Terminal

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

As a reminder for those who might be interested and for any hopeless romantics out there in particular - there will be opportunities to exit stage right without dying.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

The fallen knight had dropped his gear in falling, and if it could stop the shots that Donna had fired at them, it might be able to stop more than that.

@Cruallassar

Also, the magic here seems quite intent on undressing Amelie. Which is quite unnerving. Hah.

@PlatinumSkink

If we can get another mistaken gender flip directed at one of the seven passengers this will have all the makings of an anime.

The Final Hazard

From but a few feet away the knight would find a sudden gout of pure, blinding pain hitting her visor. Were she to swing unseeing at Donny, she'd find that he was no longer occupying the space he had been in. Ghost-like, conservative, his presence was suddenly behind her, his illegally strong stun gun thrusting into the small of her back and boasting a kick badder than an apartment wall socket.

@Doc Doctor

@Doc Doctor
The stun gun snapped and crackled menacingly for all of half a second before it emitted a distinctive popping noise, sparked excitably, and then died in his hand. Hiecro had thrown down her pavise - which fell over only to slowly pinwheel end-over-end as it drifted off through the air - and was busy wiping down her visor with her freed hand without much success, shouting threats and promises of eunuchdom all the while, appearing completely oblivious to Donny's attempted electrocution. She swiped blindly at the air with her crossbow's bayonet ineffectually, overbalancing herself in the process and falling flat on her rear beside Donny with a loud clacking noise - almost like plastic, but the armor seemed to be metallic. At least, it seemed until Donny got a closer inspection and saw flecks in the polished finish of the armor and determined that it was merely painted to look like metal. In truth it seemed to have been made from some kind of ceramic or plastic.

Amelie couldn’t do much, but at least neutralize one opponent. If she managed to catch him, she’d search with her legs to see if she could recover the submachine-gun she had put down earlier, not letting go of the man with her eyes. Her eyes would be the one thing keeping him in place, as she glared with shaking hands holding her shirt with spikes on it stretched before her constantly.

@PlatinumSkink

@PlatinumSkink
Amelie found the effort of redirecting the man's motion to be much more difficult than anticipated. Her redirection orb was letting her redirect the kinetic energy of his movement just fine, but there was some weird kind of corrective force inherent to his motion. He started to raise his right leg to move, she redirected the energy to keep him still, and then the redirected kinetic energy seemed to be swallowed by the air before reappearing and amplifying the original motion. Thankfully whatever was responsible was operating with diminishing efficacy, and with some extra effort and focus she was able to keep the pavise knight rooted firmly in place.

"What-" The man grunted in frustration, his eyes wide in apprehension despite the snarl on his face as he stumbled in place in his effort to move. "Wha-oh, to Hades, Hiecro cut it out! He can't hurt us anyway-" He continued to struggle - Amelie noted that he seemed particularly invested in raising his pavise off the ground again - but he had turned the brunt of his attention over to where Hiecro and Donny had started their slapstick routine.

"HEY!" he shouted, hoping to get everyone's attention -- which admittedly might have been difficult amidst the continuing battle. "HEY!!!"

He held the arrow an inch away from his own throat.

"Knock it off! Or the next one to die is your biometric pass!" Priority one is to protect human life. "I mean it!" He was almost certain that he really did mean it.

@mdk

Sheer rage overcame Fortune as he turned to glare at the two 'knights' that had made an attempt on the Damsel's life, a growl escaping his throat as he demanded with surprising conviction "STAND DOWN NOW BEFORE YOU DISGRACE YOURSELVES AND YOUR MASTER FURTHER WITH YOUR DISGRACEFUL, COWARDLY AND THUGGISH BEHAVIOR FURTHER!"

Taking a deep breath, he quickly followed up at a somewhat more softer yell "These 'extra's' are with me. If you dare try to attack them again, I will end your disgraces on all bretonnian knighthood myself. Is that understood?!"

@Bright_Ops

Hiecro continued to swear and futilely wipe at her helmet with her left hand, but ceased swiping at the air with her bayonet - though she kept a firm grip on the compound crossbow nonetheless. The male pavise knight seemed to be more inclined to listen, though his attention was wavering between Fortune and Luca as the apprehension of his expression turned to bemusement.

"Look, we were just trying to protect you. Don't you know there's a hit out on all of you?" He said with some exasperation in his voice, only mildly tinged with anxiety. "I was only told about FIVE passengers, for all we knew those two were sent by Leona or Ceto or the Iris or Apollo knows who else..."

@Bright_Ops
Fortune's perception of time froze again, and a flashing glimpse of that other reality swam through his vision once more.

As he fell to his knees his mouth was opened in a soundless scream, the sheer pain more then enough to choke whatever cry he might have filled the air with. He didn't know how anyone else would respond to his pain as it was too much for him, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he collapsed forwards as the blissful blackness of unconsciousness claimed him.

A dream of the male pavise knight's last words rolled sonorously through the darkness of his rapidly descending cognizance. "Kid, it does not matter if you kill yourself. You were sent here just to suffer. Nobody would care..."

@Bright_Ops

Reality proper - or what passed for it - snapped back into focus. Fortune was abruptly confronted with the accusatory questions of the pavise knight, still awkwardly squirming and struggling in place as he spoke.

"Why the hell did you even bring them? How come the spotters never saw them enter the limo? How the fuck do we know they aren't going to give away our position or undermine the barricade at the university? And WHY THE HELL CAN'T I MOVE?" His tone turned from confused to infuriated as he practically shouted the last inexplicable question.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

<Snipped quote by Terminal>

I was trying to resolve the pre-existing paradox by merging the two realities myself in having the gunshots occur, but without my death, before you could do so otherwise. Apparently I failed. Though...if I may ask, how exactly did such a thing create a third knight?

@Cruallassar

The specific reason you failed was because Donny had already reacted contingent upon Hiecro verbally threatening Amelie - I.E., an act that was also contingent upon Amelie not having conjured the redirection orb. Which she did. Donny's narrative created the alternate branch, and then Kael's own narrative created a paradox since it contradicted both the original branch as well as Donny's new branch. Your attempt force-merge did not quite work out because the reality you aimed to create retained the paradox, which I opted to purge.

As for the knight - that touches upon material which I think should be left to you and the other posters to investigate IC.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

...Doc Doctor, you killed me.
And yet, I am still alive.
Note to self: Arrange your death in some manner.
It will totally be a mistake. :p

(JK...probably...)

@Cruallassar

As long as we are pointing fingers: While Doc did establish the branch that killed you due to establishing a context where Amelie did not raise a redirection orb, you had and failed to grasp the opportunity to save Kael's life by only responding with the Kael in the branch where she did react. If you had replied for both Kaels - perhaps describing how he had dodged/whathaveyou in the alternate branch - he might not have died.

Interesting extenuating fact: You also explicitly responded to both branches at once in your post by having Kael react to both the redirection orb and Donny's gunshots. This created a minor paradox that was resolved by merging the two branches, creating the third pavise knight as well as transporting a Kael corpse into the current contextual reality.

I hope you are all taking notes.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Some notes,

@Doc Doctor, the bayonet was added in for your last edit. If Donny survives Hiecro's attack, you will no longer have to worry about it.

Also: We have our first casualty. @Cruallassar has lost a life. If the iteration had not been temporally disturbed by the two absent posts, and if Donny and Kael had not delivered their incompatible narratives, Kael would not be able to appreciate his own sculpted corpse. On one hand this is good since he gets to keep going. On the other...

-Every participant in the roleplay will have a limited number of lives. Every time a character dies within an Iteration, their poster loses a life.

Challenge Parameters, Lives, Rule 1

The lives/roster list has been updated.

The Final Hazard

Amelie reacted instinctively. What the knight said to Kael just before firing tipped her off and she was able to manifest a Redirection Orb in time. She turned wide-eyed in confusion as she reached forward, making it obvious she was the one creating the Redirection Orb in front of Kael. The orb took the arrow and sent it crashing into an adjacent building. . .

From the corner of her eye she noted Hiecro turning for her. She didn't have the time to manifest a new Redirection Orb. With no other counter-plan available to her, she'd try to throw herself aside, if she at all got the time to react.

@PlatinumSkink

With a roar he charged forward, intent to ram the woman out of the way of the arrow aimed at her to ensure that she got knocked out of the way, praying to the Lady that his armor would deflect the arrow enough to protect him.

@Bright_Ops

@PlatinumSkink@Bright_Ops
The bolt was partially deflected by the armor upon contact - but the cylindrical tip also splintered into a dozen metal shards that then scattered. A few managed to slide right past Fortune's frame like a stream of water, while a good few managed to splatter directly across his left gauntlet and the lower-left side of his chestpiece - and another two somehow managed to strike Amelie regardless. The metallic splinters liquefied harmlessly on impact, strangely carrying no appreciable kinetic stopping power - although that was a faint relief only, as the gleaming, molten shards of silver then began to spread and expand. Amelie's wards did seemingly nothing to halt the spread of the metal, though thankfully having been hit only by two shards they failed to even envelope the full front of her shirt, slowing and stopping at around half a foot in diameter.

...Before the pool of metal then began to sprout the same jagged, eerie spines of metal every other puddle of the spreading metal elsewhere had grown after the strange shift of gravity, resulting in several half-inch long spines jutting straight through her garments and into her chest.

Fortune was in an even less enviable state. As the liquid metal spread rapidly across the surface of his armor, there was a keening, shearing sound of metal crumpling or being rent - just like the sound the crossbowman's large bolt had made while electroplating the limousine.

Thankfully for Fortune, the shards that clung to his chestpiece were relatively few, and did not manage to spread far enough to pose a threat to him. Even when the pool of metal adhered to his chest began to sprout spines, they failed to penetrate through the reliable plate. His gauntlet was a different matter however - the entirety of it was wholly enveloped in gleaming silver in an instant, the metal locking each individual finger in place and completely ruining his chainmail underneath, rendering it more immobile than if it had been thoroughly rusted through. Then the metal spread to his exposed flesh beneath, and his world turned to pain as though he had dipped the whole of his arm into a blacksmith's forge. Even as his arm's surface tissue began to die, muscles and nerves began to scream in his head as his skin was fused to the interior of his armor.

That very bullet was heading straight for the heart of Hiecro's partner, Donny having aimed the revolver across his body, bulletproof vest easily enduring the frightening heat of the chamber flare. . .

Donny quickly fired a second time without cocking the hammer. A few more pounds of trigger resistance, but that was the price to pay for a double action revolver. The next bullet had a date with Hiecro's head.

@Doc Doctor

@Doc Doctor
The bullets both neatly flattened themselves into crumpled studs on impact that then fell harmlessly to the ground.

The bullets both neatly flattered themselves into crumpled studs on impact that then fell harmlessly to the ground.

The lack of any other kind of reaction was so preposterous and comical it was almost unbelievable. Neither of the police knights were even staggered - as if all the kinetic power from the bullets had been somehow completely negated. Hiecro, whom Donny had attempted to shoot in the face through what almost certainly was not a plexiglas visor, did not even appear to have suffered from any whiplash at all. The result defied any kind of explanation. The magnum rounds should have been able to penetrate the armor and have knocked both of the knights flat on their backs three feet back. The magnum rounds should have been able to penetrate three suits of armor in a row.

Hiecro, who had looked very briefly confused, and then shocked, adopted an expression of primal fury. "You're dead!" She barked, and brought the crossguard for her compound crossbow up and around to clobber Donny in the gut with a brutal haymaker from the right, which became all the more worrisome when a long, silvery bayonet sprouted from a port below the guard as the police knight moved to impale Donny on the spot. If he managed to evade the attack, Hiecro would simply proceed to chase after him, raising her pavise in front of her while she pulled her right arm back for another jab. If he somehow deflected the blow, Hiecro would somehow impossibly resist having her momentum redirected beyond her arm being moved and proceed to bowl Donny over by smashing her pavise directly into his body.

Her partner seemed a bit slower on the uptake. "You shot me!" He said, a stunned expression on his face, his eyes as wide as dinner plates.

Kael starts back in surprise when the crossbow bolt is fired at him...and is rather relieved when the redirection orb appears in front of him and deflects the shot.

@Cruallassar

@Cruallassar
In the brief moment between surprise and reaction, Kael's life briefly flashed before his eyes - and he saw another world where there had been no redirection orb - where his body lay, hideously contorted and completely covered in silver, with jagged spines erupting from every scant centimeter of his flesh.

A flash and bang suddenly ring out as her partner is shot, but with a little experience with that now...it doesn't affect Kael drawing his arrow and firing it at the female knight's eye between the slit visor, as before. Unlike before however, this time he tries to angle the arrow so the broader end is parallel with the slit, which should let it pass cleanly through...regardless of a second shot from Donny.

@Cruallassar

The second female pavise knight reeled back in shock and pain, letting out a blood-curdling scream as Kael's arrow tore right through her helmet's exposed slit visor and penetrated her eye as she dropped both her compound crossbow and pavise shield, the implements clattering to the cobblestone street. Unlike the time he had fired at the crossbow knight earlier, this was a perfectly clean shot - the arrow had lodged all the way in the woman's eye, and had doubtlessly pierced her skull. She was already dead - leaving only Hiecro and the male pavise knight to contend with.

Kael felt a faint prickling sensation at the back of his left heel - a harmless prick from one of the spines that was jutting from his twisted, screaming body on the pavement behind him, contorted in agony and shining brilliantly in the morning sun. The cold from the oddly chill sunlight washed over him, as though something had trod over his grave. Where the deceased doppelganger had come from was not apparent, but the flash of that other world leapt to the forefront of his mind.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

<Snipped quote by Terminal>

...oh.

Bugger.

Well, arrows punch through plastic better than through steel, and they punch through normal steel plate armor just fine.

@Cruallassar

You are 100% correct on both counts.

TTL: The Final Hazard OOC

Um.
Donny.
She did manifest a redirection orb at me. So he wouldn't give her a head start.

@Cruallassar

Oh, it has been noted. Rest assured. :E

As long as we're mentioning things like that: The Police Knights are not wearing visored helmets.

Notably, the design of the newcomers' armor was a class apart from that of the errant crossbowman. It appeared to be lighter, with smaller plates, more scaling, and less overall coverage across the body - which was still entirely enshrouded in chainmail nonetheless. Most notably though, rather than possessing traditional visored slits their helmets were wholly translucent lids rendered from some plastic material that wholly exposing their faces.

@Terminal

Decisions, decisions. So much to work with.

The Final Hazard

The bolt Hiecro had fired hit the unconscious thug with the arrow in his knee, the cylindrical tip crumpling and transmuting into dozens of silvery, molten fragments that quickly saw the man's body coated in metal. The gung-ho police knight had already begun to reload when Donny asked his question.

"Yuh don' mind if Ah give mah antiques a rest an' check out yah new fangled ironizer, mmm?"

@Doc Doctor

"You can if you want, though I doubt it's going to help you against Leona. Aesch will tell you more, but all those rumors about her being plate-proof? There's some truth to them. For all we know the antiques might be more effective." The male police knight answered with an explanatory tone as he turned to face Kael in response to the young archer's inquiry, raising his crossbow and taking aim as he finished speaking - his tone of voice still casual and relaxed.

@Cruallassar

"Is there a point in all this where we can learn what is going on?"

@Cruallassar

"Not for you, straggler. Don't let Charon paddle your ass on the way down the Styx." The police knight quipped, pulling the crossbow's trigger. As the cylindrical bolt began its flight through the air, it became immediately apparent that 'the other three' Hiecro had alluded to included some amongst the passengers' number - specifically those who were not accounted for and expected amongst them, which included Kael - who seemed to have been abruptly sentenced to death for having the misfortune to have been at the scene with the others. This made sense after considering that there was nobody else left alive who the knights could possibly be referring to...

@PlatinumSkink
If Amelie raised a redirection orb to deflect the bolt the male police knight had fired at Kael, Hiecro finishes pulling back on the lever for her crossbow and fires another of the deadly, shrapnel-projecting bolts at the young magician.

If Amelie failed to raise a redirection orb to protect Kael, Hiecro turns to her and issues a withering threat. "Start running. I'll give you five steps. I could use the practice."