Character Carnival

"Not violence. Precision," Frederick said, withdrawing the knife with a look of disappointment.

"This location is metaphysically impossible. As it is impossible to teleport, given the normal laws of physics, as it is impossible to use magic, given the laws of physics, this place, and everything native to it, is impossible by nature of existing here."

Saying so, he stabbed the knife into the dirt of a plant pot. With a small shudder, the plant withered and died, before crumbling into dust altogether.

He pointed to the tesseract. "I'm not incorrect in saying that that thing's killing this place, no?"

Frederick turned to Helen. "Try teleporting the blade inside. That might not work either, but there are other ways we can combine a bit of anti-impossibility and impossibility."

"Wait," Helen said, holding up a hand. "Hector says not to stab the tesseract, it ends badly."

Frederick shot her a glare of annoyance. "Tell him that we could have used that a couple seconds ago."

edited 16th May '11 6:32:46 PM by Chubert

Kohana turned to the girl. "Don't. Even. Try. To do so would doom us all. The energies contained in that object would annihilate this world and everything with it. You speak of this place as an impossibility, yet here we are. So soon you mortals are to declare something impossible.

"You think I didn't find some things impossible? Flight by mere mortals? A trip to the moon? Farther? The ability to transfer data instantly from point A to point B? All the things you mortals have accomplished during just my lifetime, and yet you want to write this off as impossible. You are fools, the lot of you."

That was so meta...

edited 16th May '11 6:35:47 PM by animemetalhead

The Damur finally managed to catch his breath. "You are wanting to be saving people? I am not caring. But for amusement, I am helping. Even though you are being so rude." He let that last word linger, then, casually said, "you are having teleporting powers? Why are you not just teleporting people out? Is simple solution. Or am I missing something?"

Then, with a smirk, the Damur said, "actually, is even simpler solution. If you are asking nicely, I am telling. You are saving everyone. Very easy. All you are having to do is be saying 'please'."

edited 16th May '11 6:39:44 PM by KillerClowns

Molly hurried back inside, leading everyone that she could back to the rest of the group and away from that wretched... thing.

She did not like how it felt at all, the feel alone being enough to make her take full stock in the Damur's prophecy. Once everyone was cleared, she hurried back in to help the Damur. Her vast powers freed him from the wall, but she felt that it would soon be meaningless.

Helen rolled her eyes. "We're very sorry, we don't like it when people start destroying worlds. Also, I can only teleport people to a locations whose coordinates I know, and, sadly, I don't know any coordinates outside of Odyssey. Do you want to try mixing settings? I don't."

"But, fine. Please, tell us how we might save this utterly metaphysically impossible setting."

Frederick turned to Helen. "We have...a pocket dimension ready, don't we? Teleport the tesseract in there, teleport the knife inside—"

"Frederick, I'm getting the feeling that these people, for whatever reason, don't like us trying to destroy the tesseract."

Freed, the Damur pointed to Fredrick. "You are idiot. Achieve nothing." Then to Helen. "Also idiot. Also achieve nothing."

Then he pointed to Molly. "You are wise woman. You two, should be following her example."

He began, as a professor lecturing a class might, pacing back and forth with his arms behind his back. "This world is cage. Zoo. Attracts interesting beings to it. Others like it before, found by Uelane heretics. Cage makes people create story. Don't know why. Cage usually fades away, into shadows. Nobody quite remembers anything after certain point. Other times, dies grandly. Creator of cage is strange, but merciful. When is time for story to end, cage saves everyone possible. Cage is dying by own choice. Will create portal for us to escape. Stop cage's death, probably impossible. Would trap us here for eternity anyways. I could endure. Others probably go insane."

The Damur looked over the assembled crowd, then summarized: "is very simple: you are letting cage fade in peace, and walking out the door it opens." The Damur yawned, then added, "Except me. I am staying. Is duty. Will kill me, temporary. But still duty. Also, knife not really necessary. Wasn't sure if she would get out — now thinking she will be. Knife was to give hope, so she not panic. Not really needed. Actually could be problem; might stab something, cause all sorts of trouble. Taking it out of universe probably for best. Oh, and was going to be explaining after funeral rite with dust. But then rudeness."

edited 16th May '11 6:53:52 PM by KillerClowns

"You...want us to mix settings?" Helen asked. "That's...um...okay. That's what you mean by 'will create portal,' right? We just...walk out? Into our respective settings? But, um, for that native, this is her setting, right? So..."

"I could call Hector and have him give us access to the pocket dimension in five seconds flat," Frederick said, tapping his feet.

Helen sighed. "Look, all I'm saying is that that's a really really bad idea. Like really bad. The fundamental rules that govern the universe change between settings. You don't, um...you really don't want them to mix. Wow. I mean, I'm just really bummed out, because I thought you had a solution, but clearly you don't, so...look. Hector tried that. He thought, 'I want to go to a metaphysically impossible zoo.' So he went to a zoo, and there was a kitty-cat there. Then he thought, 'I want to go to a metaphysically impossible park.' So he went to a park. And then he left the park, went back to Odyssey, and introduced the kitty-cat to the park. Mr. Fluffles isn't with us anymore."

edited 16th May '11 7:01:54 PM by Chubert

The Damur sighed, wearily. "Yes. Yes, you are just walking out. Portal is sentient. Intelligent. Like cage. Is capable of thinking for itself. It will be saving people, because, quite frankly, it is liking them. Native is also saved. She is creature of cages — all cages united. She will step out in other cage, like this one. Maybe have peaceful life as reward for service. Maybe find other adventure. But not dying here. If you are not trusting me, you are being free to be continuing with screw around. I am hoping you are not breaking anything."

Then the Damur sat in the lotus position and began meditating.

edited 16th May '11 7:06:10 PM by KillerClowns

"...he just said, right then, that we can do whatever the hell we want now, right?" Helen said. "Tell me I'm not hearing him wrong. Tell me. Because I think he's full of shit and I'm ready to warp away."

"Coordinates," Frederick said, his hand to his ear. He reported a list of numbers to Helen. "Security protocol says that those will change in a few minutes, so hurry. Don't worry about breaking anything, all that's left there is hydrogen gas and a dead body floating through space."

Helen nodded, memorizing the coordinates. "Er, after that, I think we might need more help for this job. Should we..."

"Later," Frederick said. "Right now, we have a tesseract to destroy."

Look, I know you guys really don't want me to do this, and I know that it would go against what you guys are planning, so I won't. Really, I promise.

edited 16th May '11 7:19:35 PM by Chubert

"Well," the Damur put in, "Portal is appearing around here. Would not wander too far. Also, might be some... turbulence. Just realized, might be problem for you. Would focus efforts on surviving turbulence, helping others do same."

The Damur breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he could do his job in peace.

"I like this guy," Kohana said, nodding towards Damur. "He knows his stuff. The metaphors are... interesting, but he knows what he's on about."

Kiora shook her head in disbelief. "He's nuts. You're nuts. If I didn't think that tesseract would do it, I'd glass this place just to be rid of it all."

While everyone was arguing over what to do with the tesseract, Mary snuck pass them. She was now in front of the tesseract, staring at it. Her mouth hung open, her pupils widened.

"Such beauty..." she said, reaching out for it....

The purple wisp rose and pushed into Mary.

Mary froze, an unusual shock going through her body. She heard her heartbeat, but nothing else. Her body was paralyzed. She felt something crawl up her spine, getting closer and closer to her brain. And then she felt something like an insect...

A wave of purple energy burst out of it. She screamed as her brain was being intruded, trying to hijack her very being. A series of random images flashed in front of her, snapshots of her remembrance. Pictures of her childhood. Pictures of school life. Pictures of college. Pictures of what the carnival used to be.

A few seconds later, her screaming ceased, and everything cut to black.

Absolutely everything...

AnA was finally in control. She had taken control of Mary, as she did with ROSANNA. Now it could execute her plan.

Mary ANN reached out for the tesseract.

Frederick batted her hand away and drove his elbow into the native's gut.

"What are you doing?!" Helen shouted.

"Look at her face, Helen," Frederick said, voice taut. "Does that look like somebody who isn't under mental assault?"

Face drawn, eyes narrow and focused. Mouth pressed into a thin line, with bits of spittle covering the edges. Strands of loose hair obscuring her forehead.

It was the look of somebody whose purpose had been stolen, dissected, analyzed, perverted, and then replaced.

Frederick readied a tranquilizer dart. Standard procedure applied in this situation. Subdue, restrain, and then look for ways to restore the subject. The tessaract was second prioirty now. He was slowly getting the sense that, stupid, idiotic, obtuse, unnerving, and syntax-challenged as the Damur was, he was just that and no more. He still thought he was full of shit, of course. How could he not be? The solution to a problem was never to let the problem run its full course until an entire setting was destroyed. The solution was to track the root of the destruction and destroy it; failing that, to find methods of evacuation that he knew would work. Simply walking out of a magically appearing portal was too easy.

But that was all irrelevant now. Mind control? That meant a third party, somebody else influencing events that was nobody that he knew of inside the greenhouse. It was an alien element to the situation, and it had to be dealt with.

edited 16th May '11 8:07:01 PM by Chubert

Kohana put a hand on the man's shoulder, floating beside him. "I wouldn't do that," she said. "I know it's hard to accept, coming from him," she jerked her head at Damur. "But this world is doomed. We will be fine. Him, the girl? Maybe. He seems certain that he'll be fine in time, and his death will only be temporary."

She continued. "You said yourself, what happens in this world doesn't matter, so why should it matter what happens to it? If you are simply disturbed by the potential destruction, then there are far more constructive things to do. I can prepare another jump spell and get us all out of here, but that would subject us to the same problem in a new setting, and this whole process repeats itself. So the best course of action is to allow this scenario to play out. Nothing bad has happened, yet. And we don't truly know if anything will, aside from the destruction of this carnival."

I was actually responding to him readying the tranq dart, but...

edited 16th May '11 8:30:13 PM by animemetalhead

Frederick raised his gun and pointed it at the woman's head. "As a matter of fact, I didn't say anything," he said. "You were reading my mind. Right now, the native just went under the control of a psychic. Hmm..."

Uh, yeah, you're responding to Frederick's internal monologue.

edited 16th May '11 8:18:50 PM by Chubert

Mary ANN looked at the man who was pointing the gun at her. Her eyes were glowing purple, and wisp of blue were emitting out of her. There was a faeish quality to her.

She opened her mouth and said, "But what about Mary?" she spoke with two voices. One was Mary's, and the other was of a forty-year old woman...

She raised her palm at fast speed and fired a bolt of blue lightning at him. At the same time, she reached for the tesseract.

The Damur said "you are having my knife, which is depowering the powerful. Is simple solution: you are figuring it out yourself, I am hoping," he said.

He had to admit, he was looking forward to what was going to happen next.

Yeah, I lost track of who had the knife. Oops. The Damur never got it back from Fredrick.

edited 16th May '11 8:32:16 PM by KillerClowns

"Sorry," Frederick muttered, rolling out of the way. "I don't even know who this 'Mary' is."

He didn't want the setting to be destroyed because he didn't want innocents to die. That wasn't the case now. He wanted to subdue this native because a third-party mind controller meant very, very bad things. Appeals to his hidden heart of sugar and warmth were not going to work.

The lightning struck the glass behind him and exploded, showering fragments everywhere.

Helen teleported out of the way of the explosion. The situation had been complicated. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to shove a few shards of glass into her vitals and watch her cough up blood. Now, she had to restrain the woman, and she figured that Frederick wouldn't be too pleased if she did it by blasting holes in her forearms.

The woman was reaching for the tessarect. In an instant, the cube reappeared at Helen's side. The Damur was saying something to Frederick. Whatever it was, it wasn't important to her.

"You want it?" she said, nodding at the woman. "Come get it."

damn, damn, edit ninjaed.

edited 16th May '11 8:33:12 PM by Chubert

Kohana nodded to Kiora, and the pair exploded into motion. Kiora forced chakra into her legs, moving faster than any normal eye could track, and reappeared next to Helen, driving a foot into her ribs.

Kohana began an incantation, a low level lightning spell that would stun everyone until the situation blew over. She shouted the last word of the spell as electrical energy spread throughout the room.

A smirk appeared on Mary ANN's mouth, one that wouldn't have appeared if she wasn't in control.

"You're on."

A second later, she jumped fifteen feet up in the air, above the crowd. She conjured up two balls of purple physic energy in her hands. She locked her eyes at the duo who challenged her: Frederick and Helen, based from her observations from the shadows. As she ascended towards the ground, she threw both balls at them like baseballs. Right after, a third ball was being prepared, for the other duo.

It was an exhilarating experience to prosses a living being. It may her feel...alive—and hungry for action.

edited 16th May '11 8:37:04 PM by chihuahua0

The Damur sighed — his advice had gotten lost in the confusion, and he, like a fool, had forgotten who among them possessed his knife. He sighed, and said, more loudly this time, "Idiot man! Knife! It depowers! Otherwise, ordinary knife! You are figuring out rest! Not complicated!" If he really cared about Mary's life, he supposed he could have explained the solution — by giving Mary a minor cut, they could sever the connection between her and her possessor. But he'd rather them figure it out himself, as penance for annoying him. More importantly, he couldn't have them getting them all trapped, and he figured the delay would give Mary's possessor enough time to put things in motion.

edited 16th May '11 8:37:42 PM by KillerClowns

Frederick sighed. Yes, he knew how the knife worked. It would just be much simpler to use if—

boom.

Psychic balls of explosive power didn't keep landing next to him. He dove behind a table as another explosion rocked the greenhouse. Cover was quickly being eliminated. Soon, there would be nowhere to hide.

"Frederick!" Helen shouted, teleporting out of the way of the woman's attack. She had seemed normal when they had initially beheld her, but perhaps there was more to the mind control than met the eye.

Nodding, Frederick tossed Helen the knife. Quickly, she disintegrated the blade, teleporting a thin sliver of the material out piece by piece, and placing them all in her pocket.

The woman was fast, true.

Helen teleported the tesseract behind her again as the woman crashed into the greenhouse floor, pulverizing the tiling where Helen had once stood. "Oh, come on," Helen said. "I was expecting something better."

With a smirk, the woman feinted around Helen's left side and then dashed to the right, kicking herself into the air, arm outstretched for the tesseract. The free hand had a ball of purple light forming around it, about to be slammed into Helen's face.

The blade fragments littered the air around Helen, each small piece placed a few inches from the next. In the one-meter sphere surrounding Helen it was impossible to fit a human body inside without encountering a blade fragment. The move was risky, true, seeing as she risked hitting something important, but though the woman was too fast for human eyes, she was slow enough that Helen could judge the general location of her body and move the slivers away from the center mass. Even if she did hit something, it wasn't anything that surgery couldn't fix. It didn't matter how fast the woman was. She couldn't outrun mathematics.

One sliver was embedded inside her left leg, the other sticking out of her side. Satisfied, Helen stepped back.

if you want to make the fight last longer, i'm perfectly open to you taking everything after Helen taunts Mary ANN as wankery and attack Helen a different way that doesn't open her up to the move.

edited 16th May '11 8:55:54 PM by Chubert

Cyrus was gone, having slinked away to the gates. It was still buzzing through his head. It wouldn't stop.

He slid his cellphone out, sending a two-word message to his foster sister-

A surge of power tore through his brain, engulfing it in an inferno. He was too weak. He couldn't take it anymore.

"Elise... my friends are going to be here in a few minutes... come with them... they'll help you and Molly get back home..."

"Mister Cyrus!"

His world went black as he heard the scream, a veritable tickle to his ears.

Elise dove to his side to help him, but he was finished for now.

Molly was already on the way after she freed the Damur. Fifteen minutes after he sent the message, help arrived to take Cyrus back. God damn this carnival. If there was nothing more that could be done with this place, his "universe" at least had to save its representative.

A woman stepped out of an almost invisible portal, her body leaving ripples on the fabric of space-time. Her name? Amy Castor. A much stronger exorcist than Cyrus. She easily picked the boy up in her arms, and, after ensuring that Molly and Elise were ready to go, the four slipped back through the portal, safe from this world's oncoming apocalypse.

edited 16th May '11 8:54:21 PM by CrystalGlacia

Kiora and Kohana landed back-to-back, caught in the crossfire of the battle.

"Glass it?" Kiora asked nervously, ducking another ball of energy.

"No," Kohana said. "I'll end this."

"To shumbolion diakonoto moi hei krystaline bashleia evigenato taionion elebos haionie krystale versais zoice ton ison tanaton hos ataksia. Kozmike Kataztrofe."

Magical energy filled the air, lowering the temperature in a matter of seconds. "You fools chose a poor time to fight!" Kohana boasted. "This spell creates near absolute zero temperatures, so I'd get the hell out of this greenhouse if you know what's good for you!"

Kiora was already airborne, blasting through the glass ceiling of the greenhouse.

Mary ANN wasn't surprised that both of them avoided the attack. It was only an excuse to warm up and get a better feel of her body.

She landed safely on the ground, swirling a spare ball at her. She put her spare hand on her hip, and walked towards them in an obviously evil way, "That was one of my weaker attacks."

The...ninja-girl launched her attack, causing a wave of cold energy to reverb through the greenhouse. Mary was quick to react, jumping up once again, jumping to the weakest area of effect. As she was in the air, she noticed that the glass ceiling was falling apart. The whole ceiling was cracked, barely staying together. Water was dripping out of the cracks, causing the pieces to push down closer. In just a short time, the greenhouse will collapse.

She readied her orb to attack the ceiling. Might as well kill the bystanders by bringing the room crashing down on them.

edited 16th May '11 9:06:53 PM by chihuahua0