"Oh, crap—" Edward yelled as the morgh spun around, forcing him to retract his blade. The blonde instinctively covered his face, expecting an attack from the tongue, not wanting to get it near any parts of his skin in fear that it would paralyze him. With one hand busy covering his face, the other got to work in slashing wildly at where the sound of a swirling tongue was coming from, in the hopes of stopping it before it got near him. "Get the fuck away!" He yelled, trying to take a few steps back to distance himself from the morgh.

Eastern Passage

"If a-this big lizard is a-causing the polluted water, and the a-polluted water is a-causing the coughs..." Luigi rubbed his chin, looking down at his tapping toe. "Maybe we can a-find the cure for the a-disease with him? Poison and antidote from a-the same a-source?"

???

" If this is the reward for my hard work... " Pride muttered under his breath, concentrating on his anger for Arawn and his Master in order to ignore the peculiar feeling this chamber emanated from every spot. His hands travelled over the book, a smirk forming once his eyes met the title. Who knew the Urizen had a knack for writing comedies? He thought, picking up the book, sticking his finger in a random page and opening it up for his reading pleasure.

That wasn't all he did, though. The Arawn's warning was a very specific one. Either he feared for Pride's safety- which the Homunculus seriously doubted- or there was something in the rooms lacking those inscriptions that they did not want Pride to see. So as he read the page he had chosen, he sent his shadows under the wooden door and into the next room, ordering them to look around and tell him what was there before he moved forward.

He had his doubts, after all.

Crystal Mayhem

- For about seven minutes, the intruder(s) left the Challengers to their furtive whispering, their light of safety, and the unending music.  In that time came also the sound of an unknown entity slicing apart metal, alongside the squeaks, grunts, and belligerent questioning of the fuzzles. There was a pause, and then echoing through the halls came a bloodfreezing chorus of inhuman screams, all seemingly muffled with thick cloth. The cage fell silent.

Those around Yee would have noticed that only the section of hallway surrounding the cage had gone dark.  

clink  

With abrupt swiftness, every light save that of the Nomad winked out. The Challengers stood now surrounded by pitch-black shadow, all-concealing, all-consuming.  Fresh sounds spoke in the darkness alongside the music, the screech of torsion and the flap of coat fabric. Something moved past the group at top speed, though they could only tell by the feeling of displaced air. It was difficult to judge the distances of sound in this murk. Another (considering?) pause, and then a chorus of wet thunks echoed out into the hallway (at least one of them very close at hand). An iron tang intermingled with animal musk filled the air. One final five second pause, and the crystalline lights flashed back on.

The sight which lay before them (and at the entrance of every other dormitory) was likely to make the Challengers wish they had been left in darkness. For at the top of the doorframe in front of them was a fuzzle corpse, impaled through the mouth and left to hang there (on closer inspection, the impaling implement was revealing to be a shining steel-and-silver bayonet, seemingly fresh out of the factory). Its blood had only just started to flow outward over its lower jaw and down the blade which held the unfortunate creature. The viscous substance spattered on the floor and trickled over the doorframe. It dripped here and there onto the door itself, resulting for a split second in a vision: their rooms, flooded to the knee with blood.

If the Challengers were to look towards the former fuzzle cage, they would find that the container had been sliced apart. Each individual bar now lay on the floor, each bearing a space or two where it appeared that piano wire had cut through the metal. -

Owain looked to where the sounds were coming from, biting back the urge to just go and investigate what was making them. The urge was promptly silenced as the fuzzles' screams echoed through the halls. He flinched as the hairs on his neck stood up. Determined to be more attentive, he tried to heighten his awareness and focus solely on any out of place sounds or things slipping around in the corner of his eyes. His sword was kept up, in spite of it probably being useless, though it was more for security than it was to strike back against any phantom foes.

As he noticed the hall surrounding the fuzzle cage had gone dark, he began to regret his heightened state of awareness as the lights suddenly going out and the new wave of unsettling noises only served to spook him more. He took deep breathes and gripped Missiletainn tighter in an attempt at steadying himself.

Easy, Owain... a Legendary Hero doesn't let simple mind games such as these hamper his ability to act!

In spite of his little mantra, Owain couldn't help but feel his stomach sink as he saw the fuzzle corpse ran through the bayonet and its blood spilling out onto the doorframe beneath it.

"Wh-what is that!?" Owain exclaimed.

Gogol Plains, Burial Complex

After so heavily wounding the mohrg, it was easy avoiding all of its subsequent attacks. Stunned and shocked opponents were always the easiest targets, hence; why it was important to end battles without getting injured once.

Not brash enough to aim straight for the kill yet, Leo's arm whizzed in a direction against the mohrg's flailing arm, elbow blade extended and ready to slice off the appendage.

Envy was feeling rather perplexed at the moment, to say the least.

On one hand, the pipsqueak saved his butt, which was way better than getting it deliberately kicked by one hell of an ugly son of a bitch. On the other hand, the pipsqueak saved his butt, and he can already tell that the brat was doing this on purpose.

'Why, that little-!'

And then, the undead had unknowingly turned his back on him to face the alchemist. Envy smirked upon this turn of events. As tempting as it was to leave him to his own fate though, the homunculus had a better idea. Using this chance, he quickly tried to strike down the Mohrg by attempting to pierce through its thoracic cavity with his transformed hand-lance(hoping to break through its bones and fleshy parts), all the while knowing that a certain pipsqueak just so happened to be the other side...

Should he succeed to finally finish it off once and for all, his weapon would still continue to pierce through it, moving very fast towards a certain brat... before barely stopping just inches away from Edward's body, all the while Envy flashed off his all-famous grin; indicating that he could end his life then and there if he so wished it.

Sabrina

"A-Alright," Sabrina attempted to try to use her psychic power to locate where the phantoms were most densely packed. It was obvious that she was scared, since these certainly weren't as mischievous as the Lavender Town ghosts, especially since it killed what looked to be unfamiliar Pokemon as well as the vision of their rooms filled with blood as a warning.

Chun-Li

"KIKOKEN!" Noticing the zombies were much less willing to fight, she moved over to Leo and attempted to fire a Kikoken at the mohrg to help Leo destroy it. If the zombies moved closer to her, she would kick them away, but they've let up severely now so Chun-Li could put more of an effort to help the others.

edited 27th Jun '14 10:48:00 PM by GameGuruGG

Ia-Kong Ziggurat, Western Passage

- Saren eyed the swarm, thinking quickly as he listened to the other group's queries through his helmet. He needed to get the word out to the others as soon as possible, but he also needed to do something to effectively slow the devouring cloud of chitin. The turian's heart-rate was growing faster after throwing that corpse, and the lack of major result from that gambit was worth a mite bit of frustration. Still, it told him that the swarm was unwilling to take heavy losses to maintain a subterfuge, and that they had a propensity for showing off to their opponents. Useful information...

Quickly as he could, the ex-SPECTRE responded.

" -No, accounts indicate that their superior has left the building. The name 'Th'Urizen' has come up, possible noble title, possible terrorist cult appropriation, possible monicker of 'Cold One.'-"

-His breathing deepened as he rose to his feet, concentrating his power once again. -

" -No further assistance will be necessary.-"

-Applying his invisible hands to the ceiling and floor, Saren yanked forth a thick cloud of dust and mildew from both surfaces (particularly the cracks between blocks) and drove it directly into the swarm. The turian hopped backward as he did this to commence his fallback.-

" -Nor possible. Not unless you can reach us in thirty seconds or less.-"

-He switched up his commline to address the wasps acidly (while also making a 'winding back' gesture to the group).-

"Congratulations, you can speak and make formations. You're not exactly brilliant yourselves, or tough. We would've thought you were pesticide fodder until the last minute if you'd been willing to -take some lumps.- But no, you had to give us a -flea circus- air show."

Riverrock—Vagabond District, heading towards City Center

“Close,” the woman said. “If our guess is correct and the killer is a vampire, the stiff has probably risen as a vampire spawn; not as powerful as a true vampire, but dangerous enough in its own right. We’re going to find this thing and put it in the ground where it belongs, before it finds a place to hide.”

No sooner had she finished talking than a chorus of screams rang out in the distance. One scream in particular rose to a shriek of bloodcurdling agony before abruptly tapering off.

The woman swore, and picked up the pace. “Hurry, before it does any more damage!”

Leo’s strike was well-aimed and well-timed, shearing through the mohrg’s arm at the elbow. The monster reeled as its severed limb and the tendril attached to it clattered to the floor, lowering its remaining hand to fix Leo with a glare of what would have been hatred had it a face to form expressions with. Hissing, the monster made one final, desperate lunge at the cyborg, lashing at him with its sole remaining tentacle and putting all the strength and speed it could muster into the blow.

Before it could reach him, however, Chun-Li’s kikoken blast took it in the ribcage; and weakened as it was, the undead horror could not survive the blast of concentrated life energy. It threw back its head with an awful sound, glowing suddenly with an intense white light—and promptly exploded into dozens of particles of fine white dust.

Edward’s frantic parrying, meanwhile, managed to deflect a jab from the mohrg’s tongue that would have caught his flesh-and-blood arm at the wrist. snarling, the monster began to lash out again—only to let out a hideous, keening death wail as Envy’s lance punched through its spine, skewering the grotesque parasite squatting there like a disgusting kebab. Almost immediately the monster went limp, the grotesque flesh of its tendrils and tongue desiccating and crumbling to dust in the blink of an eye, the now-unsupported bones coming apart and falling to the broken earth.

With two of the mohrgs destroyed in rapid succession, only the one harassing Garland remained. And with their demise, two thirds of the remaining zombies in the chamber promptly froze up, let out gurgling rasps, keeled over and died, just as they had when the first mohrg had been destroyed. There were less than a dozen of the shambling corpses left now, and the rate at which new ones were crawling out of the ground had dropped to almost nothing; perhaps one clawed its way out of the earth every half a minute.

During this, the Champions might catch the faint sound of reedy, feminine laughter at the very edge of their hearing, a laughter that had no immediately discernable source…

Eastern Passage

Sazh spared a glance in Luigi’s direction, mulling the plumber’s words over. “I’m no doctor, but I think that makes sense,” he allowed. “But let’s focus on one thing at a time.”

And turning back to Samus, he repeated his question. “They need help or what?”

Western Passage

   “Think you’re pretty smug, don’t you?”    The swarms faltered for a moment as Saren’s cloud of dust and mildew slammed into them, writhing and twisting in on themselves so that the stricken hellwasps were carried to the center of each swarm while those who had not been hit took their places on the exterior.    “We’ll see who’s giving who a show when we make your corpse dance!”   

With those words a column of wasps erupted from the heart of the swarm, hurtling straight at Saren like a javelin. They were on him before he could react, buzzing and swarming about him in a cloud so thick he wouldn’t be able to see more than a few inches in any direction, filling his helmet’s audio receptors with splitting feedback from the sheer volume of their angry drones. Dozens of them alighted on his body at various points, put mandibles to the Spectre’s armour and began to chew, tearing into the metal like termites into wood. And as soon as they’d exposed patches of turian exoskeleton to the air, they began to sting.

Fiery pain shot through his extremities as stingers punched through metallic carapace, as if someone had taken a livewire and jammed it straight into his nervous system. Any previous encounters he might have had with stinging insects in the past was as nothing compared to this, the venom being injected into his system orders of magnitude worse than any natural toxin by dint of its unholy nature. Lethargy flooded his system, making his limbs leaden and heavy; it would take every last bit of his fortitude to shrug off the effects of this insidious torpor.

[The Hellwasp swarm engulfs Saren, dealing 14 points of damage! Saren has been poisoned; make a DC 18 Fortitude save or take 1d6 points of Dexterity damage! The Hellwasp swarm is distracting Saren; make a DC 18 Fortitude save or be nauseated for 1 round!]

Vyraiah made no move to stop Ranmaru as he broke away from her grip. Instead, as the young warrior charged once more at Shinuaq’tan, the goddess simply looked on with an expression of disappointment.

“There is no honour to be had in throwing away your own life,” she whispered, inclining her head.

Shinuaq’tan glanced in Ranmaru’s direction, eyes narrowing. The ancient chieftain reacted quickly, spreading his legs and planting his feet firmly on the ground. As he had done with Jack, Shinuaq’tan swayed in place, avoiding the swordsman’s first few strikes like a wisp of smoke.

“I don’t know whether you’re brave or reckless, boy, but either way you’ve some skill,” he said between dodges. “Unfortunately for you…”

Shinuaq’tan’s left hand shot out with lightning speed, grabbing the blade of Ranmaru’s sword and stopping his latest strike cold.

“…It isn’t enough.”

Ki gathered in the chieftain’s right hand as it clenched into a fist, and then he was driving a punch into Ranmaru’s already-cracked ribs with meteoric force. The blow Ranmaru had taken scant seconds before was as nothing compared to this one; if that one had been like the wrath of an oni with an iron club, this was more akin to the wrath of a vengeful god of war.

[Shinuaq’tan used Stunning Fist with an attack roll of 42 and scored a critical hit! Ranmaru takes 34 points of bludgeoning damage and is stunned for one round!]

Ribs, only recently begun to heal, cracked anew. Lungs compressed, breath exploding from the boy’s lips. Arms went slack, fingers nerveless; and with as much effort as taking candy from a baby, Shinuaq’tan tugged the katana from Ranmaru’s grasp.

A cruel smile spread across the chieftain’s lips. “Ah, not holy,” he breathed, speaking so lowly only Ranmaru could hear him. “I can use this one, then…”

Meanwhile, Tethrasur ignored the skink Donkey Kong had become as it wandered off, seeing the tiny reptile as no threat. “This has gone on long enough,” he growled, spinning his quarterstaff around before slamming the butt of the weapon into the ground at his feet. “Wall of Thorns!”

A tremor ran through the ground at those words, the earth shaking violently beneath the Champions’ feet. Shinuaq’tan paused, midway through the beginnings of a slash that would have grievously wounded Ranmaru, and lowered the pilfered katana with a scowl before stepping back. No sooner had he done so than great plumes of broken earth and sundered cobblestones exploded into the air, and around the Champions a twisted black hedge of murderously sharp thorns sprouted, growing with impossible speed to enclose them all within a wall of wicked blades ten feet high and five feet thick. Link, if he tried to cut his way out, would discover the thorny hedge was impossibly tough, to the point where the Master Sword would barely score the supernatural wood.

“You cannot escape!” the First Shaman declared. “You are beaten. Surrender yourselves and you will be shown mercy for the crimes you committed here.”

The page Pride turned to was covered in neat, perfectly organized lines of text, written in a red ink with a passing resemblance to dried blood; indeed, if Pride were to take a sniff he might notice an incredibly faint iron tang coming off the page. The lines of text alternated between the two languages seen on the cover, that alphabet he could understand and the strange glyphic script he could not, but even as Pride watched, the latter lines of text faded away so that only the words he could actually read remained:

Even as he read this passage, Pride would find his shadows seeping out into a narrow hallway beyond the chamber door. Made of the same glossy black stone as the room he currently occupied, lit by the same violet torches and etched with the same arcane glyphs on the walls and floors, it gently curved away for dozens of feet in either direction.

Wooden doors lined this corridor at regular intervals, all of them bearing the same sort of faintly glowing marking. He would quickly discover, however, that there was one exception; at the far right end of the passageway, there stood a single door which did not bear any sort of mark. The tingling sensation did not exude from this particular door, and close inspection of it would reveal that its timbers seemed strangely rotten…

Riverrock -Vagabond District, Heading Towards City Centre, Please Mind The Gap
Johnny started to quicken his pace, before stopping dead in his tracks. What the hell was he doing? A few hours of rapier training did not qualify to take on a newborn vampire!
Ignoring the strangeness of that last thought, the more emotional side of his brain opened up with a few facts. One was the fact that this man, who'd tried to help a woman he didn't know and paid the ultimate price for it, was now being... desecrated, for want of a better word. It would be the right thing to do, putting him to rest.
Secondly, this thing was killing people, and Johnny felt like he had to help them. He couldn't just leave them to die.
Third, he couldn't leave the Watchwoman to face it on her own. If she died, it would be on his hands.
Fourthly, he really, really, really didn't want to fight a vampire, he was going to get himself killed-

Johnny pulled his diary from his pocket, and began to sing a little ditty.
"Sing us a song of the century
That's louder than bombs and eternity
The era of static and contraband
That's leading us into the promised land
Tell us a story that's by candlelight
Waging a war and losing the fight
They're playing the song of the century
of panic and promise and prosperity
Tell me a story into that goodnight
Sing us a song for me ..."

Short, simple, full of nonsense lyrics, he'd literally just come up with it there, on the spot. Honestly, it was quite a depressing song, and would've demotivated Johnny further...
...if he hadn't laced it with Inspire Courage.

Pulling his rapier from it's sheath, he broke into a sprint towards the screaming, hoping to arrive there before his artificial courage died.

Xigbar watched as his de facto leader of their small group had been struck by the swarm. Noticing the effects and not having any method of curing him, defeating this opponent became number one priority. Sure, his guns had done minor damage to it, but that was all it was, minor damage. His hands began to surge with dark energies of his element, having stored his weapons for a more magical approach. While he was unfamiliar to the magic of this world, his unique element Space gave plenty of leeway for what he wanted to do. Unfortunately, this world probably restricted him from doing so.

Seeing a chance to eliminate the infestation, he threw his hands out as the energies of his element intertwined with a form this world would accept. And so, numerous dark spheres projected around the insects as they began to crush them with incredible force.

Not one to let up, he then casted a powerful Magnega spell to pull them all in a central zone, then fired off a Graviga to crush them again. If they still remained, he began to weave the last bit of his energy and released a Zero Gravira spell as a final measure. After that, he said, "Let's see if they can survive that!" Xigbar then crashed to one knee and breathed heavily and would not be able to take action for some time.

Grey yelped in pain as the hornets began stinging him - even the hornet-like mechaniloids of his home dimension seemed to pale in comparison to the pain these things were able to inflict!

Almost out of desperation rather than any thought out plan, Grey made use of Model L's powers once more to encase himself in a large chunk of hard glacial ice. In Thetis's form, the cold bothered him little, but for the hornets, getting frozen solid might have been a different story. With a simple command the reploid-warforged shattered the ice around him - and hopefully the hornets that had been swarming him along with it.

It didn't take a genius to realise that retreat was the only option, and so Grey began backing away.

"Hold on, this might hurt a little!" Grey spotted Saren's predicament, and with a swing of his halberd he froze Saren's body (but not his head) solid. Pausing, he then the same shattering trick he had used on himself in an attempt to destroy the infernal insects that clustered all over his ally's body.

Samus didn't have much time to ponder his own postulations — though they sounded likely — as he soon cut it off with an assurance that no help was needed. Almost immediately after, his comm link filled with activity; dozens of tiny voices, dronings, yells, it sounded like an entire swarm of creatures was after them.

Samus's eyes narrowed and glanced back towards where they came, and made a snap decision. "We're not that far; we'll reposition to the antechamber. I suggest you retreat backwards."

She closed the comm link and braced to leave, turning back to the others. "They might. I'm not taking chances. If anyone can't fight, stay with them rather than following and fighting."

With that, she sprinted off back towards the chamber they came into...it was actually an extremely short run.

"What's the enemy?"

Sayaka- Temple Run

Sayaka had heard enough from Samus to have formed her own opinion of what she needed to do. The other team needed help- the mighty Saren was in trouble (like last night when the woman set him on fire) and Sayaka didn't want to miss an opportunity to help him out; it had been her first useful action and she found that she liked being useful.

But the others were bringing up another valid point. They were close to cracking the identity of the creature behind the plague. Though the implications of the names were sinister and made Sayaka most definitely uneasy, she still needed to help the people around her if they chose fighting that to helping out Saren. Of course, it may also lead to the happy situation of her being at the final victory battle before Saren and that might not be so bad. She had absolute faith that they would win the day; come on, they had a person who could throw lightning (and a mentor like figure who was a one man army).

The tables of decision were turned however when Samus rushed off to find Saren.

Sayaka figured that no one would kill her for sticking with Samus which for her was the most comfortable option, so she rushed off as well, after stumbling over a few loose stones. Very soon, her magical girl outfit was back in use- she was heading to a battle, she had better go in prepared.

...

So a short time later she arrived behind Samus, a bit flustered and out of breath but otherwise impatient and slash-happy. Taking a few steps forward from Samus, she looked hard at the other tunnel before looking back at Samus and saying:

"I think they went that way. Come on, lets go. They need our help right?"

Kyoko; Sayaka Run

Retreat was not a word in Kyoko's vocabulary.

"Ah, well. Guess I'd better stop ya from killing yourself, rookie."

Biting the corner of her glove, she grinned and dashed after them. She didn't particularly like Samus - after all, she still had her Pockies - but the uptight chick was a damn sight better than most of the morons she was stuck with.

She was going to one-up the walking pigeon. Sounded just fine to her. Ditching Afro would be a nice bonus.

Red flash. Her dress re-materialised and she caught her spear. She was taking long strides, but even an Olympic sprinter would have a hard time keeping up with her.

Kyoko came to a halt right beside Sayaka. The butt of her spear smacked into the floor as she brought it to rest, tucked behind her right shoulder.

"If by helping the others ya mean chopping sashimi," she quipped, "I think you'll have a bit of a problem there."

She pointed.

"Listen. Ya hear that din? Sounds like a swarm of bugs to me."

Impulsive she was, but never reckless. Not when there was an enemy she didn't know.

"You'd kill yourself running in blind. Sure, maybe ya'd regenerate for... oh, the first few minutes. But then it'd all be over. See, I don't hear the walking pigeon."

Kyoko gave Samus a knowing glance.

"Ain't it a good thing we have a glorious leader?" she smirked. "What's the plan?"

Link; Village of Treshold

He grunted in pain. He hit the vines until the skin chafed off his palms. The Master Sword fell from his dead grasp. He screamed in anguish. He tore at the thorns until his hands were bloody tatters.

He sank to the ground in silence.

Yee; Common Corridor

Yee's hand shook with exertion. His brow knitted as he took in the sight before him. The furry spheres, the migrant creatures, had been impaled. Blood lapped at the edges of his sphere of White like a congealing tide.

Clearly, these were servants of a Nomad. One strong and old enough to manipulate the Tesseract's primal substance.

He forced himself not to tremble. If their master came, all was over. As it was, they could survive this.

"Do not give in!" he broadcast. "Fear is what they want!"

Mustering up his will, he brandished his cane and gave a cry. The Fuzzles' corpses melted into nothing. The blood receded. Banishing the darkness, the White surged through the doorframe and burst it asunder, its mass shooting out like so many spines.

edited 8th Jul '14 11:11:43 PM by troydenite

"Well.....I mean, we're already so far into the temple, and maybe Saren can - " Fluttershy was interrupted when Samus bolted away, followed up Sayaka and Kyouko. The pony was extremely conflicted at this moment, actually clicking all of her hooves on the ground like like awkward tap dance in sheer nervousness. On the one hoof, despite not knowing how much further into the temple they were going the pony was not all that comfortable backtracking and losing progress they had right now, especially with something that is causing the slow death of an city that needed to be stopped.

On the other hoof, it was clear Saren and the others probably needed their help at this very moment, and whatever was attacking them was bad enough for Samus to just go back for him. Not to mention whatever was going on the other team would need extensive healing afterwards.

Quite honestly, the pegasus was having somewhat of a moral dilenma and no idea what to actually do. Thus she decided to go a popular fallback method for these types of things: Asking the leader.

"Um, Sazh?" she asked the pilot. "Should we keep going or should we help Saren?"

Jack slowly sat up, easing himself into a cross-legged sitting position. He carefully pulled his hair back into its usual topknot. Then, he waited patiently for his friends to reach the same conclusion he had. They were prisoners now, and their only hope to survive, escape, and perhaps succeed in what they had come here to do was in cooperating for the moment.

"Whomever your lord is, in whatever time and world you come from," he said to Ranmaru quietly, "I think he would rather you lived to return to him. Then he can decide for himself if your actions are dishonorable enough to deserve death, and if so, in what manner."

Ranmaru rose up with difficulty. He was smiling. “You do not know Lord Nobunaga, milord Jack,” he said as he struggled to stand. “I... know, with... certainty, that he would execute me... like a common criminal... if I were to be captured.”
He chuckled and coughed blood — the shaman's last attack messed with his insides. “Lord Sun Ce... would have wanted me to... give this battle my best.” He coughed some more blood, painting his silver-and-gold breastplate red. “I... will go... out... like the falling sakura...” he said and took a step. Another step, and he fell to the ground, out cold.

Crystal Mayhem

- For a moment, the grisly spectacle burst away with the White, seemingly expunged from existence. Then, like an old television being tuned, the impaled fuzzles and their bayonets wavered back into their spots. Sabrina, Yee, and Darkrai would feel a sentiment of mocking amusement from their invisible intruder.

Then...

vreeeeeeeee-

Sabrina and Owain would notice that those half-seen threads and particles coalesced around the eyes and ears of the others, binding themselves tightly into their heads. In only a few seconds, it was as if a black film was stretched tightly across the unfortunates' sensory organs.

Abruptly, a number of black strings whipped out from both above and below Yee, snaring his wrists and ankles in a bitingly tight grip. These threads bound his hands to his side, and kept him from moving out of his position. Once that was done, the threads wrapped themselves around the Remnant's mouth like a gag.

To Sabrina's senses, all of the afflicted (even Dusknoir) possessed a greasy psychic pall over them, impenetrable by any telepathy. -

-For Dusknoir, Yosuke, Tron Bonne, the Marked Ninja and others, their view of the world faded into black. An infernal itching sensation arose on their eyes and eyelids, as if something was stitching cloth over them. Just as swiftly, they would feel a soft sensation in their ears, before their hearing, too, went silent.

For several long moments, the afflicted were blind and deaf to the world. Slowly, however, they began to regain sensation, starting with the omnipresent trumpets. What came next, was steadily resolving picture of pandemonium. There were things lurking around a dark and badly damaged Crystal Tesseract, humanoid in rough shape, and wearing garments recognisable as military fatigues (ranging from sweeping dark grey longcoats to tan-and-khaki desert camos), but certainly not human in appearance. Where there should have been heads and faces beneath those helmets and berets, there were instead amorphous blobs of perpetually shifting grey static; where eyes should have been, there were instead two pitch-black ovals which seemed to actively absorb the light around them. As these things moved, it was with an inhuman and boneless gait, more like a marionette than a living being. And yet even a marionette has weight to its movements, can have a certain jerky charm. The things moved as if it was the garments they wore were alive, rippling and undulating in a halting but calculated patrol step. It was as if they owned the place now, and were consolidating their gains.

Some of the things did more than patrol about, however. In fact, since the itching had stopped, the Challengers would become aware of a new unpleasant sensation: that of countless tendrils wrapping themselves around their bodies, as captives or prey. The things were not telling anyway, apart from the tinny indistinctness of words spoken over a distant radio. Against the far wall, they could see a little of Yee, engulfed in staticky threads to the point that only his side was visible. Similarly, Owain and Sabrina lay upon the floor, covered in tendrils more and more by the moment. However Dusknoir tried, his psychic senses could not penetrate the malaise covering them. Their eyes were closed, and their chests did not move with breath, but they were not yet engulfed by the things which stood over them.

Nor were the threads around the Challengers so thick yet that they could not break free... -

edited 10th Jul '14 12:09:16 AM by Colonial1.1

Gogol Plains, Burial Complex

Leo watched as the mohrg dissolved into nothing, its ashes fusing with the air in an invisible pyre. Truth be told, he'd barely broken a sweat. He was expecting to at least be putting his capabilities to the test, new threats and all.

He spared a glance at Chun-Li, his smile and tilt of the head expressing his gratitude for him. With that, he got ready for cleanup, and was just about to mop up the last few undead creatures when a mysterious laugh caught his attention.

"What the...?"

Leo stood on guard. His head twisted and turned in every direction he could fathom in an attempt to find the laughing's source.

Duskoir felt it, the area behind his eye started to itch and the world started to fade. It was an unfamiliar attack method, but Dusknoir kept his elemental punches up and tried to open his mind's eye, his psychic power that he has grown accustomed to since he unlocked it long ago. However, he couldn't force it open, the world remained blank to his eyes and mind. It was an unsettling sensation, to have no sight or sound. When it came back, in all dramatic glory of trumpets, the situation had changed. Whatever this trap was, it was in full blown motion, and Sabrina and Owain were in more trouble than everyone else. With his elementally enhanced hands still at the ready, Dusknoir pulled his body out and forced his arms to move to grab the tendrils wrapping around his own body to destroy them with the elemental energies. He charged with the might he could muster down to the pair, going for Sabrina first. He reached with one hand to grab her body. He tried to pull he away from the ground, up with his ghostly flying, while attacking the tendrils on her with his other hand.

edited 10th Jul '14 11:16:31 PM by StephanReiken

Ia-Kong Ziggurat, Western Passage

" You call that a sent-ERRRARRRRRGHH!!"

- The initial burst of agony caught Saren by surprise. Still cooling down from gravitational manipulation, the turian had not been able to raise a field to block the beasts in time. To his even greater dismay, they had gotten through both his forged armour and his own natural plating.

A litany of expletives in a variety of languages and including a number of quite impossible anatomical positions came streaming from Saren's helmet as he spasmed and jerked around. For a few seconds, he swept his blade arm through the swarm at such a speed that it became a gleaming blur (all while leaping backward like a scalded cat).

It was then that the venom began to kick in. A wave of nausea lurched up from below, strong enough to make Saren jerk his head forward as he gagged. It made him grateful to have missed breakfast. Speech would be unwise at this point, so all that came from his helmet now was a gurgling hiss. He staggered back, fighting to keep his jaws clamped shut and his head level against the envenomed lethargy pervading his system.

He would not allow himself to fall again, certainly not in front of two impressionable newcomers (and the Doctor); definitely not at the hands of a swarm of thuggish vermin. The turian willed himself to remain standing, remain moving in the face of this onslaught. A thought niggled at his mind, but what...

Suddenly, the temperature around Saren plummeted, and he found himself partially incased in thick ice. Cold and shock gave him something else to think about, a different kind of pain from the white-hot stings and bites. It was clarity enough for the thought to form properly: Magnetism! -

" Xigbarrh! Magnet!"

- Saren managed to croak out the words, pointing at the parts of his prosthesis lying on the floor. Little bubbles of blue miasma formed and imploded around him, not a one of them controlled. -

"We. Are. Out."

The Doctor focuses and narrows his psychic powers and telekinetic capabilities to one wasp currently on his body. This is tougher than I thought. Got to...ow, keep my mind off...ow all the hellwasp bites...ow! There we go! Think I have this one...now if I can just...

He slowly moves his hand across the sonic screwdriver making sure to amplify the power of this next blast. Must time this just right. I fire the blast at the wrong SECOND and I'll need to do this all over again. Assuming they don't become immune.

As he tries to blast the hivemind apart with his connection to that one wasp, he also turns on the stronger ultrasonic blast. Right before he fires the psychic and sonic blasts he grabs the wasp he's grabbing. "Forgive me for this but...you're in our way. We will not let your cold master succeed in his mission. We gave you a chance to flee."

Gogol Plains, Burial Complex

Chun-Li smiled cutely and gave Leo a V for victory, but before she could get to clean up duty herself, she then looked around as she heard the voice.

"Show yourself!" Chun-Li demanded of the voice, unable to find where it was coming from.

Crystal Chaos

As the events happened around her, Sabrina frowned severely and tried to use her telepathy on everyone there. While she was able to track Owain at least and Yee seemed to have closed off his mind by his own choice, the others had gained a greasy psychic pall that was unnatural to them. Yee appeared to be in serious trouble now as well from the strings.

We need to— "ARGH!" Sabrina yelled as she was hit by Dusknoir's attack, and struggled to get up, not used to physical fighting without a Pokemon. "Owain! Free Yee now!"

"You can see the strings holding him and you have a blade!" Sabrina yelled at the Legendary Hero, reaching for her Pokeball so as to release Alakazam. "I can't reach into the others' minds but maybe he can!"

Sabrina had a look of desperation in regards to the ones being manipulated... She needed to figure out some way to free them, lest they might just attack both Owain and herself, but she also had to defend herself if need be.

-taste air. cool here. no enemies. stay. taste air. no food here. cool here. groundshake outside. enemies. stay. taste air. no food here.-