time.

Inari

Location: What Lies Beneath
@Kapuchu


Lily's caution earned her another half-hour of waiting a short way off from the mushroom garden, but in time she did become aware of the low whine of a second drone, eking from between the between the dimly luminescent stalks. It grew steadily louder as it came closer, but no other noise could be picked up even in the oppressive silence of this massive cavern.

The kitsune's foe did, however, appear.

He walked out from a bundle of spindly mushrooms, his steps slow and halting. Unmasked by a helmet, Teller's features were plain to see, and his glazed, languid countenance told of a decided lack of wellness. Black goop coated his futuristic armor, especially thick around his hands and forearms, where it besmirched the rifle he held in his grasp. In front of him floated the drone, but he did not glance at it when it reangled itself to face in Lily's direction. Instead, he reached out and grabbed it, his fingers working quickly to shut it down and attach it to his belt, before he turned his dull eyes from side to side. Their gaze looked over the scenery beyond the pseudo-forest's age.

“I knooow where you aaare...”

Of all things, his voice sounded wet. Before he turned to face Lily, somehow fixating in her direction despite the lack of guidance, a few more strange things could be glimpsed. From his lower back sprouted a gooey black tail, its tip a spade, and his shoulderblades gave rise to winglike extensions that lacked membranes.

“Your souuul...I need it. Give it, sooo tasty. Won't ask nicelyyy...I must feeeeeed.”

The soldier's face began to bubble and boil, the sky turning to jelly. His mouth grew to take up his whole face, the teeth yellow-green pillars that gnashed together again and again before opening wide. Two additional arms sprouted from his ribs and reached into his maw to retrieve a pair of curved swords from within his gullet. When the mouth closed, it shrank back to its normal size, Teller's liquidated human features reappearing. Black slime flowed from his lips to cover the top of his head, where it altered into a horned military helmet with a microphone. Music, energetic but distorted in parts into a hideous-sounding remix, began to echo through the underground.

“Coming for you, tasty!” came the garbled ultimatum, through the noise.

Sunspot

Location: the Park
@FloodTalon


While the tree Pieter inhabited harbored no more leaves on its boughs, the remnants of Weird Autumn swirled like a stormcloud of oranges and browns above and around their controller; after all, in a world where a single mature oak could have two hundred thousand leaves, a single twister made no difference to the whole. Jin's dash toward Pieter proved to be a shortsighted maneuver as a portion of the original tree's magicked leaves swooped down on him from the front, and those of his former cover closed in from behind him. The two waves hastened to crash together with the assassin in the middle.

Malveil

Location: Main Street
@RoughDragon1


Blood-curdling shriek after uncanny shriek sounded out from the alley as Malveil grew closer, intensifying until the very moment he rounded the building's corner to peer down it at the abhorrent things within. When he turned his gaze upon the horrible noises' source, however, only trash looked back at him.

The next second, blasts of blackness appeared above him, in every direction. Murky dust expanded into a nebulous cloud that blocked out the sun, and from the sudden dark descended a squadron of shapes blacker still. Misshapen, abominable, and with no two quite alike, the nightmarish things cackled at the surrounded fool that had fallen for their ambush. Wasting little time, the ghouls mounted their bloodthirsty assault, the first lashing out with its twisted limbs to gouge Malveil's flesh from his body.
Overwhelming strength and conviction--is it all one needs to defeat insurmountable odds?

Woodstop

@Lord Zee's Revenmar, @13org's Yasha


Singlemindedly ferocious as they were, the foxmen of the Vulpuryun Tribe boasted their fair share of wits. Even those among them that couldn't boast a dozen battles under their belt could recognize the two abnormalities that had taken the field. No regular soldier could, after all, rack up such a body count at such a blistering pace. From the moment that foxes started dropping like flies, their still-standing comrades took notice of the lethal knight's shining armor and the crested swordsman's flying razors of wind. After finishing off the last man challenging him atop a nearby boulder, a burly foxman with a huge greatsword began barking orders. The beastmen not directly engaged with Woodstop's soldiery, or entranced by the silver warrior's taunt, began to rotate their positions. More druids and hexfoxes appeared near Revenmar, and archers took up positions close to where Emile was fighting to nock and loose their arrows.

Giving Revenmar a respectable distance, foxes wielding hexing wands began to channel energetic purple magics. They moved his way in waves, and their lapping touch seemed to increase the weight of his already-heavy armor. His powerful muscles were forced to contend with the debilitating might of Gravity, strong enough to lay out flat any ordinary soldier, and to bring even the most prodigious strongman to his knees. At the same time, the druids flourished their lightening rods to shower him with bolts of electricity from afar, aiming to cook him in his heavy plate. A rarity on the battlefield, such armor nevertheless sported its fair share of weaknesses.

For his part, fortune favored Emile; the allies he fought beside spotted the bowfoxes taking up advantageous positions to fire upon them. When the call went out, Randy looked to confirm for himself, and ended up smiling despite the dire circumstances. “The subhumans display more military practice than I would have anticipated. Look over yonder, Emile! Our foe has pegged you for a magician and seeks to penetrate your arcane artistry with a quarrel or two.” He paused to concentrate, dodging backward as a spearfox grew too close for comfort. His movement left a comrade's flank open, and the spearfox altered her weapon's course to bury itself in the soldier's thigh. While the man let out a startling scream of agony, he lunged forward toward the fox and bashed her shield with his own. Stunned, she couldn't react in time to avoid a vertical air slash from Emile that parted her arm at the shoulder. Her howl was cut off by the soldier's axe, which he slammed down into her collarbone from above to get around her still-raised shield. As she toppled, he fell back too due to his brutalized leg, and the next moment he was being left behind. Randy fell back, his palm aglow with a green luster, to start healing the injury as he dragged the soldier back. “Tarry not, mercenary! Those arrows will rain down upon us in seconds, now that there's an opening.”

Emile nodded, and as he stepped onto a small rock sticking out of the grassy hill, he swung his sword to throw another air slash at one of the archers. The relatively slow-moving air razor left the bowfox plenty of time to duck out of the way, however, and the next moment an arrow shot Emile's way. For a second, he couldn't process how fast it was moving; sharp though his vision was, they did not make possible the impossible feat of speeding up perception, and to him the arrow looked scarcely slower than a bullet. He felt the impact before he saw it. ”Huh!?” Panicked, he looked down, but the arrow was already twirling away to fall, harmless, in the grass Just before piercing his belly, it had been stopped by a thin barrier surrounding him. It hit him the next moment, just before the second arrow did: aether body. The swirling orbs floating in the air around him were proof—the Comet Chaser's blessing had prevented harm. Randy, still watching, looked dumbfounded as the arrows smacked into Emile one by one and magic spilled into the air instead of blood. The other soldiers had taken cover behind knolls, trees, or shields, and they appeared just as surprised. Not one to rest on his laurels, Emile ducked behind a large stump. Thud, thud, thud went the arrows into the stump, and then they stopped.

The woman in armor beside him, whose dirty-blonde hair, pale purple eyes, and short sword gave her away as the very same soldier who'd helped Emile moments before, stared at him dubiously. “That's some useful magic. Got any to spare, mate? Ya might be able to head back out, but we're pinned down here.” Her face became a scowl of anger. “How many bleedin' bowfoxes they keep in reserve? Gonna take the hill, we were. Now we're sittin' ducks 'til their duffers come 'round and clear us out. Unless ya fancy chargin' 'em one by one.”

Silent, Emile took a peek around the edge of the stump. His visor allowed him a clear look at the well-built beastman commander on his rock at the hilltop. “Better to take care of the real problem.”

Lips curled in a proud smile, Hargrihn the Highlander stood with his enormous claymore atop his shoulders. More a long chunk of sharpened iron than a real sword, his 'weapon' could have put an entire team of lesser foxes to shame, but this Vulp's physique made it clear he was no ordinary beastman. For a moment it had seemed like the human force, bolstered by its steady stream of reinforcements from the village as well as the two forces of nature that fought for them, would take the hill and force the warband out of the valley. No matter how strong it might be, however, anything on the battlefield was subject to military strategy. There was no move the humans could make that the Vulpuryuns lacked an answer to. Though a veteran of many battles, Hargrihn did not typically issue commands like this, but he felt sure that the effectiveness of his calls would earn a newfound respect from the warlord once he became aware. Still, the Highlander's true passion was the fight, and he almost wanted to let the humans advance so that he could leap down and join the brawl himself. It was with a shimmer in his dark eyes, then, that Hargrihn watched the shape of the special swordsman rocket up from behind his stump on wings of aether. For a moment, in fact, a great many eyes were on Emile's spectacle as he hung in the air, his magic wings a steam of effulgent teal and pitch-black trail, before he drove straight toward Hargrihn.

At the last conceivable moment, the Highlander moved his sword to intercept Emile's double overhead slash. The resulting clang rang across the battlefield, and the fox's grip held against the Comet Chaser's push. As Emile's feet touched stone, Hargrihn pushed the locked weapons down, and bared his teeth in his enemy's face. “A beautiful light show. Very impressive! But not for the Highlander!” He adjusted his grip as he spoke, his grin widening. “Magic, dexterity...tools of the coward! There is just one path for the true warrior, stranger!” Mustering his strength, Hargrihn gave a mighty shove. Emile's loose footing on the edge of he bolder gave way, and he tumbled backward to land in the grass. Above him, a great black shadow blocked out the sunlight dappling through the treetops. “Muscle power!”

Emile rolled out of the way, and Harghrin's sword split the earth where he lay a split second before. In a flash the Comet Chaser regained his feet, and the fight was on.

-=-=-


The thickness of the woods meant that the sounds of battle faded away with haste as Yasha made her beleaguered retreat. In the hollow of a deformed pair of trees, whose trunks had grown together into a warped curve, she found a place to hide and rest. In the shadows beneath the leaves the pale sharpshooter did not stand out so much as one might think, and as her breath eased she could feel the stillness of the air. No errant breeze filtered through this forest, and only the drone of insects, the swish of leaves, and the song of distant birds interrupted the silence.

That lull remained until an odd noise disturbed the atmosphere. At first it could be mistaken for footsteps, but rather than the fall of shoes on leaves and roots, it sounded far more like slapping. Even stranger was its frequency; the soft, meaty noise could be heard several times per second, unassuming in volume but detectable thanks to the woods' general quiet and growing louder as whatever it was grew closer. After a few moments, the noises' perpetrator passed within Yasha's view. For about a second she could make out the unusual but familiar shape of Lenore, who she'd seen but perhaps not assigned a particular significance to last night after the enigmatic transition. Not far behind Lenore followed two more conventional-looking flesh golems, their freakish forms all the stranger for their silent attendance to their mistress. Lenore did not notice Yasha in any way, but instead headed in the general direction of the illusory boulder the markswoman spotted a short time ago—though in fact, Lenore's current course could take her right past it, if there weren't any foxmen to clue her in on where to go.
Sorry, folks. I have been busy, but I'll have a post up in the next couple of days. Hang tight until then!

The only person who needs to post in the near future is @Lazo. It's been quite a while, but I haven't been sharp about monitoring as of late.
@13org, @Lord Zee, I have been busy, but I'll have a post up in the next couple of days. Hang tight!
A room packed full of powerful presences, including a fair few unfamiliar to Souta and several all the more potentially problematic for their familiarity, bid him keep his tongue. He did not, of course, put blind trust in the angels, but what were Lily and Fenn going to do? Though the agents' consensus had been but a short time ago, he already felt unsure as to what they intended. It would appear, based on the demons' obstinate refusal to part with their orb, that there was no plan to enter the Jungle Tabernacle and secure the seal. How then, one might ask, could the seal be placed under the Charred Council's protection? The smith had no idea, but he did know that his voice mattered not at all among this lot. Anything he might say could easily strengthen the tension filling the air, which was already fit to burst.

No small part of this escalation rested on the shoulders of the one other human-looking being present aside from him and Akoni: a white-haired guy who in the span of moments had managed to establish himself as a prick of preternatural proportions. As any Japanese man with a shred of propriety might be, Souta was affronted by his utter rudeness on a personal level. He felt as though this man shamed his race before the angels; though all parties present might not agree, common courtesy demanded at least a little respect and self-composure.

Any second now this powderkeg could erupt into bloody conflict, which -it occurred to Souta- might be what Henry and his demon allies wanted. Wrath, at least, was trying to mitigate the situation, but Souta felt sure that angelic pride and demonic rebelliousness could not coexist for long. Wearing a nervous expression, Souta flicked his eyes between all the major players present. We can't start fighting now. We have a real problem on our hands, and Sevrin could appear any moment. If a brawl starts, it'll play right into that bastard's hands.
@Lugubrious Dude, I love your post. Who knew such a gentlemanly character could be that funny? Much better than my post for Steve.


Thank you very much, but don't put yourself down! This isn't a competition.
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