Mausoleum II: Stairdancing The Multiverse

blanked

Edited by Enirboreh on Dec 17th 2018 at 6:09:27 PM

this one too

Edited by Enirboreh on Dec 17th 2018 at 6:10:17 PM

Mama Jupiter's Colossal Cabaret

“Such is the dilemma of sapient golems. Inorganic material; still classed as self-aware. Therefore, still slavery,” Kyxe droned, diverting attention away from the agonized Claudia seeing as she was currently out of commission for the time being anyway and turning to face Begonia.

Already she was on edge around him. He reminded her of a Zyla in temperament. Sporadic and therefore unpredictable. Eccentrics were always a headache.

Even when practically every occupant decided to charge in towards them she didn't tear her eyes away from the strange boy. It was only when one of them made a tackle for her did she whip around—flinging one of her knives into his throat and sidestepping to let his now gurgling form continue its midair momentum past her.

“If I knew you all in some way personally, perhaps I'd feel regretful.”

And then Kyxe was replaced by a vicious predator.

Just like that. As soon as that remark had exited her mouth her eyes had clouded over, and her serrated teeth had bared themselves. It was like watching an incredibly bloody dance as she flipped over, under, and occasionally through the patrons targeting her if she had managed to cut cleanly enough beforehand. Precise strikes to major arteries in the neck, skewering the odd eye or two, solid kick straight to the liver—even the occasional handstand-to-leg-based-neck-snap. It was... a sight, most definitely. Not necessarily a pretty one—but a sight nonetheless. Though the times where some of her blood was spilt somewhat added to the display, admittedly. The azure blue contrasted nicely with the crimson red.

One got a plasma-coated hand shoved straight through the back of their throat and had to take in the rellan's wide-eyed, glassy stare before their soft tissues turned to smoking charcoal. Another got a rather nonchalantly delivered bolt of plasma to the spleen which bowled them over double. But perhaps the most horrific display was when Kyxe tired of the approaching numbers and waited until she was practically surrounded—before erupting a large, crystalline spike out of her chest and skewering three of the assaulters on the end.

She promptly snapped off the considerably heavier spike—the bodies landing with an audible squelch even over the din—and continued fighting.

Sort of.

It was about this time that she had started to slow. While before her efforts seemed calculated and efficient, now it seemed every strike and every blow was starting to take considerable effort. She began to back towards the rest of the party once a bone in her arm painfully clicked from the strain. A single good strike from any of these patrons (they all looked considerably massive compared to her) would surely cripple her in an instant.

The fact that her focus had been on what was effectively mass-murder and not protecting Andratite didn't even cross her mind.

Mama Jupiter's Deathbrawl 2kXX: The Fuckening

Wolf howled and strained against those holding him, but the crystal woman was too strong, and he could not break free of her grip.

Then a man appeared, offering something for something else. Whatever it was - Wolf neither listened nor cared - a number of people attacked the crystal woman at that moment, and Wolf was pleased. For in charging Andradite, they had charged him by proxy, and all but dashed into his waiting jaws.

Chomp, crunch, scream, rip, tear. Any who got anywhere close to Andradite would find an inhuman beast lunging at them, tearing them limb from limb, with jaws wide enough to swallow a man whole and powerful enough to crack steel like a walnut.

As Wolf unintentionally acted as Andradite's protector, the circle faded, and Lamb gracefully avoided the crowd as she headed for the entrance. Hopping up the stairs, noting the unconscious bodyguards - that explained why they had not heard the noise - she held out a hand to Kayne.

"Return my bow, if you would." She said, "The end has come for many this day. And it will come, too, for Andradite, if we do not act."

Edited by kagescorpionakki on Dec 17th 2018 at 2:07:45 PM

Kayne & Moko—Outside

Kayne paused for a moment before slipping into Mama Jupiter's behind Begonia, keeping to the shadows with careful steps and filching the golden chain (as well as whatever it was attached to) from his unattended back pocket. Moko also awoke from his position atop Kayne's head, having heard everything. His mouth was twisted into a slight frown.

<Be careful in there! You don't know what you might find!> Moko warned, looking down at Kayne.

<Don't worry. I doubt this fellow's a real powerful mage anyways. If he were, he'd be slinging spells with his bare hands instead of using things that need recharging. Of course, now I just tempted fate. Let's wait and see.> Kayne replied nonchalantly in her thoughts, well used to Moko's telepathy.

<Oh...dear...What have we got ourselves into?> Moko moaned mentally.

<Nothing we can't handle, I'm sure.> Kayne "said" soothingly.

With that exchange, the two had quietly slipped into the establishment behind Begonia, handing Lamb's bow to her without a word. Stealth was important here.

Begonia's speech carried far, it seemed. His voice was grating. Well, Kayne would just have to knock him down a few pegs. She forged onward, noting the sounds of a riot or a lynch mob stirring up.

Kayne & Moko—Inside Mama Jupiter's Colossal Cabaret

Kayne and Moko took the time to duck into an unobserved nook, observing the disastrous proceedings. A brawl was occurring, and it was occurring everywhere.

She crawled up to the table and popped up behind Begonia, pulling on his ear. It was time to cause some drama.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" she screeched, her voice only just shrill enough to cut into the din. "YOU SAID YOU WERE GETTING MILK! AND THAT YOU WEREN'T OLD ENOUGH TO PROPOSE, BUT HERE YOU ARE, IN SUCH A PLACE! THIS—THIS DEN OF INIQUITY!"

"WHY WOULD YOU EVER WANT TO SEE SOMEBODY ELSE? AREN'T I ENOUGH?" Kayne wailed, affecting tears. "AND WHY ARE YOU TELLING SUCH—SUCH LIES!? WE DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF MONEY! WE NEVER HAD THAT KIND OF MONEY!"

"I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME..." Kayne sobbed. "NOW, I DEMAND SATISFACTION!"

That last bit was punctuated by Kayne trying to take off her glove to slap Begonia's smug face, as was custom for challenging another party to a duel—but Kayne decided that people who supported slavery deserved more than a light slap on the face with a glove. Therefore, she detached her clockwork prosthetic from her left arm-stump, and swung it towards Begonia's smug-ass face with all the strength she could muster.

Kayne's throat felt very sore, but hopefully that achieved her purpose. Drama between couples was often very awkward in public spaces. Hopefully, this would get the mob to stop before anyone else got disemboweled.

Ooh! Was that a chunk of someone's liver? Focus, Kayne, focus...

Edited by JumpingFruit on Dec 17th 2018 at 5:13:25 AM

Mama Jupiter's

The silence that had fallen over the crowd in the wake of Begonia's announcement was different in tone than the hushed shock a moment before. With a start, Andradite realized that her makeshift hood had fallen down in the struggle with Wolf, and her hair was being its treacherously prismatic self.

And then everything became much, much louder.

"Ah, look, please just- I don't actually belong to- you'll just get- Oh..."

Andradite now stood in the calm center of a storm of violence as the bar's patrons threw themselves onto the fangs and daggers of her friends.

A trio of humans with long shaggy hair, intricate glowing tattoos and silver mylar hakamas advanced with their swords held high, the leader shouting something that Andradite didn't understand but thought sounded very intimidating.

"I'd really rather not...?"

One was cut off mid-battlecry by a bolt of magyckal ice fired from further back in the melee, and the second found himself testing his master's techniques against an angry hungry death spirit, but the lead managed to jump over the wolf's sinuous body and slash downwards -

There was a crack and a high-pitched ringing sound that cut through the melee as Andradite caught the blade - actually not a blade, she realized, but a bundle of metal rods attached to a handle - in her right hand. Tiny hints of green light flashed from her palm to her elbow. Before her assailant could pull back, she closed her fingers around the not-blade and wrenched it towards herself, pulling him forward to meet her knee coming the other way.

"Sorry!"

Flipping her pilfered shinai into her hands, the gem gave the man another kick just to be sure, looking up in time to see another spike of enchanted ice flying towards her. In her mind's eye, the ice became a golden fork-tipped arrow, and Yellow Diamond's encouraging voice rang in her ears as she brought her weapon up in a sweep that knocked the projectile aside.

The black-robed insectoid who had decided to just sling spells into the melee started to incant additional wyrde magyckes, and Andradite settled into a defensive stance - but she couldn't help but glance at Begonia's smug face. Her grip tightened on her weapon, despite the uncomfortable grinding vibration that sent up her right arm. The last time she'd felt this way, it had involved a clear day, an interesting flower, and thankfully-aborted trip to the moon.

It was not a good feeling. Sensei had called it "dread".

Seeing Begonia getting hit in the face with an arm made her feel a bit better though.

Bah, the fogey didn't even see fit to answer Kaguya's question on the way out. If the sight of Maken's twisted, unnaturally bent corpse falling onto the ground was supposed to elicit any emotion in Kaguya besides mild miffing, then there's a problem here.

She certainly didn't wait for the thump of a landing body to act, though! Flying backwards the moment this ugly thing made its intentions clear, Kaguya did what nobility does best and issued orders to the competent lower castes. "Give me a moment of time, friend! You seem like you can take this one on well enough!"

Hopefully Girimehkala was immune to not-swords. The Lady of Mount Hourai scanned the aisles, pushing aside priceless things to peer behind them and letting them crash to the ground inelegantly. Her goal was to find a sword or, you know, anything the slightest bit sharp and long to make herself useful with.

Mama Jupiter’s Colossal Cabaret

Taking Claudia's sobbing, broken form into account, Magicaloid found it strange to think that she was probably more relieved by the waitress’s survival than the waitress herself was; but then, it was hard to be thankful of much of anything when you were being gnawed on by a jungle cat. Magicaloid let out a simple exhale nonetheless, glad that the crisis was over for the moment, and turned to the thank the additional source of heave that had kept the woman from becoming just so much more paint on the walls.

She squinted, instead, due to the incandescent light from the overhead disco pyramid bouncing off of Andradite’s reflective locks—then widened her eyes, for the same reason.

Oh, crud—!

Magicaloid wasn’t robot enough that she could accurately time how long it took for someone to jump out of the woodwork and start gunning for Andy’s head, but her best guess put it around .03 seconds; the magical robot girl herself needed far more time to get her bearings, conversions and calculations flooding her head like the collapsing Red Sea, and her thankful expression toward Andy downgrading very quickly to something close to what one would use on a piece of top-tier meat. Five million cryptcoin. Just under sixteen BILLION yen. Magicaloid’s hands began to tremble, as her already-fluidless mouth began to feel like the inside of a hair-drier, visions of their quest swamped by visions of the luxuries that kind of money could afford. My parents could work twenty-six lifetimes for that kind of money. Or I could make it right now, with just a little—

Wolf began writhing back and forth like a murderous fire hose, seizing up on her lingering grip and just as soon jerking her forward as rippling back with a reflexive slap, causing her feet to leave the ground as she momentarily became airborne. A just-as-reflexive mental trigger on her part arrested her motion mid-air, as the innocuous-looking pack on her back split open along the bottom and revealed a set of thrusters like the horns of an exotic instrument—that no sooner came to light than came to life, buzzing for an instant with idle energy before erupting into crisp blue flame. Makoto hung in the space above the chaos, mesmerized for a moment by it all, and by the gem-woman in the center of it. I could build another one of her. Entirely, top-to-bottom. Out of gold.

Something very much like lightning buzzed by something very much like her ear, and Magicaloid’s steel momentarily softened. “Asmodeus!” She called out to be heard through the din, “Try and grab Andy, and meet me at that thing!” She yelled, pointing to the disco tetrahedron still rotating obliviously above the dancefloor. “It’ll throw off their aim!” Magicaloid herself continued to bob and weave through the air for that same purpose, casting her eyes about through the crowd for—there. Just about the only denizen that wasn’t gunning for Andy’s head on a platter, still mewling where they’d left her. Her lightly-glowing chassis disappeared beneath the waves of muscles and grunting curses, for one second, two—before a familiar ray of red light would pierce up towards the heavens, from the would-be assassin’s smoking barrel as Magicaloid aimed it at the sky.

Taking advantage of the space generated by her warning shot, Magicaloid would kneel down, taking care to maneuver over to Claudia’s good side. With one eye on the masses of inhumanity closing in indifferently all around them, and the other on Claudia’s compounding list of injuries, she would attempt to lift the waitress to her feet, most likely only bringing her to a low kneel due to the disparity in their sizes. A three-pronged volley of further space-creating sky-borne lasers heralded her boosters reigniting, the twin glows of red and blue momentarily converging into a violet very close to the shade constantly emanating from the robot girl’s arms and legs, as the two ascended up and away toward the twirling pyramid hanging from the ceiling. About halfway up, almost on a whim, Magicaloid would discard the weapon from her inexpert hands, sending it twirling end-over-end in the direction of Garbhán—thinking that he seemed like the sort of creature that the weapon was better suited for.

Magicaloid would then come to a stop with Claudia as they hugged the far edge of the tetrahedron, staying just outside the range of the fixture’s spinning edges, subjecting them to intermittent bursts of multi-colored light as the pyramid made its rotations, in exchange for that light obscuring their profiles and the pyramid itself serving to shield them from the main entrance, where most of the action seemed to be taking place. Makoto’s pink-shielded eyes remained fixed on Claudia, as they had on the entire trip up, weighing semantics in her head; no one would argue that this woman was necessarily aged, but she figured a good many doctors and near anyone with eyes would place her squarely into the category of infirm. Luckily, she’d been doing this for a lot longer than she’d had truth serum for. “Hey,” She would say, struggling to make herself heard even this far above the scuffle. “Stay with me. I need you to answer a few questions, alright? Answer right, and I’ll help you get back home. The normal way.^note It could come out of Kaguya’s share of the reward money, of course. Who hired you to kill Mama Jupiter?” Magicaloid worked her thrusters to creep around the edge of the pyramidal fixture, peering down on the situation developing with the boy in the blue cloak. “And is it the same person that that boy works for?”

Old Man Maken's Celestial Clusterfuck

"Yeah, that's about how that goes." grumbled Girimehkala, brushing a small length of Old Maken's chitterlings away from his ear, but smiled in obscene satisfaction under his trunk. He'd learned the folly of karma a long time ago, but the old windbag getting skewered on his corkscrew-talk struck something deep in his belly and resonated happily. It was like poetry, it rhymed, and it was the best punchline he'd seen since Viscera's routine with the sausage and the muffin.

Maken had the decency to burn his web of intrigues down on the way out, so Girimehkala pushed over a shelf for attention and drew two of his favourite guns; a long-barrelled pistol with ivory grips he'd pulled from the warm hands of a man with no name and less luck, and an antique shotgun he'd made worthless a few years back by sawing off most of length of the barrels.

He'd never heard of Mad Jack Stutter-Step, but he'd seen enough to get the gist. Some kind of corpse-walker, berserker type, maybe a particularly untalented lich, rigged up to bumblefuck his way around linear time. Big purple bit on his back looked like it had something to do with that. Sword didn't really look like a sword, but that was probably just some kind of fashion statement. Red ring could afford smiths.

There really wasn't much else to say. You could slap on as many gimmicks and fancy glowy bits as you wanted, give the thing some smarts if you felt you really had to, but a zombie was always going to be the same fight as any other zombie. Honestly he was just grateful for the familiarity.

"Shoulda asked quicker, huh?" said Girimehkala, and emptied two barrels of 00 buck into Mad Jack's festering knee.

Admodeus, Mama Jupiter's Big Brawl

What the hell was going on? Asmodeus was busy thinking of dirty jokes at the speed of light, being hot as hell, and other such nonsense. Now things had devolved into all out war after some creepo came here to claim the green girl. Well, Azzie wasn't having any of that! Odd rocky green girl or not, owning people was slavery! And slavery was bad, except in a controlled roleplay scenario, in which case it was pretty hot. But that's another story.

Azzie heard Magacoloid loud and clear.

"Got it!" she said, preparing to make her move.

First, she cast Haste on herself. This place was a clusterfuck right now, and she didn't want to spend any more time in the line of fire than strictly necessary. Now with magically enhanced agility, she made a mad dash for Andy. She attempted to grab her, then flew up towards the strange disco tetrahedron above.

Kayne and Moko; Several Minutes Ago

Attached to the gold chain was a small gold pyramid. Engraved on it was the rust-red eye that had been on the scroll: save for that, however, there were no other distinguishing marks of any kind.

It looked very mysterious.

Old Maken's Shop Of Mysteries

Girimehkala's assumption was correct: zombies were, indeed, a kind of lazy necromancer's shorthand scrawled across the pages of the multiverse. Disturbingly common, criminally uniform - not a jot of originality among the whole shambling lot.

Unfortunately, that was about as far as assuming would get the rahshaka. For even as the buckshot blew away his left knee in a spray of pus and muck, shattering bone and shredding ligaments and spinning right through muscle, Mad Jack Stutter-Step did something decidedly original:

He rotated.

That was the best word for it. His right ankle swiveled with a screech of rusty steel, his grounded heel popped like a pimple, his left shin went flying off through the darkness...

And the corpse of Old Maken squelched straight through Girimekhala's working tusk, flopping over his face, hanging on his trunk, completely filling half of his field of vision.

Which would be only mildly inconvenient, perhaps, if it wasn't for the fact that Mad Jack was now well and truly inside that blind spot, on the ground, and trying to eat his legs. His steel teeth gnashed like gears. His hands grasped like vises. His massive sword flailed behind him like a shark tethered to land, tube bathed in the spray of black blood from his severed stump.

And through it all, the core on his back spat chronal purple.

Kaguya, meanwhile, would find something extremely strange: a katana of exceeding beauty, hidden inside a beige umbrella. The blade was cold and blue in the white light of the remaining wall-torches, and when contrasted with the lavender purple of the walls might remind the Lunarian of her own veins. Across its flat was etched, in exquisite gold kanji:

If you can read this
You're doing everything wrong
You absolute numbskull.

She was then hit on the head by Mad Jack's left shin.

Mama Jupiter's Colossal Cabaret

Claudia was not in a good way. Her bitten hand was bright red and puffy, a worrying sign of sepsis, and her face was white with shock. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps, and her glazed eyes barely saw. She didn't even seem to register the brawl beneath them. It was clear she would need a proper healer, and fast.

"D-don't... don't know," she gasped. "N-never seen blue cloak. Cloak... cloak was red. Called..."

The tetrahedron rocked and swayed as Asmodeus brushed past its leftmost corner, Andradite in tow. Claudia bit her lip and moaned, but managed to maintain her sanity.

"Petunia..." she whispered.

Beneath them, on the table, Begonia slipped Kayne's false arm, gripped her real arm, and spun her around and out. It was a simple maneuver, one that any housewife could have mastered in a few hours, but the momentum was enough to send Kayne tumbling off the table and into the worst of the fight, Moko-first.

Or at least, it would have, if Begonia hadn't caught her by the hand.

"Woah, woah. Calm down, cutie! No need to brain me just yet."

He held her there, precariously, taking full advantage of her altered, armless balance. His hood was off, showing a full head of tousled blonde hair, a puckish nose and bright green eyes. There was a blue butterfly pin in his hair. He practically glowed with mischief.

"Like I said, there's something I need to take care of. I'll get the milk later, pinkie-promise. Just stay there…"

He whipped the wand of force from his pocket and flicked it up in a calculated motion. Andradite's left cheek broke clean off, scintillating as it fell.

"Or well, here. Apportate!"

And with that, he tossed the wand in the air and dropped Kayne, pulling her safely onto the table as he did. The chunk of Andradite winked out of the air and into Begonia's waiting hand. The wand dropped neatly into his other, then went back into his right cloak pocket.

"I've never been strong," he grinned. "But who needs strength when you have a degree in Translocations?"

He flourished the huge chunk of painted crystal, waving it at the tetrahedron like a flag.

"Hey, Andradite! This holds some of your memories, right? I'd hate for anything to happen to them!"

Even as the words came out, he had another wand, a gnarled green thing that popped and bubbled in the air.

"You should probably come down before things get worse!"

The searing, dripping beam whipped right past Kyxe's nose and struck the dancing girl in the 50s bikini. She wailed, sputtered, and turned abruptly into a stuffed pink elephant. A buff vineling took advantage of the miss to smash into Kyxe with a barstool, pinning her with the wooden legs and bearing her away from the rest of the party.

"Whoops," said Begonia, and aimed again. "This time with love."

This time, as it turned out, was straight for Asmodeus.

Who was still holding Andradite.

While all this was going on, the skinhead whom Mama Jupiter had humiliated barrelled over the broken bodies of his fellows, ducked Wolf's jaws in a miraculous feat of hatred, and began, viciously, to stab her in the stomach.

This put him, of course, squarely in the circle of life.

Edited by troydenite on Dec 24th 2018 at 2:36:39 AM

Girimehkala, Old Maken's Transcendental Fracas

"Piss."

Od Maken's torso was already spinning away in ragged halves, taken by two hands as their owner stumbled back, but the viscera came away from his eye just in time to see Jack' gnashing jaws stutter-stepping around his ankle.

Girimehkala had been rewarded in his rebirths with sturdy skin and hostile dermatology, but Mad Jack was, in the most literal terms imaginable, a corpse possessed. Bones creaked and muscles bled as his fingers closed, and his blackened stumps tore a long grey strip from the inside of his ankle, slicking the floor crimson.

Girimehkala bellowed as the agony boiled up his leg, rattling the shelves with a baleful trumpet, and brought his full weight down on the the base of the lumpen man's spine with his free foot.

He strained for a moment to pull his ruined ankle away, gritting his teeth against crushing fingers and the white-hot protests of his flesh, then whipped his pistol down to fan six chambers right into Jack's glowing chronotumour.

Edited by OG-Sama on Dec 23rd 2018 at 3:21:36 AM

Kayne & Moko—Everything Goes To Hell

Kayne dropped her prosthetic arm as Begonia spun her around. Moko screamed for his life and was on the verge of crying. Thankfully, the mysterious pyramid-keychain-thing was strung through Kayne's belt.

Then they were none-too-gently deposited safely on a table. She could see her other arm was on the floor, near one of the table's legs. Safe, for now.

Kayne's heart stuttered as Begonia literally got a piece of Andradite. More bad things happened from there.

<Moko, physical and mental boost. Stat!>

<O-on it!>

Moko flashed a deep red, and Kayne's skin glowed with red runes of power and clear thinking. A rune of a vertical eye flared into existence between Kayne's eyebrows.

She saw a bit clearer now, mind disassociating from the fear and racing thoughts that had plagued her a moment before.

The beam was on its way to hit Asmodeus and Andradite.

Kayne did the only thing she could.

She flung the pyramid-keychain-thing at the beam.

With luck, the obviously important-to-Begonia-thing would be turned into a pink elephant plush. It wasn't as if it held any importance to Kayne—she didn't even know what it did! If not, well, Asmodeus and Andradite were on their own.

Mama Jupiter's Colossal Cabaret

Kyxe grunted in pain as she was suddenly rammed into by assistance of a barstool, losing her footing and promptly crashing onto her back—subsequently ending up pinned to the floor. Evidently she didn't seem to be enjoying this state, as the rellan immediately began to gnash her teeth and screech like some unearthly thing, plasma spraying from every pore of her form like a hot geyser and eating away at the barstool's legs at a rapid rate—which would invariably end up leading her attacker further into the jets of white hot material. Not that it mattered, as her rage-induced seizure was spraying plasma from all angles and shooting directly against them anyhow.

Mama Jupiter's

The circle of life was gone, leaving Mama Jupiter frail and exposed. A man tried to take advantage of this, but the moment he raised his knife he was dead, an arrow sticking out of his chest where it had pierced his heart. Several more soft thumps followed, more spectral arrows lodging themselves in the unfortunate hearts of those who attacked any in Lamb's party.

"You overstep." Lamb's whisper somehow carried over the din. Glowing eyes focused on the instigator, and her next arrow nocked itself as she took aim at Begonia. Wolf had slipped out of Andradite's grip in the chaos, and his eyes snapped upon the same target. Begonia's only warning would be the Mark appearing suddenly over his head, and the stereo whisper:

"The masks of the Kindred seek you."

And then Wolf was barreling towards Begonia like a freight train, prepared to run down any in his way to assault the man. At the same time, Lamb's arrow flew, aimed precisely at Begonia's heart. Lamb nocked another right afterward, cautious, preparing to fire again should the target pull another of his magician's tricks.

Andradite, Mama Jupiter's

Of all the escape routes in this brawl, being swept up to the ceiling hadn't really crossed Andradite's mind. Dangling from Asmodeus' arms, she held on tight with her good hand, kinda-sword danging from her not-so-good hand, watching the carnage play out below with a detached awe. From up here, you could see just how much blood there was. She wasn't an expert, but that seemed less than ideal.

"Hey, do you think those lasers left any holes we could-"

There was another ringing chime, a split-second of awful sheering force, and part of Andradite's face fell off.

Wide-eyed with shock, she watched the glinting curve of crystal flutter away, raising her hand to press it against the flat plane of refractive green that now sliced across her face and chin. She'd dropped her weapon in the process, but she didn't care. Asmodeus and Magicaloid could probably see the internal shadow of the gem's mouth between her painted fingers as she stammered out a disbelieving noise.

"Wh- no-"

Begonia's voice rang out and snapped her out of her reverie. He knew how Inclusions worked. He must have been to her world, or he knew someone who did. She knew these thoughts should have been in the forefront of her mind, but she couldn't help but to frantically trawl through her memories, trying to figure out what the blue-cloaked boy had in his hand. A whole afternoon of study? How to write Bort's name? A moment spent with Sensei?

That was the worst part of being chipped or broken. You might never figure out what you had lost.

"I- I need that back..." She whispered, voice slightly slurred as she looked between Magicaloid and Asmodius, a look of panic crossing four fifths of her face. "I need that back! What... what do I do?"

"What?" Kaguya said out loud, a smidge confused by this cheeky scroll, "what is this? What am I doing wro—"

You can figure out what cut her off. It wasn't enough to knock her out, the flabby growths covering him giving a good-if-disgusting cushion from a severe impact. Kaguya's face became one with the floor, and the katana skidded off. She summarized her feelings like so: "OW."

Oh well, it was a minor setback. At least she wasn't dead or anything!

Kaguya ran back into the fray, holding the sword high with proper form but a wobbly grip, her weak noble noodle arms obviously not the right ones for the job. She seemed fine, minus the gash on her face from hitting the sword on the way down.

If Giri's shots didn't do anything, her whacking the glowing purple something with her sword would!

Mama Jupiter’s Colossal Cabaret

Whatever passed for Magicaloid’s ears strained to properly hear Claudia over the clamor from down below, shouts of pain and triumph in equal measure serving to drown out the woman’s quivering confession. So it was that Magicaloid felt equal parts annoyed and kind of bad when the woman ended up revealing not much at all, confessing a name that, while thematically appropriate to the person currently trying to stuff Andy like a trophy kill, wasn’t very useful in things like ‘identification’ or ‘not getting them killed.’ For all I know, this could actually be some kind of war between the flower people and the rock people, over something stupid like the color of their flag or their taste… in… music… Magicaloid let the noise coming up from below filter through her senses, a blank yet contemplative expression coming over her; for all the noise carrying up from patrons being thrown into every kind of furniture imaginable, there was a notable lack of smooth, atmospheric jazz played by things with really too few fingers to be calling themselves musicians. A flicker of memory passed behind her eyes, of a piano being lugged off the stage, and the back-and-white teeth disappearing through the gap of a door. But which—ohhhhh…

Magicaloid’s train of thought was broken off as the chaos down below reached out a spindly, invisible finger to break a piece of Andradite off; a section of cheek flat as a dinner plate appeared in the showboating boy’s hand, and—all things considered—Andy took it a hell of a lot better than she would’ve, minor shock instead of an ear-splitting wail of pain. Magicaloid dipped slightly in the air as her concentration wavered from minor shock of her own, before bracing herself against the refractive surface of the tetrahedron for support—and, upon feeling it give ever-so-slightly, developed the kernel of an idea. “I’m more worried about the rest of you, to be honest,” Magicaloid whisper-shouted, figuring that that would be a touch more comforting than we’ll just get it after the others take care of him. “Those starfish things left out of a different door than the one Begonia’s guarding,” Magicaloid said, pointing one light-lined arm toward the entranceway in the far back, “so I’ll make a distraction, and you two make a break for it. Once you’re out of here, Andy, those maniacs down there won’t have any reason to keep trying to kill us.” At least, that’s the hope. The magical robot girl thought as she adjusted her grip on the injured waitress, uncomfortably aware of the fluids dripping down toward her own body, and more importantly out of the other woman’s. “I’ll be right behind you. If we don’t get Claudia to a doctor soon, she’s not going to be able to tell anyone much of anything. Afterwards, we’ll all meet back at the Forever and a Day. In fact—” Looking down to find out where their resident leopard-shaped wild woman had gotten off too, she would shout: “Hey, Irra! Tell the others that we’re going out for fish after this!”

Earnestly hoping that the admittedly-simple code wouldn’t go over the simple woman’s head, Magicaloid collected both of Claudia’s wrists with one small hand in order to better distribute the waitress’s weight, while also being careful to keep the woman’s body parts away from the flames of her booster pack. She then turned to the other two with a nod. “Alright, we’ll go on the count of three. One—” Just then, Begonia brought out the latest in his bag of tricks, and even as Kayne moved to intercept, Magicaloid knew they didn’t have another second to spare. “—three!” She shouted, before springing into action. Firing up her rockets just enough to carry her up the length of the pyramid, Magicaloid’s hand traced the refractive contours of the ornament until it hit open air—at which point it would snap forward, attempting to clasp hold of whatever passed for the tetrahedron’s chain. Bracing either of her diminutive feet against the nearest edge’s lip, Magicaloid would then hunch forward, taking care to cradle the injured waitress on her back like a turtle balancing its empty shell, a fresh jet of flames shooting out of her booster pack in a far more horizontal direction. Pitting her mass against that of the disco pyramid’s, Magicaloid would attempt to swing it on its holdings in an arc, until the point of the reflective decoration was pointed at the very table that Begonia was situated at—before coming to terms with one, small hitch in her plan.

“Kayne!” Magicaloid would shout out at the one-armed girl, even as her mechanical knees bent in preparation and her grip tightened, “Move!” Magicaloid would then attempt to extend her body like an opening spring, taking her slight but strong frame and using it to sever the connection between pyramid and ceiling. Ideally, the arcing momentum of the tetrahedron would take it in the direction of Begonia, and while unlikely to actually hit him, would hopefully take up enough of his attention for Magicaloid and her allies to make their getaway.

As soon as the pyramid was in free-fall, without taking any precious seconds to check if it impacted or not, Magicaloid would be off like a shot, igniting her pack in yet another bloom of flame away from the whole spectacle altogether, flying low among the heads of the baying crowd as she grabbed tight hold of her delicate cargo and booked it to the door on the far side of the club.

Edited by Uncandescent on Jan 3rd 2019 at 12:41:18 PM

Kayne & Moko—I Like To Move It, Move It

To be fair, Kayne was already moving, scrambling for her arm under the table, irrationally glad that she didn't take her glove off.

She snapped the thing back onto the port on her stump, rolling to her feet some distance away and sweeping Moko off her her head.

Now, if she'd judged things properly (with the help of Moko's mental boost), if Magicaloid's attack impacted Begonia, if he let the Shard go flying, and if nobody decided to interfere—

—The Shard would preferably land right inside Moko.

Hopefully.

Meanwhile, Moko, who did not like to be turned upside down was "WAAAAUUUUGH"-ing like a baby, flapping his noodly hatband-arms.

Old Maken's Shop Of Mysteries

Girimehkala's full weight smashed into Mad Jack's sacrum, crushing his pelvis. The lumpen man writhed and gurgled, his fingers splaying open, but his steel teeth were still shredding, tearing, locked in a hidebound grin...

Then the shots rocked through his back, six syllables spat sharply through the air, and Kaguya's katana scythed straight through the core, with more ease than anything had a right to. Mad Jack's smile vanished, flitting briefly into childlike confusion. He howled, then lit up in a spray of arcing purple, flailing and rolling across the floor.

To anyone else, it would seem like the purple lightning was devouring him whole. The two immortals, however, used to chronological trickery, would see that the situation was in fact reversed.

Mad Jack Stutter-Step was an unstable being, a paradox. The core had been the only thing keeping him coherent. Now, he was an electrical fire on the circuit-board of time, and the moments allotted to him would be an eternity of wild desperation.

Time flared.

Something seized Girimehkala by the soul, and, caught between two instants at once, wrestled him bodily through the back of the shop, out through the wall, and into the seedy air of Dive. If Kaguya looked down, she would find that the skin on her forearms was completely gone, and that the fat and muscle was blinking up at her, like cow's eyes.

Even though nothing had touched her.

Girimehkala; The Seedy Air Of Dive

It is an assault not unlike other assaults you have experienced; an attack on your corporeal existence. Because corporeality is a burden at worst and an annoyance at best, you are more or less able to hold your ground.

The enemy appears to have split into three, or five, or sixty-four. He is a cloud and a mote at the same time, and his swords, flailing through the air, scrape your skin like granite. You are being borne through the air at an alarming speed.

Because the swords are so terribly ungainly and the distances so uncomfortably close, no leverage is possible, and so the strikes are surprisingly comfortable. You are not moving at all.

Asymmetrical warfare on the soul-body level very seldom makes sense.

Mama Jupiter's Colossal Cabaret

A great many things happened in a very short period of time, too brief for any words.

Lamb's arrows, so swift and true, turned from Begonia like water, as if warded by an invisible hand.

Begonia's smile widened.

The fizzling wand-beam hit the spinning amulet, rebounded at an angle and hit an unfortunate mug, doing absolutely nothing.

Begonia's smile froze.

Then the tetrahedron smashed straight into the table, crushing it to splinters, and the shard of Andradite went spinning nicely into Moko's waiting maw.

As Makoto flew overhead with Claudia and crashed through the back door, sailing straight over Kyxe's reeling, screaming assailants, she would notice something much more worrying than the cool night air.

Something that looked like three men at once, flashing and twisting through the air like a grotesque cloud of puppets, pouring purple lightning. And wrestling the swords away, trumpeting defiance, a familiar six-armed elephant man...

Also, everyone else was still in the cabaret, and not all of them could fly.

Edited by troydenite on Jan 11th 2019 at 7:09:49 AM

Mama Jupiter's Colossal Cabaret

Seeing an opening as her assailants reeled back, Kyxe promptly rebounded off of the floor with her knives sparking into existence in her hands—performing two quick and clean slashes to their respective jugulars before grasping them by the throats and heaving her full body weight into a shove so as to make them tumble over. As she regained her balance—panting heavily and literally steaming with heat—she noted Begonia's momentary shock.

...No.

She was too exhausted. And so she scrambled towards the bar (or whatever remained of it) and vaulted over it to take cover. Searching her pockets for her Kenlœ pills, she found... nothing, because she had no pockets. And no jacket by extension. She'd given the thing to Andratite, of course.

...Seltār.

Manual ventilation it was, then. With no small amount of trepidation, she concentrated on flaring her glottal warblers to their fullest extent—concentrated, hot steam seeping out from the open slits on her neck like that of a geyser. Yet she didn't do so all the way. She might have to move at any moment. She wouldn't want to be jogged and irreversibly scald her vocal chords in this delicate process.

Getting The Hell Out Of Dive

"MMMMMMMMMMMMMMPH!" Moko protested, before spitting the Shard into Kayne's hand. She put it safely inside him with the (precious, precious) books. "We need to get the HELL out of here!"

Moko was swearing. That meant that things were bad.

He was haphazardly flopped onto Kayne's head as she used the (very welcome) tetrahedron distraction to rip the cloak from Begonia's shoulders, contents included. She was considerate enough to grip the top bits so as to not choke him too much. Kayne was pragmatic, but not a killer.

Her immediate concern was getting the heck out of dodge, and waded her way through the crowd with plasma pistol drawn, managing to intimidate some of them when she shot a posturing swordsman without a word. However, the way out certainly wasn't easy by all means as she headed for the back door.

Staggering out into the night, various wounds on her arms and one long gash on her left leg, her eyes widened as she caught sight of Giri engaged in an odd battle of his own.

Was that a Rift?

What the hell was even going on?

Whatever. It looked like he was holding his own well enough.

She held the back door open in case any other party members wanted to come through. She shouted, "Everyone, get out of there! You need to get out, we're done!"

She took the opportunity to catch Begonia with one of her eyes peeking out from Moko's brim. And then her face split into a wide grin to rival one of his.

If he took the time to think about it (fat chance given the fighting crowd), her eyes would hidden under Moko's brim nearly all the time. That's how she hadn't "seen" Andradite.

No amount of expertise on teleportation could beat the construction of carefully worded truths learned from the driest law books of the past decade.

Girimehkala: Bang Bang Pull My Devil Trigger

"Ah, piss," said Girimehkala, into his own ear. He'd dropped the pistol somewhere back in the shop and the rest of his weapons were busy parading around the past six minutes. His foot rotted off at the ankle and fell into last Sunday while his corpse winked at him wryly from a an hour in the future.

Girimehkala swatted away a thousand swords and swept a hand through empty air, then threw a punch a second too early and three plancks too late. He had a headache that beggared belief.

His confusion was giving way quickly, half a matter of survival and half a matter of pride, evaporating before fury that didn't see about the difference. He let it creep up his gullet with every reversed echo and phantom sword edge, then with the cold rationality of a seasoned murderer closed his throat around the scream and willed himself primordial.

Reality tensed around him for a moment, and then slackened in defeat.

>राक्षस: यौन हिंसा बनें

There is no lightning strike. There are no gods here who know to intervene, and when the chance is ripped away from them the statement goes unopposed. A few motes of light manifest behind your head, shimmering illusive before erupting into concentric inferno, and the dialectic is consumed by the irrefutable.

Gravity cedes to your authority. Your flesh consumes its wounds. You are become the carnal violence.

Fragmentary thoughtforms and displaced instants batter against you, but your reality has a consensus of one, and you reject the null. You trumpet once to silence him, low and rumbling and terrible, then drown him in your ignorance. Certainty takes Jack by the throat. Infinity sloughs down to singular and the waveform bares itself naked and shivering. The henceforths and whatabouts ablate into irrelevance and refutation.

Jack howls something empty and motive, agonized in coherence, and you bid him fuck his mother.

>राक्षस: अपना हथियार वापस ले लो

Your arms are already retrieved. The distant floor is the holster upon your hip is the palm of your hand. Your kukri was always drawn. Jack swings his sword towards you and it shatters amidst a hail of lead and sparks, carrion for the scavenger-peasants.

On the follow-through, you catch his thoughtform by the wrist and lop his arm off at the shoulder.

Mama Jupiter's > Outside - Help that wasn't asked for

Begonia was dealt with, one way or the other. But something else demanded attention. Wolf tore through the crowd, and by extension several chest cavities, to reunite with Lamb as the Kindred fled the room for the world-bending scuffle happening outdoors.

The elephant man, The One That Should Not Be, was warring with a demon. Or so it appeared. In theory, at least, Girimehkala was on the same 'side' as the Kindred. Thus, as Lamb loosed her arrows, and Wolf pounced into the metaphorical literal conceptual cartoon dustcloud of the bizarre brawl, the Eternal Hunters aimed their assault at Mad Jack.

Wolf wove around Giri like a scarf with teeth, thrashing like an extra limb that was also a blender. Lamb's arrows passed through Giri like it was a video game with Friendly Fire turned off. Whether this was due to Giri's nature not mixing well with arrows of Death, or simply due to the ongoing conceptual soulfuckery, even Lamb didn't really know.

As she nocked more arrows, Lamb hummed a small tune.

To be honest, even for an eternal, essentially chronologically anchored being such as Kaguya, she hadn't encountered a lot of situations where time exploded.

Unable to get her bearings at first, as even though she got the nicer of the two results she could only shake the sudden feeling that she was a second out of place, the princess looked between herself, and the hole in the wall, and...err...

In bracing herself, she felt the odd sensation of a butterfly kiss on her cheek. She looked over, and—yep, that's...that's an eye. Eyes.

Her first reaction was to drop the sword, not out of concern for the two eyes resting on the hilt but because this was seriously uncanny and disgusting to look at. She backed away, but found out that for some reason her arms seemed to follow her at every step. Trying to cover up her unsightliness with her sleeves, she found that those had eluded her. Who knows where, or when they are...

She...well, she was still extremely unhappy about all of this, but what was she going to do? Cut off her arms? I mean, sure, suicide is infinitely more of an option for her than it is for everyone else, but right now, she didn't want to be THAT hasty. It's a second option. Kaguya, trying her best not to think about having arms, picked the sword back up with some extreme reluctance after there was an audible squishing sound, and the strangest sensation...you know those odd tingles and visible lights when you press down on your closed eye for a bit? Like that.

Charging outside, profusely bleeding from her arms and face, Kaguya saw the continuing violence going on and said the first thing that came to mind: "Maken is dead!"

She was a little hesitant to get back into touching range of that thing, for some reason.