A Game of Gods: A Multiversal Challenge

-The Dullahan advances, halting as the sonic vibration fills the air.-

NO. This will... NOT be.

-Continuing forwards, the construct heads for the statue itself.-

-Zod flew towards the gunship and crashed into the side, intending to push it into a position where it was firing at the statue before the pilots had a chance to adjust their aim-

Washington emerged from the flames, on fire and groaning horribly. His face was a ruin of melted flesh and partially-exposed bone, and his muscles were visible as he opened his mouth to scream.

"The power of the entity is worth every life, we just lost!" he cried, his voice dry and cracked like old parchment; obviously, the fire had done a number on his lungs and vocal cords. He limped fowards, staggering with a grimace as Bowser's fireballs slammed into him, and took aim at the koopa king with his bolter.

"I won't let you throw all this away," he gurgled, pulling the trigger and sending a mass-reactive, high-yield explosive shell streaking towards Bowser.

The gunship ceased firing as it passed behind Washington's hoverdisk, clearly not wishing to hit the administrator with a stray shot; as such, both Gordon and Craft's shots successfully struck the enormous aircraft, shorting out its shields and blackening the underside of its hull before destroying one of its antigrav engines. The Azrael still flew, however, for three engines were sufficient to provide relatively stable lift, and though its movements were slower and the ship listed slightly to one side it continued to strafe and fire at the challengers.

Unable to do much more at this point, Dr. Ikari and Dr. Langley had taken refuge behind the wreckage of the elevator shaft in order to protect themselves from the incoming fire; determined and brave though these two might have been, the scientists were ultimately still human, and as such even a glancing shot from one of the gunship's turrets would make short work of them.

The statue was almost fully illuminated now, and the entire chamber began to shake and rumble as the monolithic effigy began to shake and rattle faintly, the chains which bound it straining to their utmost limits as it began to lean forward and pull against them. Cracks began to spread across its cadaverous mask.

LLUUUUUUUUUUUUH...

Zod managed to shift the gunship around, but the vehicle's fire did little more than leave faint nicks and pockmarks in the effigy's torso.

All throughout, Ravage was still clawing his way towards the statue, still reciting his name and occupation in a mantra to help him withstand the sanity-shattering effects of the NOISE.

"Covert agent Ravage, Tripredacus Council, Predacon Secret Police. I am Decepticon. Covert agent Ravage, Tripredacus Council, Predacon Secret Police. I am Decepticon. Covert agent Ravage, Tripredacus Council, Predacon Secret Police. I am Decepticon..."

The Danse Macabre Codex

With the shields down, Bolas had to act incredibly fast to change the tide. Fortunately the shield worked as advertised; it had given him time to think.

Now he could work impossibly fast.

Even as the shield fell, he bought himself a bit more time, because as someone fond of traveling through it Bolas knew you could never have enough. The spell was cast so fast that it seemed like time stopped for its execution. He waited a fraction of a second and pulled the same trick again, this time deploying a spell against Washington's shield *

. And again, attempting to wrestle the tanks back under his control.    "OBEY!"   

The combined casting took exactly two-thirds of a second.

He focused his attention on Ravage then; the agents carrying out the idol's destruction must be given the highest priority. "Covert Agent Ravage of the Tripredacus Council, Predacon Secret Police, Decepticon. I take your burden." With that, safely behind his invincibility, Bolas went completely quiet, withdrawing all telepathic presence from the minds of others, only his Levitation active to remind them he was still alive. This was a storm he would weather alone.

edited 1st Jun '11 12:40:18 PM by SOCR

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

Rey abruptly shifted his attention to Washington, and an uncharacteristic sneer crossed his face. "Breeched..." He spun around, swirling up a mass of shadowstuff, a rather large amount, seeming more than he'd gathered to date, and flinging it towards the man with a shout of effort.

Easing back into life one step at a time

Dodging another shot and still reeling from the disasterous effects of the abhorrent noise, Craft had a spark of inspiration. Looking over to Gordon, he yelled, "Dr. Freeman! Deal with the gunship, I will retire the Ad - Maverick!"

"As for you, you are an enemy of the state - humanity - and must be executed." As he finished speaking, he took aim at the Administrator and squeezed the trigger, aiming for his upper torso. As a back-up measure, he launched a single missile once the barrel had cooled enough for him to do so.

edited 1st Jun '11 12:24:52 PM by Flanker66

Locking you up on radar since '09

-T He Dullahan plods on towards the statue, drawing its sword.-

"I'm on it!" Gordon said, sliding another rocket into the RPG. He strafed, in an attempt to avoid the plasmafire it was slinging his way. He checked for one of the other antigrav thrusters and took aim at it, firing another rocket to try and blow it out of the air.

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

Bowser was still far enough to dodge the bolter round, but he was aiming to enter melee with the admin. So who knows long long he'll be able to dodge those things.

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

— Megatron began loosing blasts from his fusion cannon at the administrator, the split-grille gritted.—

-# You Are Decepticon. Kill In The Name Of The Cause.#-

edited 1st Jun '11 12:39:43 PM by Colonial1.1

Narumi rolled out of the metal box and aimed at Washington's head. He fired a few shots at him before running off to the back of the elevator.

Washington's shield collapsed instantly, though in his current state the administrator did not seem to notice; the pain of his injuries, particularly having his face melted, had subsumed the last fragile slivers of Washington's sanity beneath a raging storm of agony and rage-induced madness, and the full extent of his reaction to suddenly being deprived of his protective barrier was to begin frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog.

Then the bolts of shadowstuff and Craft's beam struck him simultaneously, and for a brief moment the administrator was lost in a destructive blossom of light and death; when it cleared a moment later, nothing was left of Washington but his legs, hips and a ragged, smoking stump that was all that remained of his upper body. The man's legs did not fall but continued to stand in place, held that way by the rigid armour which encased them; the heat of the combat reploid's beam had fused the joints and servoes together, forming a hideous monument to the administrator's folly and insanity, a grizzly sort of statue which was thankfully obliterated—along with the hoverdisk on which it stood—half a second later with the late arrival of the blast from Megatron's fusion cannon.

Gordon's rocket struck one of the gunship's other antigrav engines, annihilating it in a good-sized explosion; as both pods were on the same side of the ship, it rapidly began to lose altitude and soon crashed in a giant fireball.

All that remained now was the statue itself, and—

JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

With that single, deafening SOUND, the chains holding the statue in place tore loose from their anchors in the wall and the mask over its face shattered into a million pieces, skeletal debris which rained down on the ground below in a veritable meteor shower. The floor and walls cracked open as the colossal statue leaned forward, and the earth split open as a pair of utterly massive arms tore their way free of their earthy prisons, immaculate hands of gold reaching up to tear the links free from biceps the size of small hills; above it all, the entity's perfectly proportioned and far-too-human face loomed and leered down at them with a faint smirk, as though amused by the swarm of gnats attempting to bring it down.

Massive orbs of molten gold shifted in their sockets to regard Bolas, and the effigy's lips curled upward in a faint sneer.

edited 1st Jun '11 1:25:28 PM by SullenFrog

The Danse Macabre Codex

"..."

Gordon stared up at the freed god for a few moments. That... that wasn't good. There was no way that was good. At all.

"So... we've got to kill a god?" Gordon asked, taking a step back. "Well... how the hell do we do that?"

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

"How do you think?" Vanitas summoned a dark fireball.

"Yup. That tasted purple."

As Narumi rolled out to fire again, he saw the monsterous god. He stood up in shock, dropping his gun. All he could do is stare at the monster, like a dear in headlights. If one was to listen closely, they could hear Narumi rapidly breathing.

Return to... the pit.

Craft lowered his weapon, staring at the spot where the Administrator had once stood.

He had been so willing to kill him, a human, when not long beforehand he would have hesitated to kill anyone who was not a Reploid. It had been easy to pull the trigger, to feel the weapon energising in preparation of firing. But now, in the end, he had become as bad as the Resistance he and his unit had set out to crush.

Perhaps he had always been heading down this path. After all, did he not destroy a good chunk of Neo Arcadia, the one place which he had sworn to protect? It was strange, really, how he still clinged to that notion, perhaps hoping that it could purge him of his wrongdoing.

Quite frankly, he didn't give a damn anymore. One person could not change the world...

Snapping out of it due to the statue coming to life*

, he began to put distance between himself and the "god", keeping his cannon trained on him.

"Even legends can be distinctly underwhelming in the flesh," he said with surpising calmness for someone about to fight against what was quite possibly a deity.

Locking you up on radar since '09

"The dynamic of power seems to be between the dark and the light. Our enemy is of the light. We let the eclipse reign again." The shaft of light that seemed to give the god life was extinguished, and darkness claimed the room. It would not take long for all involved to find their targets again, as soon all the champions and the two xenoarcheologists were shrouded in a bright glow, temporarily protecting them from the God- and from the next spell Bolas was about to cast.

"Now as all are the same in darkness... I make your power my own!" A huge flame erupted from Bolas' position, the pillar of fire striking the god. The dragon focused all his now-formidable power into this one spell, increasing its damage and its scope, tendrils of light escaping from the chamber the combatants were enclosed in up the elevator shaft and the channel the daylight had until recently shone through. These roving tentacles of burning fury sought out the soldiers and their opponents in the ruins above, other researchers, any living creature to feed its hungry power. Bolas would use all their life energy to bolster his own, sacrificing them in a great pyre at odds with the darkness he shrouded the land in.

edited 1st Jun '11 2:27:24 PM by SOCR

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

Rey grinned widely, holding his hands up, panting for breath slightly, still grinning.

"You've killed worse than this, Gordon. We should blast it in the BRAINS. We're gonna make it STUPID."

Easing back into life one step at a time

Ravage could do little more than stare up at the towering monstrosity, jaws agape. True, it was nowhere near the size of the all-too-real ultimate evil of his own faith, but this massive golden humanoid positively exuded power on a scale the transmetal panther had previously thought unimagineable; simply looking upon it filled him at once with countless conflicting emotions, chief amongst them an all-pervasive fear for his eternal soul and, paradoxically, a sense of profound, euphoric bliss—like being in the presence of a terrible destroyer and a loving, caring parent all at once, a Father who could shower his children with gifts and praise one second and then wreak upon them a truly horrific and unprovoked vengeance in a moment's notice.

Then the Predacon found himself enshrouded in a curtain of warm radiance as the sunlight faded, and he was forced to throw a hand over his optic sensors as the chamber was suddenly engulfed in a firestorm of gobsmacking proportions. The last thing he saw of the effigy before it was consumed by the blaze and lost from sight was the image of its sneering face, lips curling downwards faintly in what might have been annoyance—then the fire washed over it, and he could see no more of the gilded titan.

The Danse Macabre Codex

Kimimaro had felt grim satisfaction upon seeing the insane cultist's brutal demise.

"And now the Shinigami grabs hold of your wretched soul," he said, "and tosses it to the 10-Tails, who will feast upon it in the lowest Hells for eternity."

Now, Kimimaro was countering the dark god's psychic effect by reciting in a low voice, in ancient Japanese, a litany of praise to the Six-Paths Sage. He stood by near the two Doctors, ready to protect them from harm, as he awaited the dark god's emergence from the firestorm that presently engulfed it.

Bendy Slendy in Upendi. Also, check out my fic

-The Dullahan reaches the base of the god, unperturbed by the darkness, though stopping once the blazing light is summoned.-

Bowser was also waiting, but was first attempting to flank the giant. He had a hunch that the thing wasn't going to be too happy once the flames disappeared, and that being in front of it then wouldn't be a good idea.

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

Craft could not hope to get to safety in the short time he had before the firestorm hit, so he settled for shielding himself the best he could by hunching over.

edited 1st Jun '11 2:58:40 PM by Flanker66

Locking you up on radar since '09

Rey grunted and stumbled, curling up and covering his head at the attack, and once again was screaming, staying on the ground in a ball as he did.

Easing back into life one step at a time