A Game of Gods: A Multiversal Challenge

-Isaac shrugs and enters the portal, confident in his newfound strength and leaving interrogations as to his simian form for later. The Dullahan follows some time after, still wondering where the hell the last Challenge took place.-

Galen walked through the portal.

"Oh, hey, wait up for me!" Rey started for the portal and jumped through.

Jack, though he had grave misgivings about it, stepped through the portal.

Mason drove his Hilux through the portal.

Naoto shook her head and rubbed her eyes while standing up. For some reason she felt like she should really be upset, but that last challenge was a blurr to her. She shrugged and walked through the portal.

Subaru looked up as she was petting the demonic cat.

“Great! New challenge! Hopefully not as crazy as the last one.”

She walked through the portal, hoping that it would at least be somewhat sane on the other side.

Amidst a bloody battlefield on a war-torn land, a young man stood. He was tall and thin, with white hair and two small red dots on his forehead, and red markings right below his green eyes, which were currently tainted grey. He was talking to two others - a blond-haired teen boy with whisker-marks on his cheeks, and a very tall orange-haired young man. He had a calm smile on his face.

"I see now" he said. "Uzumaki... thank you... Juugo. I know you have already chosen to do so, but I ask you to watch over Naruto-san, and lend your strength to him."

"Kimimaro..."

"I know that you can control your instincts now. Use that power that you once killed with to protect those important to you. Madara and Kabuto must not be allowed to succeed. ...Farewell, my friends. And thank you."

He closed his eyes, and his body rapidly decayed into dust. An army of White Zetsus began to charge toward the two remaining heroes. Juugo formed a warhammer from his right arm. He looked to Naruto, who nodded, and they both charged.

Kimimaro's eyes snapped open. He realized he was in a bed. He rose up and looked around, noticing the rather utilitarian room he currently occupied.

'I'm not dead, I can sense' he thought. 'Have I... been brought back to life again somehow? It's not Edo Tensei; I can't feel anyone's chakra within me besides my own'.

He swung his legs out and stood up from the bed. There was a hip pouch sitting on a table, and he found it full of kunai, shuriken, and some explosive tags. There was also a hitai-ate - the Sound Village insignia with a horizontal line scratched through it. A quick test confirmed that his kekkei genkai was working fine. He tied the hitai-ate around his waist like a belt, clipped the pouch to his right hip, and then walked through the door.

He followed the odd series of hallways until he reached a door; on the other side, he could hear people talking. Willing his bones to ready a blade just below the surface of his skin for quick draw if needed, he opened the door and stepped through. There were several people and... not-people... gathered around, and he caught sight of a few stepping through some kind of portal. He walked up to the group who hadn't yet passed through.

"Excuse me" he said. "Could someone please explain where I am, how I got here, and what is going on?"

edited 12th Mar '11 9:36:42 AM by DKN117

"Aha! A newbie! First impression time!" Vezon ran up to the newcomer and shook his hand. "Hi there! Welcome to the challenges! Where're ya from? What's ya name?"

Dex-Starr merely yawned as Subaru carried the blue cat into the portal as well.

"My name is Kimimaro" the young man replied to the robotic being before him.

'Strange' he thought. 'A mechanical being, yet I sense a life-energy signature. And why are my instincts telling me not to trust this one?'

"Kimimaro, huh? Cool name, lotsa syllables. They call me Vezon, but anyway, you're probably wondering where you are. Thing is, there's this bunch of omnipotent people called Nomads who've plucked us out of our universes and dropped us into some sort of sick little game. Here, we gent sent into different realities to complete different challenges. Could be anything from fighting evil mastermind apes to going on a blind date. One challenge's just opened up now, through that portal."

edited 12th Mar '11 10:23:48 AM by LizardOfAus

"...Well. I'd like to say this is the strangest thing I've ever experienced, but I'd be lying."

'Lovely' he thought. 'I've gone from being the pawn/plaything of one self-styled god to the pawn of another. (sigh) Nothing to it, I guess'.

Kimimaro walked up to the portal and stepped through; just beneath the skin of his fingertips, a fusillade of bone-bullets were made ready, on the off chance the portal dropped him in the middle of a battle.

'Wisely done, Missster Kimimaro! I'll sssee you up ahead.' Vezon dived in after the others.

edited 12th Mar '11 10:48:46 AM by LizardOfAus

Natsu jumped in the portal as well, Gajeel and Wendy trailing after him.

Raz strode through the portal, giving a curt nod to the newcomer.

The Doctor walks into the portal.

(Thumped by the OOC Thumper)

edited 12th Mar '11 11:55:46 AM by DKN117

— Saren stalked his way over to the portal, directing the occasional searing look ceilingward while trying as best he could to burn the memories of the past Challenge away.—

Lux had moved away from the lightning display, mostly for her own safety. She noticed another new arrival, and moved to greet him, but the energetic Vezon beat her to he punch. In the meantime a new portal had formed, and the others started filing in.

She looked over to Red Mage. "That is where we enter the next challenge. Perhaps we can discuss more inside?" She turned and walked through the portal.

Hope stepped into the portal, still thinking that whatever had been bubbling away in the base of his brain was still there.

Ravage appeared in the Common Room, staring in bafflement at nothing in particular. For a long moment, the Predacon remained silent.

"I don't know which was worse," he said at length, his tone neutral. "The sheer inanity and impossibility of that bizarre world based on human comicbooks, or the bizarre planet to which I was teleported partway through."

He slowly shook his head, seemingly traumatized by whatever it was he had seen when that so-called R-Ray had wisked him away. "Shapes were not meant to go together that way," he muttered, "especially not in planets, be they technological or natural..."

His gaze drifted to the blue portal, and his lips peeled back in a sneer of disgust. "Really making up for lost time, aren't they?"

He sighed in irritation, and was about to step through when Dis Baba suddenly appeared right in front of Ravage, blocking his path. The alien's demeanour was...different, to say the least; his face was set in an angry scowl, and every other second Dis Baba's head would twitch violently to one side. Throughout this, his mouth hung open half a centimetre, and a low, angry buzz droned constantly from within.

"Whoever devised that madness shall die a million horrible, gruesome deaths."

"Maybe I'll actually be able to do something other than sit around this time..." Bowser muttered as he stepped through the portal.

The first thing Gordon noticed when he arrived was the cold, blue metal that he stood on. It had a strange sheen to it, and was disturbingly familiar. Gordon didn't place it immedietly. He shook his head, and when he looked up... that's when it hit him. He knew where he was now.

The landscape as utterly and completely devoid of any actually natural constructions. Tall spires of the same cold blue metal that he stood on dominated the skyline. Some were skinny needles, adorned with lights. Others were thick, multi-tiered constructs that stretched hundreds of feet into the air. All of them seemed to have the same cold, imposing prescene, like giants of metal and malevolence. Added to all of this was the strange, orange sky, wholly alien. It was filled with strange... things. Bulbous ships, small contructs of unknown material flitting from tower to tower. But they were not made of metal.

The things in the sky were twisted fusions of the organic and the technological, sporting mounted pulse cannons and all manner of other weaponry. Gordon, speechless at all of this, looked around. Those who had gone through the portal had arrived on a series of suspended walkways, high above what appeared to be an empty abyss.

He looked back up. As true awareness flooded back to him, he noticed the massive structure in the distance. It was almost impossibly big, angular, and utterly imposing.

"Oh dear god..." Gordon said, falling to his knees in pure shock. "We're here... we're actually here... son of a bitch..."

Blink eyed her surroundings in confusion.

"Where are we, Mister Freeman?"

Gordon got back to his feet. Further down the catwalks, he could see small bodies perched on long legs. They were aproaching all too quickly.

"The Combine Overworld. God damn it, we're at the Combine Overworld."

edited 12th Mar '11 12:35:43 PM by AnnoR

The Doctor hears what Gordon says. "Um... Mr. Freeman... you OK?"