A Game of Gods: A Multiversal Challenge

Okay Boys, Control Transferred.

— The ancient Nomad hacked at Xi vertically this time.

Down in Omega's control room, one of the Militantiaries extended a distorted digit onto a black switch with a plastic covering flicked off, then pressed it. —

---

Within the warhead, the rumbling began to abate. The light-scheme turned orange.—

COUNTDOWN SUSPENDED.

"Can't it make up its mind? Not that I don't mind the countdown to be stopped." Spriggan was getting confused.

edited 6th Jun '11 5:55:07 PM by Ominae

"Another inter-Nomadic confrontation, perhaps?" Kisame said.

Bendy Slendy in Upendi. Also, check out my fic

Xi just barely managed to block this time. While she was quick with her naginata, she was at a disadvantage in strength and mobility. If she wasn't restrained, she'd be far better in a fight... but she needed to get free and escape, not fight.

---

"Seven hours? Plenty of time," Gordon said. He cast his eyes around the room, searching for something, anything, that might prove to be a way out.

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

Rey walked around, glancing at everything, grumbling to himself. "Come on, guys, we need to figure out something. We have to get somewhere, someplace other than this, and do something. I didn't exactly bring a deck of cards to whittle away the hours with..."

Easing back into life one step at a time

"Thing is where do we start?" Spriggan mumbled.

"Computer, where are the main energy storages, secondary storages, and emergency energy storages for the weapon."

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

Atop the spire, another lightning bolt streaked towards Dis Baba, this time from the side; the Kin overlord stopped clapping as it approached and turned, slowly and unconcernedly, towards the scintillating arc of green death heading his way. In another man, this might have signified a brief island of lucidity in a raging sea of personal madness, a returning of faculties at the last possible moment that he might look on his destroyer and understand, and face his swift-approaching death with a measure of dignity before it fried him alive. Alternatively it might have been defiance, to stare death in the face as it came to claim your soul and take the one, final second afforded you before the reaper's scythe severed your thread and you shed your mortal coil to spit in the eye of the powers that be. Another likely option, perhaps more so than the previous two, was that he turned to the lightning, not with acceptance or defiance, but fear and denial; that if, just by looking upon the emerald doom bearing down on him, the Kin overlord might somehow escape his imminent demise simply by power of refusing to believe in it.

But in this particular creature, such actions ultimately indicated none of these things; its lips had peeled back from ear to ear, revealing a nightmarish maw of needlelike teeth that seemed without limit, and the expression on its face could only be described as a predatory grin—a starving carnivore smiling in exultation as it at last happened upon a rather tasty morsel.

Scant microseconds before the bolt would have struck him and fried the alien to a crips, Dis Baba held up on hand, fingers extended and palm facing outward, before holding his arm straight out before himself—a clear gesture to stop, futile though it may have been under normal circumstances.

Alas, these were hardly normal circumstances; as if drawn by a lightning rod, the vivid green bolt of electricity swerved sharply off its trajectory—whose ultimate destination had been the creature's face—to pool within the palm of his outstretched hand into an orange-sized ball of crackling energy no bigger than an orange. Cupping both hands around the emerald sphere, Dis Baba leaned forward slightly and took a deep, heady sniff of the bound lightning, shuddering with ecstacy a moment later and loosing a sigh of utter contentment, as though his olfactory sense had been stimulated by the most delicious and intoxicating scent in the known universe.

"So...palatable," he hissed, his words somehow audible in spite of the vacuum as he gave the sphere a sudden squeeze. Though it was clearly made of pure energy, the ball of lightning collapsed under his fingers like an overripe fruit, staining the creature's palms with vivid green juices as its ruined fragments disolved into plumes of emerald vapour; a deep inhalation on the alien's part, and this gas was quickly sucked into its gaping, toothy maw to vanish from sight. Dis Baba's head rolled back as a gurgling sigh of satisfaction escaped his lips, and had anyone been around to observe the creature, they might have noticed for a moment that he seemed surrounded in a faint corona of gibbous, griseous light, a flickering blue halo mottled with flecks of red, green and grey; the colours mixed together greasily, in a way that the eye simply found dizzying and repulsive to look upon, and if there were any observers present, regardless of whether they were divine or mortal, Champion or Nomad, they would all smell and feel the same thing as they took in Dis Baba's illuminated form.

The rank foetor of putrifaction and decay, and a rising sensation of nausea.

But there were no observers at all; the Champions were elsewhere in the complex and unable to see what occurred on the surface, and the Nomads had their hands full elsewhere—and even if they had not presently been occupied with the fact that a malevolent manifestation of chaos and evil was presently attempting to devour their planet, he was all but invisible to their divine senses.

The corona lasted for but a moment or two, its noxious blue radiance waning out of sight as the creature finished digesting his meal. A satisfying morsel to be sure, but it would not sate his hunger for long; he had denied his natural craving for far longer than he would have liked, but such was the price of watching a scheme come to fruition. And in the end, had he not profited? Had his abstinence, while taxing in the long run, not delivered him to this smorgasbord right under the plump and blind one's doorstep?

As the Kin splayed his fingers and spread his arms wide, the smile on its face simply widened; had it been within an atmosphere, the expression would have been accompanied by an awful wet, ripping sound as the corners of its mouth split open to accomodate this toothsome grin.

"Yes," it rasped, "Yes, we have indeed..."

The talon of one index finger extended, growing rapidly until it had become a baton of sorts, and Dis Baba folded his arms slightly during a momentary lull in the crackling display of lightning; with his posture, extruded talon and high position, he looked for all the world like a seasoned maestro preparing to conduct the opening movements of a symphonic orchestra.

A brief lowering of his arms before gradually lifting them in mute indication for a crescendo was the creature's first act, and as his limbs rose upward so too did the lightning rise high into the sky, arcing towards his outstretched fingers like moths drawn inexorably towards a flame. The bolts rapidly came apart into tufts of green smoke as they came within an inch of the alien's fingertips, and the resultant fumes quickly vanished into Dis Baba's parted lips and nasal passages as it began to conduct in earnest, feasting all the while as its aura returned and swelled with stolen, subverted energies...

---

Lambda continued to lash at Unicron with the Chains of Judecca for a few moments more, the light of his eyes building steadily in radiance all the while. When he saw that the Chaosbringer was distracted by those enormous mouths—for once, the argent Nomad wasn't quite certain who it was he owed thanks, but he suspected that it was Eta who had conjured them—he gave both ends of the chain a swift yank, pulling them back in through the rippling portal of his base and causing them to return to their original size. Once they were through and restored to their original condition, he allowed the bloodslicked links to drop from his fingers and glared defiantly through his spacial distortion at the distant form of the planet-eating Transformer.

"Now then," he panted, weary and exhausted from his exertions but unbowed and unbeaten, get thee hence!"

With these words, cruciform flares of intense platinum radiance flashed around his eyes as twin beams of scintillating energy lanced forth from his pupils, coiling and entwining with one another into a double helix as they streaked forth into the spatial distortion at the speed of light...

---

...and in space, an utterly gobsmacking beam of silver light exploded forth from the argent Nomad's portal, lancing towards Unicron far more swiftly than the Dark God could possibly hope to react; if the beam hit, odds were quite high that its effects would be positively devastating—perhaps not enough to destroy the Chaosbringer's body outright, but enough to damage it severely by far.

---

Not waiting to see the result of his final, desperate attack, Lambda barked at no one in particular to close the portal; seconds later whatever systems filled his private sanctum complied, the rippling patch of silver liquid on his ceiling becoming solid and opaque once more, and with a sigh of utmost fatigue Lambda staggered over to the forge and slumped onto it, every breath laboured and every second a torment. That energy blast had drained a good deal of his power and vitality; it would take time to recover from such a devastating exertion, time he almost certainly did not have—if he was to emerge from this debacle alive and with his beloved safe, he needed to act, and now.

Tiredly, the argent deity lifted up one hand to examine the damage they had incurred. The sight of them caused Lambda to grimace; much of the skin was gone, leaving divine sinew and bone exposed to the air, and what little flesh remained on his palms was bloody and blistered from friction. He lightly flexed a finger or two, then winced slightly as shards of pain shot through his nerves in response to this motion; a lesser man would have succumbed to unconsciousness or catatonia to spare themselves such pain, or failing that would have wailed and lamented the gory ruin of their palms as they waited for someone to attend to their injuries.

Lambda did neither of these things; he was mde of sterner stuff than that, and he still had work to do. After taking a moment to get his breath rate under control and master the pain, the silver Nomad closed his eyes and sighed. "Lakhesis."

Unseen holographic projectors flared to life, and the translucent, monochromatic form of a woman who was the spitting image of Dr. Aska Langley materialized in front of the slumped deity. Yes, Lord Lambda?" she inquired, her features blurring with static briefly as an expression of concern spread across her face. "Are you badly injured? Do you require medical attention?"

Lambda slowly shook his head and turned to look at her, his face a stoic mask of determination. "I have no time to have my palms tended to; I will just have to deal with the pain for now. Fetch me my gauntlets."

---

Ravage continued to listen in silence as the others attempted to devise a plan of action, optics narrowing slightly as the countdown came to an abrupt halt. Clearly, this Omega—a character the Predacon dimly remembered from the early days of his imprisonment—had believed himself secure in his plan to eliminate his fellows, never once considering that others might have been aware of his scheme and/or had schemes of their own.

As he mused on the precise nature of the strange power dynamics between their enemies, those heavy metal footfalls grew louder as they drew nearer, and small flecks of dust had begun to fall from the ceiling in response to each ponderous tread taken by the owners of those massive feet. Seconds later it stepped through the portal behind him, a towering machine in the shape of a humanoid body which some of the Champions might recall from their mission to Jorge's universe and the planet of Reach. Bulky black armour plating covered every inch of the colossal machine, save for the glowing purple Decepticon insignia emblazoned proudly on the machine's chest, and a large sword with a crooked blade--like some gigantic Kukri dagger--was sheathed with the hilt facing downward on its right shoulder.

Most notably, the thirty-foot tall machine had no head; instead there was a large socket between its shoulders, as if the robot had originally been intended to have a head but the appendage had been removed during construction.

The Danse Macabre Codex

Rey stared at the giant machine for a moment in silence, then glanced over at Ravage in incredulous amazement.

"Anything you'd like to confess?"

Easing back into life one step at a time

Eta materialized in the Amphitheater, wearing a blank, hungry look on his face that masked his regained intelligence, rather like his previous image. He sat down and waited for the meeting to start, the others not knowing that this particular agent had turned against them.

Always be ready to do the unusual and unexpected.

Kimimaro stared at the mecha that had just arrived, noticing the symbol.

"...What in the Hells have you been up to, Ravage?"

Bendy Slendy in Upendi. Also, check out my fic

A faint tapping could be heard in the Ampitheater.

   Look, if nothing happens soon, I'm leaving to return to what I was doing before.   

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

The machine in Lambda's chamber slowly lost is purple glow as it was eaten away at by Unicron's reactionary attack. Pixels floated off of the machine as its physical form faded away, leaving behind only the purple glowing lines until they too faded into nothingness. The purple Post-It note floated over to Lambda with new words written on it.

That was good fun. Good luck with your rescue Mr. Knight.

It flipped over to show the writing on its back.

Give us a good show.

With that the post-it note started folding in on its self, getting smaller and smaller until it eventually vanished completely.

---

In Echidna's chambers one of the locks flared to purple life. Numbers started to fly by, attempting to find the right combination faster then normal eyes could comprehend. There were 21 numbers needed so it took all of a minute before the click of a lock disengaging was heard.

---

back in the Ampitheater Zeta sat back in his seat and grinned at Tau. "Whats the matter Cadet? Not enough orders to know what to do? I'd prefer to leave too if we're not going to do anything."

edited 6th Jun '11 8:03:33 PM by Oni-Lord

— The All-Devourer screamed. It was a cry of agony, of anger, of endless loathing made yet more expansive. As the flash struck, a quarter of Unicron's surface was vaporised, more of the superstructure shredded in that instant. Secondary explosions rocked Him, and the immense Transformer lurched backward, angolmois belching forth from the gaping wound.—

---

—A golden shape formed around the scythe in the Amphitheatre, pointing upward. —

Did You Feel That?

—-

— Within the sanctum, Digamma aimed to knock Xi off her feet. Several hundred of the Militantiaries had disappeared from those assembled.—

One Horrible Day? Is That The Best Excuse You Have, Traditore? HAH!

"Bah," said Sigma.

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground

Xi was swept off her feet... but the final restraint on her left foot shattered as she fell. Suddenly she was on her feet again, and several feet away from Digamma.

"One day?" she said, holding her naginata out. "I-it wasn't one day. It was hundreds."

She kept her naginata pointed at Digamma, as she tried to detect the champions. It would only take a moment for her to teleport when she found them...

edited 6th Jun '11 8:09:14 PM by AnnoR

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

Tau realizes the boredom arising. Ah yes. I believe most of us are arranged for. So I was told to lead us to action. We need to defeat the Chaosbringer. Any objections?

edited 6th Jun '11 8:11:51 PM by Fusionman

To Be Updated when I'm not Lazy

"He is rather defeated by our argent fellow?" Asked Sigma.

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground

Tau sighs. His power is more than enough for only two of us to handle brother.

edited 6th Jun '11 8:21:22 PM by Fusionman

To Be Updated when I'm not Lazy

"Well then," said Sigma. "On we go!" With that, he disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground

Link stood silently, as the Doctor and Galen made their exchange.

"We are not going to die."

His voice was determined, and without a hint of panic.

"We will survive this intact. Omega has underestimated us if he thinks that we will just sit here and wait for death."

He looked around.

"Plans of battle, anyone?"

edited 6th Jun '11 8:49:30 PM by troydenite

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

"I've got a plan, smash it until it dies".

Icarax strode up to the towering machine and looked it up and down as if to size it up for battle.

Eta stood up and sidled near Tau, the blank expression still on his face. "Omega. Where is?" The former Nomad asked in short phrases as before.

Always be ready to do the unusual and unexpected.

Ah Eta. I didn't see you at the meeting. What held you up?

To Be Updated when I'm not Lazy

"Helped out." Eta gestured to the screen depicting Unicron, his mouths still grinning like the Cheshire Cat, occasionally opening up to spit meteor sized energy filled globules of explosive power at the Transformer.

None of the other Nomads knew the extent of the enigmatic Eta's abilities till now, not even Digamma, Omega, nor Lambda. Even then, he still had some tricks up his sleeve for the confrontation with Omega, which he impatiently wished to happen.

Always be ready to do the unusual and unexpected.