CoLC crossover RP, main thread

Despair-Cole froze up at the sound of Sawyer's voice, slowly turning his head to look towards her, a clear hesitancy apparent in his posture and expression then. After a moment he finally spoke.

"They hurt me...stopped me from fleeing. They want to destroy me, to lock me away where I won't be a bother anymore! I just want to get away from them!"

He turned his head again at an awareness of a thudding in the distance, but just as quickly whipped his head back to stare at Sawyer, eyes flashing bright once. "Just let me go...make them stop hurting me..."

edited 27th Apr '16 7:57:28 AM by ColeMinor

Crowing that it was a success, Ranma then soon wilted with guilt when she found out the whole 'positive emotion cannonball' plan didn't work nearly as well as she hoped it would. Still, it got rid of his stealth technique which was good, since now he couldn't simply invisibly shiv people like a psycho killer. And then chase turned into a hostage situation that consisted of Scarecrow holding himself hostage. God damn he was such a coward, especially now that other people were coming, those who actually cared about him.

Deciding to take a wait and see approach since nothing she did worked out, the girl began moving in a strange archaic way. One slow step here, one slow shuffle there. It was a footwork technique meant to mess with people's optical judgement capabilities and let people travel short distances without raising too much alarm. Soon, she was directly in between the line of sights of those more inclined to use lethal force upon the spirit, using her body to hinder aim.

Staring at the manic would-be killer, Ranma brought forth the gymnastic's ribbon once more to ready the utensil in the more than likely case Scarecrow would try to slit his own throat. She disliked him, but not to the point she wished for the guy to kill himself off. She never did. The excitement of the tense situation almost made her miss the far-off sounds of thumping that seemed to be coming closer their way that just about everyone else was missing. Narrowing her eyes and huffing in frustration that she had to keep an eye out for yet another unstable element in this already horrible situation, the girl tried to figure out where and when it would arrive with her senses. All the while Scarecrow was up to his old shame-shifting shenanigans that put all the fault unto others. Lovely.

edited 27th Apr '16 7:18:08 AM by Makaioh

Bottom Level Elevator - The Girl From Nazcaa

For her part, Cassiopeia had remained thoughtfully silent before, during, and after Sir Redring's exposition of what was presently known about the situation - the situation she shared with her eight-armed escort and everyone else in the city, apparently. After following her companion into the lift, the green-haired woman took a moment to retrieve her discarded heels from her bag and slip them back on. While the octopus was preoccupied to near mystification by his inspection of the elevator symbols, she focused briefly and traced a glowing Rejuvenate rune in the air, which shimmered for a moment and vanished into motes of light that seeped into her garments and erased any grime that she might have picked up while she'd been running.

"Hmmm, electricity, you say? The term strikes me as vaguely familiar, for some reason..." she muttered distractedly, then squinted at the buttons from behind her guide, "Oh, I see! It's... one presses the button for the level to which one wishes to travel. So the top button, for example, would take us to the top floor." For fear of making her new friend feel foolish, she refrained from explaining that Nazcaa had discovered the uses of such flowing energy long ago - though they had, of course, called it something else entirely - and that this system of mechanical transport was rather primitive compared to the magically-powered teleportation pads that littered her palace.

"Not to say that I dislike your company in any way, Sir Redring, but I do wonder why we were brought to this place," she mused idly, "What possible purpose could such a thing serve, and for whom?" There was no trepidation whatsoever in the questions, simply bewilderment. It was an utterly baffling turn of events in her life, to be sure, but she hardly considered her own material and cosmic imprisonment on the whim of some esoteric deity anything to be afraid of if she wasn't to be imprisoned by her lonesome.

Why, if the rest of her fellow abductees were even half as nice as Sir Redring had proven himself to be, then it would be a splendid experience! An ever-shifting landscape was practically guaranteed not to become boring, not to mention that it was doubtlessly a smorgasbord of interesting people from across the multiverse! Why concern herself with traveling the worlds when parts of the worlds would be practically dropped into her lap?! The wayward queen would surely have begun bouncing on the balls of her feet out of sheer excitement, had her current choice of shoes not prevented the motion.

As if for the sake of confirming everything she had just been thinking, a duo in thoroughly odd getups swooped down from above and implored that the lift be held. Immediately obliging their request and bringing a hand up to ensure the doors wouldn't close without notice, the wizard found herself blinking owlishly up at the man in blue... and up, and up. "My, you are quite tall, Sir."

She had already resolved not to judge others for their choices in attire, so she made no remark that he was decked out entirely in spandex... But is he not at all cold...?

Her observations about The Tick were fleeting, however, compared to the surge of concern she felt for the young man he carried on his back. She couldn't very well leave the poor dear a possible quadriplegic! And this sounded as if it was a regular affair?! Hurriedly emptying her mind, she drew a rune of Healing Hand and unleashed her strongest curative spell. There was no merit in using a weaker magic if Arthur was at risk of being crippled for life, after all. The radiant glyph melted into a flood of green light that swept around Tick and enveloped his sidekick in soothing warmth.

Cassiopeia swayed momentarily as the spell sapped a large chunk of her energy, but then shook her head and peered intently at the bunny-moth-man. "How do you feel, Sir?" she inquired anxiously, "Are you experiencing any residual pain? Cramping? Stiffness? Shortness of breath?"

edited 27th Apr '16 9:52:10 AM by darksidevoid

Talk Down Cole, Y/Y?

He was still reacting to her, so that was a welcome start.

He said something about being hounded, how they wanted to destroy him. Was this how Cole would be now? Perhaps she could do something to revert it, like kick Old Feather Beak's beak through his throat. Sawyer was aware that the spirit was already a tough, erratic customer to deal with for the others, but frankly... she could at least calm him down.

"Misunderstandings happen." She said simply, approaching him slowly. The knife in his hand looked threatening for either of them, but... she trusted him even now, for better or worse. "...put the knife away. I will take you... somewhere safe."

"Hm....it seems that all the chaos the Ruckus created really was a distraction," Plague Knight said to the orcs, finally having the chance to speak his mind on the matter. "Possibly done in order to capture a friend of mine, though why I cannot fathom. Quite obviously for some nefarious reason I wager, considering the leader of the Ruckus is a demon."

Of course, all of Plague Knight's thoughts were merely conjecture without speaking with the others in order to confirm his theories, but the orcs did not know that......

Rex was confused, Cole continued talking about someone that had locked him away. Was he having a mental breakdown or had Old Feather Beak finally possessed him?

"Who are you talking about? I'm not going to hurt you. And I'll make sure no one does either"

He looked at Ranma as if saying "Did you really need to attack him?". Luckily, Sawyer was there to talk some sense into Cole. Rex knew that they had a thing going on and that a moody teenager would probably hear his hormones more than logic. He also noticed the spirit was bleeding so, on top of being mentally unstable or even possessed, he was losing blood. Something that probably didn't help his reasoning.

"Cole, please. Hear us out, man. You're bleeding, we can help you"

Grey Matter continued to jump and shout. Nothing. No one could hear him, he couldn't help, he could only watch as the now-demonic Cole threatened everyone, including himself.

His legs wobbled, then gave out and he fell onto the hard ground. He then fell backwards, about to start wallowing in the despair that Cole had planted. What if Cole was right? What if he was just some stupid little kid acting out a dream instead of actually being a hero? What has he done to Gwen and Grandpa? How would he ever be able to look at the others again?

However, as soon as he fell backwards and hit the pavement, he felt a surprising lump on his back keeping him from falling totally backwards, hard and metallic. There was a beep, then the area around him was bathed in red light. Soon, Ben was laying there in his human form, and despair gave way to surprise. "Wha—? How did I....??" he asked, confused. He had inadvertently pressed the Omnitrix symbol on Grey Matter's back as he lay down, but he didn't realize that.

Once he got over the initial shock, Ben jumped to his feet, looking at the watch. On cooldown. He glared over at the scene unfolding before him, and rushed over to try and help, in some way.

Cole shot a glance at the others seemingly trying to corner him, then looked back to Sawyer, and his hand holding the dagger lowered enough to not be immediately threatening his own throat. "T-take me away from them...don't let them hurt me anymore...p-please, Sawyer, I know...know-know you don't want to hurt me..."

Middle layer — With Cole

Garrett followed the others to the area where the shots came from, and he froze. That... thing, that monster. Was this Cole? What in the world have they done to him?

He said nothing, not wanting to reveal himself, but — still hidden in the darkness — he put on his climbing gloves, just in case, then got out his bow and a gas arrow, ready to shoot if it becomes necessary. Cole's new... form... looked even more unstable and potentially dangerous than his normal self; and if the knockout trick worked once, he figured, it will work again.

edited 27th Apr '16 11:22:09 AM by Korodzik

Talking Down Cole Still

"Put the knife away." She repeated, her voice as firm as a monotone droning could afford to be. "And let yourself... be treated. You will die from... that wound if you... do not." She decided to not push the question who exactly was responsible for hurting her friend.

"Where is... the demon, Cole?" She asked, her expression a little softer.

The Tick gave a friendly beam. "Why thank you, madam. It's to make room for all the muscles, I think."

Directly afterwards, the woman drew a glyph in the air and bathed Arthur in a great deal of healing magic, washing away the ache in his tired limbs and then some. Stunned by his own sudden recovery, Arthur looked about, bending his arms and wriggling his legs. "I...I don't even remember what hurts anymore."

"That's the spirit!" Tick let Arthur drop back on his feet. "Thank you, caped magician! You might just be the most friendly and helpful soul we've met so far."

"Oh, you are most welcome! I am happy to have been of some meager assistance!" The vaguely-incognito royal beamed right back, then stepped aside to let the pair into the car.

"My name is Cassiopeia, and this is Sir Redring," she continued, motioning to the talking cephalopod manning the buttons, "Now then, which floor are you headed to, Mister Arthur and...?"

edited 27th Apr '16 4:12:13 PM by darksidevoid

Top Layer - Shopping Center - Well Now

Zelda frowned. "Getting yourself lost just because Mary's already lost isn't exactly going to make the situation any better, is it? The best you'd be able to do is go back to the library, and we already know she's not there. At worst, you could meet someone really nasty, which might...well, now's not the best time to be thinking about that."

She then gave the emotion a warm smile, trying her best to do the impossible and make an embodiment of sadness feel somewhat happier. "I know you want to help. I want to help too; otherwise, I just would have stayed back in the library when the rest of you went out. Even if we're not quite as...accomplished as some of the others are, we'll still find Mary if we work together. All right?"

She then looked back the way they came, and at that moment her smile suddenly faded. "...Oh no...."

In her haste to try and get Sadness to stick around, she had not been paying attention to where they were going and the city had once again shifted around, effectively separating the two of them from the others. She had even reminded Sadness that this was going to happen if she headed off on her own, and yet she hadn't been thinking about it applying to herself as well.

She paused for a long moment, before turning back to Sadness. "...I was going to suggest going back to the others for now, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen now." She sighed, before shrugging in a defeated manner. "Well, now that I'm with you I'm going to stick with you no matter what. It wouldn't be good of me to not follow my own advice. So, shall we keep looking for Mary?"

Gon, watching the proceedings

Gon kept a close eye as Sawyer continued to interact with Cole.

He didn't know the two by name so far, but he wanted to wait and see what will happen next. Does he need to fight or can the sitation deescalate, so as to give him more time to look for Ben and maybe, investigate the events for today.

The thumping got closer, and sure enough someone soon came around a corner to see the situation. The worst person in the city to possibly show up right now except for Old Feather Beak and possibly Bill Cipher.

Space marine. Battle Brother. Marcus.

He took a quick look over the situation, his enhanced brain working out what seemed to be happening and his response to it in mere moments. A shame that his helmet did not allow reading his facial expression. "Fallen psyker" Brother Marcus muttered, drawing his bolt pistol and aiming it straight at Cole. "Get away from him, now" the space marine said aloud in a commanding tone.

"I'm afraid I don't really know the whole answer" Sir Redring admitted in regards to Cassiopeia's question about who brought them here and why. "All I know for sure is it must be a very powerful being indeed" he muttered, glancing out at the dark city in front of the elevator, "it changes the entire city regularly. It was not this tall yesterday, and a few days back it was a forest, and before that it was frozen over entirely."

When she asked the Tick and Arthur about where they were going, Sir Redring cleared his throat,^note a very odd and squishy noise with a bit of clicking from his hidden beak and motioned at the buttons; the lowest one was glowing slightly, indicating that that's where they currently were. "I believe there is only one direction for us to go; we can stop along the way, if they aren't going as high as we are" Sir Redring pointed out, then would press a button to take the elevator up as soon as Cassiopeia, Tick, and Arthur were in the elevator.

"Didn't we tell you to wait quietly?" one of the two pig orcs watching Plague Knight said in a frustrated tone; he wasn't really paying attention to what Plague Knight was saying. The lead pig orc caught some of it however, and it got his attention.

"Hold on" the lead pig orc said, passing off his looting bag to one of the two that had been standing guard. "What are you talking about?" he asked as he stepped over to Plague Knight.

The city shifting and cutting them off from their friends also shifted something new into view for Zelda and Sadness. Some sort of standoff happening between Silanea and a few of her anti-human gang members, and a small group of Ruckus. The two couldn't hear what the groups were saying yet, but from their stances the anti-humans looked angry while the Ruckus looked casual, almost dismissive even.

"Ho-ho, yeah." Rick took a shot as he watched Brother Marcus storm the scene, aiming his bolt pistol at Cole, preparing to terminate with extreme prejudice. "Oh boy, things *urp* things just got a lot easier, you know, Morty?"

"Oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez..." Morty shrank behind his grandfather as the imposing Space Marine passed by them; still wary of the monstrous super-soldier after their disastrous encounter four days ago. "Rick, is this really, the, you know, the right... choice for the situation? Cause maybe he recognizes us? And he'll try to..." Morty gulped and wiped some of the sweat off of his brow.

"Shoot 'im in the knees!" shouted Rick- ignoring Morty- to the space marine. "You gotta *urp* shoot him so he doesn't die." Rick cocked his own heavy rifle and pointed it at the crazed demon-child. "'s important, I think."

Grimlock; Dino mode

The City, Middle Tier

Once again, there was only one word he that he thought of that described the situation as a whole:

Scrap.

Apparently, whatever happened to Cole made him turn into a demon and he was trying to get away. From what Cole described of demons yesterday, it wouldn't be good if he did get away, for him or for anyone. And then what happens? Blue guy shows up. Grimlock knew he meant well for humans but scrap, he certainly wasn't the best person for this situation.

Rick wasn't helping either.

Grimlock gave him a brief glare before directing it at the blue guy as he tried to block Sawyer and Cole with his body to at least take any shots so Sawyer could do something—preferably run away. He didn't bother to say anything to the blue guy. He figured any words from anything not human were likely to not be listened to.

Cole's gaze turned from Sawyer when the space marine appeared, and a snarl came to the deformed mouth, the grip on his dagger going instantly from holding it in a means of harming himself, to a grip with clear intent on using it against someone else.

"They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed."

The snarl vanished behind that same sadistic grin.

"Your god-emperor is weak. As are you. You don't even know the things that crawl in the underbelly of this city, what they'll do to you, to all the people you think you protect when all you've done is terrorize...and you can't even save anyone because you can't kill me. You can't kill anyone here. And what good are you if you can't even do the one thing you were created to do?"

Ben stopped when he saw the familiar Ultramarine armor of Brother Marcus. His fists clenched again. He wanted to do something, anything to stop Cole, to stop Brother Marcus and everyone else from causing people to suffer and die. But his watch was on cooldown. And what if Cole was right? What if he really was just a stupid kid?

He couldn't think about that now. He stormed over to the group, glaring at both Brother Marcus and Cole as they stood each other down.

"My companions tell me that the leader of the Ruckus is a demon of some sort," Plague Knight explained to the lead orc. "I do not know what variety of demon, but it is a very powerful one, having the ability to enter the dreams of others and directly manipulate said dreams. I even heard he can mind control people using magic to subtly control them from afar, this suggestion working upon people just by him talking to them!"

He did not know whether that last claim had any merit or not, being entirely conjecture based off of Cole's reaction to Ben and Twilight last night, but at this point he was just rolling with it. One less set of people possibly swayed to join the Ruckus, the better.........

Sawyer seemed to have an effect on Cole. Even though he still was a monster, he was showing sings of hesitation. He told her that he wanted her to stop anyone from hurting him.

Things were looking good but, of course, the loud thump that Rex had decided to ignore given what was going on here.

Rex put himself in front of Marcus' pistol. He knew it was suicide but it was the only way of showing him that he he wasn't going to let him hurt his friend.

"Dude, dude—Mark, don't shoot, please. I know this looks bad but he's not a psyker, his abilities are different from what you know. I think we can talk him out of this. Just lower your gun and you can try to kill us, after we've solved this"

When Cole started insulting the God-Emperor, the empire of man, and the fact that Marcus couldn't really kill anyone; Rex just facepalmed.

"I'm trying to save your ass over here and you go and insult the guy trying to kill you?"

edited 27th Apr '16 10:07:29 PM by DeisTheAlcano

Mary (Apartment Building) - On the Topic of Religion...

"Okay!" Mary exclaimed, waving to Old Feather Beak while she continued eating her breakfast. "Have fun!"

Her eyes then shifted towards Kelsey. She examined her new big sister in a bit more detail, and in a matter of seconds took her hand with an excitement she hadn't had in the entire day.

"Come on then, big sis!" she exclaimed. "Let's go do things! We can talk about other things on our way there! Like your favorite colors, or you favorite food, or how to do that thing you mentioned for Corn."

Top Layer - Mall - Food Court

Lune explained that the bag contained cellphones. Caro fished one out of said bag. Before she could have any chance of examine it further, she noticed that Sadness rushed off the mall, obviously too worried about Mary to wait any longer and was quickly followed by Zelda, who seemed to be trying to stop her, but ended up getting away from the mall along with the emotion. Caro quickly moved closer to the entrance to try to see if she could still catch up to them, but they were already off in the distance and then suddenly vanished, likely as a result of the city shifting once again.

Caro returned to where Lune was, in time for Sans return, who asked if they had managed to eat anything. " Yeah, Lune is right, there some arguments and we never got around to it. And now Zelda and Sadness left and are likely in a different part of the city already, thanks to how things work around here. Look, I going to find something real quick and then we leave. We still have to find Mary. I don't know if we can find Zelda and Sadness, but given that they are also looking for her, assuming they do manage it, if we focus on the former, we will meet them again eventually."

Caro then dashed off and looked quickly throught the food court. She found a stand that carried wrapped sandwiches, which would be good for eating on the way. She grabbed two random ones, since she was too hungry to care at this point and then went back to her friends.

She offered one of the packages to Lune and said, " Here you go. I don't know what it is, I was too much in hurry to notice, but I hope it is good." Then turning to Sans, she asked, " Are you sure you don't want anything? Come to think of it, back in the library, you asked Miss Tairee for monster hotdogs, didn't you? I assume that is something from your world. Is that too different from food like this? Can you only eat food like that? And more importantly, you said that you would explain what you knew about how the city is working today. Now is a good time to talk about that. We need a plan on to go about finding our friends. So please tell us what you know."

Top layer

After spending some time looking around the area, Twilight got lost when the city shifted. She looked around a bit, and then eventually saw Zelda and Sadness. She landed near them.

"What are you two up to?"

It looked like Zelda and Sadness ended up getting themselves lost outside and considering they were the most helpless among them that was just all kinds of bad. Sans sighed while Caro went to pick up some sandwiches and then asked him if he wanted something.

"nah, i think when i was gunned down earlier those guys also killed any apettite i had left," said Sans, shrugging, then Caro asked about monster food, "food where i come from is different from what you guys are used to, at least i'd imagine it is. the food doesn't go through our body when we eat, it just instantly becomes energy and doesn't leave anything behind, it also doesn't spoil, it's real nice."

Finally, Caro asked about the information he was gonna give her about all the info he knew. That one was probably gonna take a while to explain.

"this is gonna take a bit to explain so you might as well begin eating..." he advised before he began his explanation, "i don't really know everything but what i do know is that today the city is divided into floors, this is the top floor since there's no ceiling above us. when i began the day, i was in the floor below this one and it looks quite a bit different from here but i don't think there's anything particularly important about it but i'm gonna take a guess and imagine that the further down you go into this city, the worse it becomes. that's why i took some time to find you guys again, my shortcuts work based on the location of the area i want to go to, but with this city change that meant that the library was also in a different position from the other days."