A Game of Gods: A Multiversal Challenge

Dis Baba, still grinning, made as if to sit down; as he did so, the voluminous expanse of his overcoat flexed inwards, conforming to the alien's cadaverous profile like some manner of rippled organic chair growing from the floor. The empty sleeves swung around until they ran along the length of his forearms and seemed to harden, becoming bizarre facsimiles of armrests as the Kin overlord crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in his improvised throne. Resting one hand on the knuckles of the other and settling into his chair with a sigh, the pallid being began to watch the battle raging between Digamma and Zeta with great interest.

"By the by," he said casually, "you can forget about claiming young Master Ikari's artifical intelligence program. Trust me, old boy, she's long gone; I checked."

The Militantiaries, meanwhile, might notice a faint sound emanating from no particular direction; it sounded oddly like the clicking of mandibles or the dim buzz of gossamyr wings beating far faster than the eye could see, and it seemed to come from multiple directions at once, as though the source of this noise were all around them yet not readily apparent. Furthermore, a keen eye might notice that the web of shadows beneath their feet had rippled faintly in response to the motions of these fibrous soldiers as they steadied their aim at Zeta, much as the threads of a real spider's web might oscillate in response to the frantic struggles of an ensnared insect; in response to these seeming vibrations, the head of Dis Baba's shadow seemed to turn in their direction, and its umbral visage split open in a ghastly, almost predatory grin...

---

Rho made no effort to dodge, her face contorting into a positively savage snarl of mingled fury and glee as she strode towards the three Dervishes with the temerity to fire upon her. Before so much as a single bullet struck her, the violet Nomad's form abruptly rippled and wavered like a mirage...and suddenly she was no longer there, the projectiles which would have struck her passing through nothing but empty air.

Before this triad of cyclonic monstrosities could process this information she reappeared behind them, the crackling, tainted purple light swirling about her hands solidifying into the long, ornate shaft of a massive labrys. Loosing a mighty warcry, Rho swung the enormous battleaxe through all three of the Dervishes in a single powerful, horizontal arc; as the twin heads of this weapon passed through the whirling maelstroms, vast gouts of that destructive red-tinged black light spewed forth to eradicate all that the blades themselves did not touch; within a second of completing her swing, not even a handful of stray atoms remained of the three gilded minions to mark that they had ever existed.

Lambda, for his part, threw another punch towards towards one of the Dervishes; torrents of divinely-empowered lightning leapt from his knuckles, crossing the intervening distance within the span of a heartbeat to electrocute the cyclonic beast.

"As long as it takes!" he bellowed in response.

---

As the tentacles felt about, they would find that some calamity had clearly befallen this place; all the machinery seemed to have been wrecked, and some broken, jagged edges were still coated with a rather caustic liquid which burned even them faintly. The chittering sound, meanwhile, had begun to grow louder, and now and then they might feel something small, paradoxically cool yet warm, skitter by beneath their tips...

The Danse Macabre Codex

Das thump.

edited 18th Jul '11 4:49:31 PM by TestYourMight

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

The purple tinkerer raised up his arm to intercept the incoming blade. The blade sunk into the arm, but stopped halfway in. Metal and wires stuck out from the wound, showing the inner workings of this Zeta-bot. The metals that made up his arm was strong enough to stand up to the swing. He smirked at Digamma as several other Zetas stepped out from the shadows. "Man, this is gonna be fun." All of them say in unison.

Iota's symbol took shape in the giantesses torsos hole, while blood red lines much like those on a computer chip appeared all over the body. Even so, Itoa didn't have full control of the room just yet, but the lines began to appear all over.

To be seen, stand up To be heard, speak up To be appreciated, shut up

You Wanna Play Army, boy?

—The Militantiaries all opened fire on the copies, some firing miniguns and miniaturised anti-aircraft cannons, all while the elder Nomad wrenched his scythe free.—

As For You, Outsider...

—As had happened before, the scythe gleamed when pointed, and Dis Baba got the exact feeling of a shell going off just out of fatal range of his head, slightly magnified for the desired effect. —

Snack On Somethin' Else.

—Digamma sliced at the younger deity's head, putting a little more power into the blade this time. —

---

Yer Funny People, You Know That? Welp, Now That You've Shown Me What A GREAT Couple On The Battlefield You Make... Lemme Show You WHY I Sent Soldiers Instead Of Yours Truly.

— CRACK

A sniper round grazed Rho's left shoulder.

CRACK

Then the right.

CRACK

This time, it shredded off the tip of her left ear.

Meanwhile, the Dervish in the process of getting zapped by Lambda metallically shrieked it's displeasure, then speared the sharpened tip of the electrified and empowered chain through the barrier, aimed for the sternum.

A small fountain of blood jetted up from the Stig's corpse as hundreds of fibres shredded his body completely. The gun in the thing's hand aimed for Durant and fired, all while the wounded Dervish wrapped its chain round the Spriggan's arm and yanked.

---

—the tendrils promptly retreated back through the door from whence they'd come... And a blast of purging plasma roared from the portal. —

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

"Bastard!" Rey stood his ground in front of Blink, aiming with the sword and sending a few small blasts of shadowstuff at the faint remains of the Stig's body, trying to attack whatever was coming up from there.

edited 18th Jul '11 11:48:46 PM by MystyGlyttyr

Easing back into life one step at a time

"Move!"

Durant yelled as he and Michael rolled out of the way. Hopefully.

---

"Shit..."

Spriggan struggled with the chain while emptying his UAE-made pistol at the wounded Dervish.

"Eat this!"

"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"

Blink held Gordon's crowbar up defensively. It was all she could really do at the moment, at least that's why she thought.

The vortigaunts directed their attention to where the sniperfire was coming from. They scanned the area, in search of the wielder of the deadly weapon.

"Oh, dear. The toad, the monkey, and the dog have all screwed up."

Let me see the truth!

Link crouched down, and placed the Lens of Truth to his eye, looking for the snipers.

He was shaking all over with rage at the death and callous mutilation of his comrade's body.

Let... me see the truth.... so I can crush them!

'Being around you guys makes me go "wtf" instead of pondering the ever increasing dread of time' - EchoingSilence, 2023

-More rocks fall.-

Mason aimed at the flash that came from the sniper rifle when it was fired, and fired 10 rounds at it.
Seeing as his bullets had little effect on the Dervishes, he sprinted to grab one of the fallen Dervish's shotguns.
He then spotted the Stig's uniform taking control. He kept sprinting, but shouted:
"Digamma, you're dead. The uniform is sacred!"

They do have medals for almost, and they're called silver!

Narumi and Phi focused their guns at the Stig and fired a few blasts at him.

"You...you would desecrate a fallen man's corpse?" said Sub-Zero. "Have you no honor, Nomad?"

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

" I can feel something nomadic in that corpse. He might not be our ally for any longer. If it comes to that, we may have to desecrate it." Phi said.

edited 19th Jul '11 10:17:12 AM by Psyga315

Dis Baba's head snapped backwards, the throne that his overcoat had become seeming to buckle under this sudden motion...only for him to snap back into an upright position almost immediately, wobbling back and forth for a few moments like a bop bag that had just taken a punch to the face. The alien's expression remained unchanged, but now his grin seemed suffused with a cold malice, as though some factor had been subtly altered to change its meaning altogether; in response to this, the temperature in the ballroom seemed to drop a few degrees and the air became particularly muggy, as though the ambient humidity had just gone through an unexpected spike.

"Oh, the pain," the Kin overlord declared, casting his head back and throwing a distraught arm over his brow in a positively melodramatic fashion. "Such terrible ardor; truly, a lesser man would have been moved to agonized histrionics after taking such a blow, their mind fractured and fragmented if not destroyed outright. Had anyone else been forced to endure such a ghastly attack, they would doubtless have fled for the safety of their progenitor's coat-tails and begged for the pain to stop."

The alien's grin grew wider, and a faint glimmer of sickly, multihued light twinkled within the cavernous depths of his eye-sockets. "How fortunate, then, that I am none of those things."

These words had scarcely left Dis Baba's mouth before a number of wet, squelching sounds filled the air, occuring at the same time that the Militantiaries pulled their triggers. Were the fibrous soldiers to investigate, they would find that all of their guns, without exception, had jammed; a rank, viscous fluid dripped from the barrels of their weapons, the fat droplets of this azure muck hissing faintly as they struck the floor. That odd cacophony of insectoid noises from a moment ago had intensified as well, the clacking of mandibles and the droning of delicate gossamyr wings rising to a fever pitch as they echoed loudly throughout the ballroom. As this odd symphony swelled, the golden warriors of Digamma might notice other things were doing much the same—wet blisters and foul boils had begun to protrude from their weapons, starting off positively minuscule yet growing at a rapid and alarming rate; and through the translucent membranes of these aberrant pustules, the tiny shadows of dozens upon dozens of little arthropods of every conceivable shape and configuration could be seen scurrying around.

Dis Baba settled back into his chair, a long, segmented tongue snaking out to lick at his thin lips in anticipation of what was to come; on the floor, his monstrously warped shadow mirrored this gesture as it stared hungrily at the Militantiaries.

---

As the plasma poured into what had been Lambda's sanctum, the chittering sound which filled the place grew louder and abruptly began to stop and start over brief, regular intervals, almost as if whatever was making that noise were laughing at this attempt to purge the former laboratory. The scalding energy did indeed roar inside, and it would have immolated all within its path under ordinary circumstance; these however, were anything but ordinary.

The torrent of raging stellar power came to an abrupt halt and began to swirl about in place, looking for all the world like the contents of a latrine which had just been flushed; over the span of a few seconds this plasma continued to spiral in on itself, growing smaller and smaller with each revolution, until it was gone altogether, leaving the ruins of the laboratory completely unharmed.

---

Back in the ballroom, Dis Baba let out a faint ructus.

"Pardon," the Kin overlord muttered, quickly dabbing a handkerchief over his mouth before returning to his original position with a sigh. "So...palatable..."

---

A rather foolish mistake on the Dervish's part, for empowered though its strike now was, that empowerment had come from Lambda—and the argent deity was immune to harm from his own abilities. Even as it attempted to skewer him through the chest, one gauntleted hand slammed closed around the chain, holding it firmly in place as the silver electricity gamboled across his fingers to coruscate over his body; and an intense silver light flared around the silver Nomad's eyes in mute testament to his anger and irritation with the damnable things.

"Imbecilic monster," he growled, his voice having dropped an octave or two at some point. "Did you honestly think I would allow myself to be harmed by my own weapons?"

The chain swelled within his grasp like an overinflated balloon as he poured raw, destructive power into the cyclonic monstrosity—and scant seconds later, the Dervish exploded, annihilated on a molecular level.

Meanwhile, Rho staggered under the impact of the three shots, but her feral grin diminished only slightly.

"Yes, you've certainly made your reasons clear, Digamma," she snarled, her wounds healing at an impossibly rapid pace even for a Nomad; in less than a second, her ear was intact and the damage to her shoulders—both her own and those of her plugsuit—was completely repaired. "You won't fight us yourself because you're a vain, boastful coward so obsessed with primping himself in front of a mirror every day that he can't even take us on in a fair fight without hiding behind your gaudy toys! Speaking of which, I've grown rather tired of them all..."

And without another word, the violet Nomad hefted her mighty labrys overhead and brought it crashing down upon the floor with a mighty roar. Its blades sank deep into the ossified floor, and then a shockwave of black energy erupted from her to sweep throughout the entirety of the realm of Arima. The Champions and the other Nomads present would a brief onset of numbing cold as the dark wave washed over them, but little more; as it passed, warmth and vitality would return to their bodies.

The same could not be said of the remaining Dervishes, snipers and militantiaries in this place, however; upon making contact with the rapidly-spreading wavefront, their golden fibres turned black and they collapsed, lifeless and disintegrating rapidly, to the floor. Furthermore, any other such minions who attempted to enter the place from this point onwards would die immediately upon entry, the power animating them being snuffed out before they could even process their surroundings or begin to so much as exert the force necessary to begin squeezing a trigger.

"This is my realm," Rho declared with a note of finality, straightening up and pulling her monstrous blade free of the ossified floor. "Your cheap tinkertoys aren't welcome in it."

The Danse Macabre Codex

"Well, Phi," said Sub-Zero, "in my realm, it doesn't count as desecration if you're dismembering the undead. But the actually dead...that's another story."

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

"Try not to break a hip, pops"

One of the Zetas jumped forward with something in his hand and threw it up in front of himself. A blue flashing hexagonal shield sprung up in front of him, reflecting the Militantiaries' shots right back at them.

The Zeta that found himself under Digamma's attack soon found himself without a head. Sparks flew from the stump of his neck as he collapsed. One of the other Zetas jumped forward and grabbed Digamma's scythe, holding it in place. A third Zeta jumped up onto staff part of it and used that to jump even higher into the air. "Useless!" He said as he raised his arms up into the air. Once again purple lines seemed to trace something in the air.

Soon Digamma was covered in a shadow as, from several feet up in the air, a steamroller dropped down on top of the golden Nomad. The Zeta that was standing on the top of the steamroller laughed before stomping on the steamroller and jumping off. The second he jumped off the steamroller exploded into a large fireball.

edited 19th Jul '11 1:02:26 PM by Oni-Lord

Iota's blood red electronic lines covered the room, then faded away. The only way someone would be able to see that something was differnet was with the Giantess in the middle, which still had Itoa's symbol floating in the torso area, and the eyes had changed from green to red. Nothing else really of note.

   "Hope you don't mind me taking temporary control of most of your realm Rho, just need to check something"   

---

In the ballroom, a pair of eyes appeared in a darkenes corner, watching the ensueing conflict.

---

   "Interesting..."   

To be seen, stand up To be heard, speak up To be appreciated, shut up

Y'know What, 'Bub? I've Gotten Tired Of Being Laughed At By A Cosmic, Multiversal Cockroach.

— The scythe sliced through the nearest iteration of Zeta, aimed to cleave it apart diagonally. That same weapon pointed at the next row of copies, glowed briefly, then fired a thin yet intensely bright and fast beam of light at them, melting the floor it passed over. When the smoke cleared, the scythe could now clearly be seen without an owner.

The ancient Nomad hovered past the old man that wasn't, heading for his shadow. From the folds of his robes, a large boot incased in metal stepped, at the edge of the edge of the menacing form. Digamma went on to stomp heavily on the face, chuckling.

I Should Have Done This When You First Showed Up.

The militantiaries, meanwhile, seemed to be merging together at the distortion that made up their "bodies", half of them staring at the fleshly entity sitting, the other half focusing on the shadow. From where, the old entity could not say, but a razor sharp line of black whipped across his neck, slicing it open. Another line of black cut off the tips of his fingers on one hand. Still another sliced out a chunk of his "chair". A slight pull in mouth, and one of his front teeth was yanked out. This went on and on, the lines of black like so much static gnawing away at his face after stripping away the skin of his arms.

Digamma's jaws opened wide, displaying the cavernous, light-absorbing hole there. Blood and ichor from the old man flowed through the air, turning to golden light before they were sucked in.—

That's Right, You're Joining The Butcher's Bill, Pest...

—The lines of black speared through the entity, holding him still, then vibrating to shred through more. All the while, the one eye blazed at the shadow with searing, destroying light. —

---

Writer's note: This can't be used on more than one entity at a time.

---

—Thunderous explosions rocked the caverns, and crevices of molten rock spidered along the ceiling and floor. The plasma barrage had resumed. —

What was that you said about burning through, Mysterio?

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

The vortigaunts eyed the cieling, and readied themselves for whatever they may need to do.

Blink gripped Gordon's crowbar tightly.

"Um... What's going on now?"

"Oh, dear. The toad, the monkey, and the dog have all screwed up."

"I think," said Sub-Zero as he walked over to Blink, "Digamma's going to attack us." He readied his Kori Sword and put it in an ice sheath. "...I hate it when things get dragged out far longer than they should be. Whatever you do, Blink, don't lose that crowbar."

edited 19th Jul '11 8:29:46 PM by TestYourMight

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

"What's the next phase?"

To Be Updated when I'm not Lazy

" With any hope, blow anything up and go home." Phi said.

Rey winced, calling back to Saren. "If the walls of this place are organic, I think I can get us through it!"

Easing back into life one step at a time

This appeared to work, the black lines rapidly unmaking Dis Baba until almost nothing remained but blood and ichor, all of which were quickly converted into golden light and swallowed up into the luminescent maw of Digamma; in a matter of seconds, the Kin overlord was gone, the golden Reaper's efforts leaving behind no evidence to indicate that he had ever been there.

It was immediately apparent, however, that something was wrong.

The web of shadows persisted, still covering the floor in its intricate network...and rather than diminishing in scope and consistency with its master's death, the umbral lines which composed this net actually grew thicker and darker. Furthermore, Dis Baba's own monstrous shadow had disappeared at first...only to reappear on the floor directly beneath Digamma. And much as the gilt Nomad might wish otherwise, his stomp had done absolutely nothing; it still sported that hideous grin, and the baleful light of his eye had done nothing to dispel that leering, umbral visage as it slowly turned to look directly up at him, the twinkling polychromatic lensflares of its eyesockets flaring for a brief moment.

Then a creeping numbness began to spread through Digamma's midsection, and the faint sound of countless claws scratching at something emanated from the Nomad's divine 'stomach'; though the pain was dulled to the point as to be almost completely absent, he might feel dozens upon dozens of sharp things poking and prodding at his metaphorical insides, as a carcass might feel—if it were still alive and able to feel such things—when a brood of maggots were merrily chewing their way through its innards.

Bit off just a tad more than you could chew this time, my boy, Dis Baba's voice echoed within the Golden Reaper's mind, the alien's mocking tone beginning to shift and alter into something else altogether as the scraping sensations continued. So tell me—after eating me, just what is it you plan on doing next?

With these words, the entire ballroom began to shudder violently, and the sound of chittering insects intensified to positively deafening levels; seconds later, this tumult was accompanied by an utterly horrendous, ratcheting metallic screech as Dis Baba's shadow threw back its head in a sudden paroxysm of triumphant laughter. It extended one long, chitinous limb out before itself, its multisegmented pincers assembling themselves in a rather complex and curious fashion...and in response, the sound of ripping fabric rang out as a long, emaciated arm suddenly erupted from Digamma's midsection, tearing a hole through the golden Reaper's robes with incredible ease; even if this limb had not been clad in the blue sleeve of an ill-fitting tuxedo, its pallid flesh and taloned fingers would have made its owner's identity painfully obvious. The fingers of this hand arranged themselves in just the manner necessary to produce a rather loud and satisfying snap, and without further ado this arm began to flex slightly, its shadow immitating these motions to the best of its abilities.

"Showtime," a voice that was at once similar to yet distinct from that of Dis Baba chuckled, its oddly-inflected words echoing throughout the shaking chamber as the Kin's arm snapped its fingers...

---

Down in Echidna's realm, a noxious multicoloured light abruptly surrounded the Champions and their Nomad allies, filling them with an unsettling numbness and an abrupt and inexplicable nausea. In short order they began to turn transparent and immaterial, much to the surprise of Lambda and Rho, as a power several orders of magnitude beyond their own decided that they woud best serve its goals somewhere else.

This sickening corona grew brighter and brighter for a few moments, and then in a blinding flash of light everyone disappeared altogether...

---

Only to reappear with a sudden surge of blinding radiance and destructive energy within the ballroom itself. This abrupt backwash flooded over the Militantiaries, knocking them off their feet to a man and leaving them paralyzed for the moment like flies trapped in a spider's web.

edited 19th Jul '11 11:12:44 PM by SullenFrog

The Danse Macabre Codex