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Dien
Exalted Player
Posts: 226
Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 1:59 am
Class: Blademaster
Location: The "Who's Online List," Stalking People...

Part 8

Post by Dien » Sun Jun 21, 2009 7:35 am

(OOC: If you haven’t, YOU NEED TO READ THE EDIT TO SEKAI’S POST FIRST because it provides vital context to the conversation).

They still have those lives outside of the one they’ve chosen here,” Sekai said after a moment of thought, eyes drifting towards the stairs, up to where Demorian likely was. “But for reasons of their own, they’ve chosen this world as the one they prefer to live their lives in.” Her eyes narrowed as she shook her head with a little more emphasis than was probably necessary. “No. If I’m going to be honest, I have more in common with the Elites than I do with those in the Freedom Fighters.” The look on the young girl's face was as serious and solemn as a funeral as she looked over at the older Blademaster, somehow unphased by the harsh tone of voice. Her eyes seemed suddenly too old for how young she’d hinted at herself being. “Life taught me,” She said quietly. “Life taught me as well as traveling with the Freedom Fighters and having to fight for my life.” Her voice suddenly grew a lot quieter as she dropped her gaze for a moment. “Nemera-san was the one who phrased it to me in a way I could understand though.

Sekai looked up, an unusually stubborn expression on her face as she tried to establish eye contact with her fellow Freedom Fighter. “Can you really call yourself normal after everything you've been through? After every battle you’ve endured, all the pain and injuries inflicted upon your body and your instinctive reaction upon meeting someone who opposes us and stands in our way? Can you really still say that we’re normal?” She went quiet again after a moment and shook her head. “I would be very grateful for any training you could give me, that way I can be a better fighter.” A pained smile, as if it hurt her physically in some way to admit to what she was about to say. “As much as I wish your words could be true, I cannot help but disagree. The moment we joined the Freedom Fighters, the moment we went comatose…that was the moment we became a bunch of loosely affiliated soldiers in a war we still don’t know anything about.

“Hey,” Dien said as tenderly as he could, “we’re still human. We can still take the punches that life throws at us—albeit odd ones at this point—and turn the bruises into growth. We can still laugh and cry with each other, love and hate, live and die. We can still feel the heartache when a friend is in trouble and we can’t do anything to help. So our circumstances are different and so we’re caught up in stuff we don’t understand; who isn’t?! So we’re torn apart by the tides of life and introduced to pain we never thought we could bear; who doesn’t face that?! Even though our lives may be different from the lives of people on the outside, we’ve still got a lot in common with them thanks to our humanity.” He smiled, eyes having misted over slightly as he returned his gaze to the girl next to him and grabbed a hold of her hand, “And Sekai, even soldiers are human. So don’t go on about how we’re all too different to hold together and how we’re not allowed to be weak—that’s part of what humanity is all about, and if we can’t accept that weakness, how can we expect to grow out of it?” The smile was wiped away and Dien shook his head.

“No, but that’s just it: you’re not weak at all! At your core you’re probably stronger than any of the rest of us—that unshakeable compassionate streak in you that you claim to be weakness is the very thing that I think will make you one of the most valuable members of this group. See, because unlike most of us, you can’t stop caring, and as time goes on, that will be a greater and greater asset to you and to us. Trust me when I say it’s not something you want to let go of.”

Her face heated up, eyes quickly blinking back tears as she listened, and could agree with and understand what he was saying. Part of her wondered if he ever questioned and thought the very same about the people they fought against- she knew she always did and mourned for every life they had to end for that very reason. Sekai jumped, eyes widening and a bit of panic starting to filter in her expression when her hand was grabbed. “I…I apologize, I didn’t word that properly. What I meant by ‘loosely affiliated,’ I meant that the one thing everyone had in common was indeed ‘The World’ when it was just a game to us. We were brought together by that one simple common factor, it’s a matter of…um, finding out how we compensate for one another’s weaknesses and they for our own that will make us closer in the end.” She was obviously flustered, trying to better explain herself now that she’d realized she’d done or said something rather wrong. “It wasn't about being too different that we won’t or can’t work together, that was never what I meant to imply.” Her expression turned sad as her eyes turned towards the stairs again. “…everyone says the Elites lost their humanity long ago. I don’t believe that, at all. I think…that it’s still there, deep down inside of them, but the power they wield…maybe it’s a representation, some kind of symbolic reference to what they long to be.” Another pained smile.

Power tempts anyone who feels that they’re weak and insignificant. People who long to prove someone wrong, to prove themselves worthy…or maybe just to rise up and take revenge on someone who bullied them or hurt them in the past—whether they’re here or not.” The girls who’d beat her up and bullied her in school, an image of her father standing there, her mother’s disapproving face, all of that flashed through her mind. “Even my compassion is not unshakeable. There is a man dead because of my anger and I will have to answer for that when I die.” She looked up and gave him a sad, but genuine smile. “Just as humanity can be capable of the greatest kindness and compassion, humanity can also be capable of the greatest cruelty and deception.” Another momentary pause as she regained her breath.

I am flattered that you do not find me weak, but, I will most regretfully have to disagree with you. I have my own weaknesses, the biggest something so very small to others, but so very,” Sekai reached for the word in her mind, looking for the most appropriate term to use. “influential in my eyes.” She gave a tiny, nervous laugh, as if trying to play it off as something silly and embarrassing.

My age, though you are polite and do not ask it, does influence things quite a bit. There is a lot I still don’t understand, partially due to barely being fifteen years old, and partially because I was homeschooled and secluded from society as a whole until I entered high school at nearly thirteen.” Sekai looked up, tracing the path of the winding stairwell with her eyes until she made herself dizzy and closed them. “If I must, the biggest weaknesses I have are my gullibility and willingness to trust other people beyond all doubt. Demorian-san was one of those cases, and I am more than just a little glad to see that I was not a fool in believing in him. I’m very naive and I want to believe in the good in other people…and to believe that they will be honest in their intentions.

“I feel the same way, you know,” he replied, having relinquished his hold on Sekai’s hand, “and honestly, when we faced Royce and Klive in the bottom of that dungeon, I was surprised by how normal they were. Sure they’re on a power trip, but if we can get away with not killing another Elite, I’d say to go for it.” His brow furrowed as a frown creased his lips. “I’m nowhere near proud of the people who, as a result of my actions, be it directly or indirectly, are dead. The Warden, the Headsman, Marionette’s Puppets, and probably many more are dead because I was swinging my sword first and asking questions later.” He closed his eyes and let his head fall hard against the wall behind him. “Ideally, these things wouldn’t happen. Ideally, we could get by through defeat and submission. But the world isn’t ideal, and all too often in this World we’re thrown into ‘kill-or-be-killed’ situations. Should we really blame ourselves, then, when we have to do something we know is wrong? I don’t want to live that way…” Dien’s voice trailed off as he also followed the stairs with his eyes.

“Let’s make a deal, Sekai,” he stated plainly, “let’s you and I mourn the lives of the people we’re forced to kill. It’s going to happen, but at the very least we can preserve their honor, right? Let’s remember their names and find a place where we can go to regularly pay tribute. Even if we don’t know them, remembering them seems like a good way to satisfy that compassion inside you, and a better way to try and make good for the evil we were forced to commit. Who knows? We may be the only ones who will actually do them the justice of remembering them, and that seems like a pretty important thing to me.” He smiled and turned again to face her, “so how ‘bout it?”

She looked surprised after listening to his response, but inclined her head slowly, understanding little by little what he was trying to insinuate or do. It didn’t ease the guilt of killing Liam by any means, and it didn’t really help the fact that she’d caught a glimpse of how ugly it was to really hate someone with every fiber of your being, but it would help- a little- in the future, of that she was certain. “Um…by Marionette-sa, I mean, Demorian-san’s ‘Puppets,’ do you mean Devil-san and Angel-san?” Hastily, Sekai backtracked a little. “N-Not to discard the rest of what you were saying by any means, but, if that is what you meant by his Puppets, um…” The young girl suddenly looked very uncomfortable, though it seemed to be struggling with defiance in her expression. “D-Devil-san is most certainly no longer alive anymore, if…I hadn’t been so scared and still adjusting to the comatose state, I may have been able to help him too.

Suddenly feeling shy and uncertain, she ducked her head a little and looked up through her bangs at Dien, distinctly looking as if she’d rather not be talking about that right now, but a little too stubborn and defiant at the moment to really change her mind. Her eyes slid suddenly toward Nall and Sheena, narrowing ever so slightly and the expression on her face changing to a rather calculating look that would have been more at home on the face of the tall, semi-ghostly form watching the aforementioned two individuals. As if a decision had been reached, her voice lowered by quite a bit and she looked back at Dien. “…Angel-san is still alive. “She said quietly, a moment of fierce pride and defiant stubbornness lighting her eyes. “I waited until everyone else left to go destroy that, um, other place, and I revived and healed her.” Tawny eyes flickered up to where Kira was, softening in a rather obvious way before the girl shook her head and continued. “She gave up halfway through the fight, and…I really hope there is a way for her and Demorian-san to reconcile…she really, really cared about him a lot.

“I was referring to Primal, who gave Nighthand that nasty scar,” Dien replied indicating with his own hand on his face the line that existed on their leader’s, “it was the quest before you were trapped in-game. He only had a shell of his humanity, but I can be sure that when the last of his HP disappeared, somewhere somebody flat-lined.” He inhaled and then sighed, “what you did showed more bravery than I’ve witnessed in this whole group. To act on your beliefs alongside your friends is easy, but to act on your beliefs in counter to those same friends—that is the type of strength I see in you. It means that your intentions will always be pure, and that above anyone else you can be trusted to do what is right.” The blademaster rolled his head around his neck to stretch and let out a yawn.

“And even though you’re only fifteen, you seem like someone who’s been through a whole lifetime’s worth of shit already. You’re very mature for your age, and while I’m sorry you had to grow up so soon, I am glad that it’s made you so wise to what really matters.” He smiled and leaned forward as he saw the rest of the group descending the stairs about halfway from the top. Standing, he turned and offered Sekai his hand to help her up.

Sekai's expression was contemplative as she studied the offered hand in front of her, wondering what it was he had experienced in his own life and what trials he had come to face and overcome on his own- or with help. “I may not always have the best judgement,” She said quietly as she continued to look at his hand. “and there will be times it will probably get people hurt or into more trouble than we’re in already,” A sudden burst of nerves made her hand- so much smaller than Dien's suddenly looked to her- start to tremble a little. “But I will try to do what feels right to me and do what my heart tells me is right, it’s the only promise I can make and stay true to…right now, anyway.” She gingerly took his hand and allowed him to help her to her feet, craning her neck to look up at the taller man—drat being so frustratingly short at times—and finished what she was saying. “I don’t think of myself as wise, as modest as that may sound, but…maybe with the right kind of help, I’ll be able to say that I have some wisdom, when I'm older.

“Only someone who is truly wise does not acknowledge their own wisdom,” Dien said with a smile, “you’ll do fine, kid.” Was now the time to tell her that he was only two years older than she was? Nah…
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Image|||Level 35 Blademaster (+200 EXP)
Wishlist: EXP, Ends of Earth, Armor with Status Effects

User avatar
Locke
Ikkitousen
Posts: 111
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:21 pm
Class: Twin Blade

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Locke » Thu Jun 25, 2009 6:41 pm

Baron shook his head slightly as he looked around, suddenly snapping back into focus. What had happened, and how had he suddenly spaced? Was he so tired that he couldn’t even keep his focus where it belonged? That really said a lot for what his recent mental stress had put him through. Blinking and taking a deep breath, the Twin Blade took a look around him to see what had happened in his momentary mental absence.

It seemed that all of the enemies had been taken down in short order, and Baron’s attention had come back just in time to witness Demorian carving up the Headsman. The gigantic guardian who had been giving the rest of the group such a hard time had suddenly been cut down with ease by the Blademaster, with the man moving quickly and surely to defeat his opponent. Baron had to admit that he was impressed, and wondered just how powerful Demorian was. Certainly he seemed like he was hacked to some extent, though it seemed that nearly everyone had some sort of hacked ability or talent that made them more useful.

Except the Twin Blade himself. There were times that Baron felt so useless as compared to the others, especially watching their strange abilities or “hacks” as they were called. Sheena had said that he would develop his own in time, due to the effects of the Twilight that had rendered him comatose and trapped him in the game. Until such an ability manifested itself, though, Baron truly felt like he was just dead weight, a burden on the members of the group with an actual purpose.

Don’t start moping again, kid. Libra’s out cold and I don’t think you want us running your body around, now do you?

Baron almost gave a wry look at the statement, but rather than have everyone wonder why he was making a face at the air, he instead kept his expression neutral. Don’t worry, I’m not going to relapse like that. But… do you understand what I’m saying? I literally feel useless. Dead weight. Unnecessary.

How do you think we feel? He we are, scraps of data on the edge of deletion in your mind who will eventually be destroyed no matter whether you win or lose, and you think we’re gonna show you some sympathy? Yeah, not happening. Just deal with it and move on, you may find some use for yourself later.

Baron was oddly surprised at the comment and said nothing for a moment, thinking it over. Well, not so much about his lack of usefulness to the team so much as he was thinking about the Gemini. Now that they had been beaten, their part in the Zodiac’s plan put to a halt, was it really necessary to destroy them? They weren’t doing any harm as they were now, and if anything they were being helpful. Perhaps if he could convince them to support the right side, to help stop the Zodiac’s plot, just maybe they could be spared. But Libra had also said that, to destroy the Zodiac, he would have to destroy all of them, Libra included. Did that mean there was no way to spare any of them? That just seemed wrong. Well, there was nothing to do about it right now, but Baron decided that he’d think about it when the group was out of the prison. For now they had to focus on getting to safety, wherever that was.

The group quickly set off again, and Baron found himself marveling at the number of stairs that the building had. They seemed to go up forever, but he still trudged forward, wincing at the slight tightness in his muscles but ignoring it for the time being. It was just another reminder of his comatose state that he didn’t need at the time. Instead of focusing on it, however, he noticed Demorian walking near him, not more than a few steps away. Curiosity as to the origins of the mysterious Blademaster brought Baron to inch a bit closer to him, and after a moment he started up conversation.

"So, Demorian... if it's not a problem, can I ask how you became a part of all of this? How you became involved with Twilight, the Elites... everything."

His opening could have been a bit better, but the Twin Blade didn’t have much of a way to break the ice, so he figured he might as well go for the kill. From what he could tell through the conversations of others, Demorian had been a prominent figure for the… whatever the resistance was called. Freedom Fighters, at Baron’s last recollection. But the Twin Blade wanted to know more, before all of that. Unfortunately Demorian’s answer was short and somewhat vague.

"Huh. Well, that's a really long story. To make it shorter, though... basically the same way anyone else did. Got Coma'd, then got to fighting. I've just been around longer."

"If I might ask, how did you end up comatose? Was it just a random accident or what?"

Demorian was quiet for a short time, and then answered quietly. "I blame Nall."

Baron gave him a questioning look, unsure whether or not to prod for more information, but curiosity got the better of him. "What do you mean? How did Nall cause it?"

Demorian shrugged again. "Let's not talk about it now, shall we? No reason to just yet. We're short on time as it is..."

The man hurried ahead, and Baron was left with more questions than he had started with. What did Demorian mean by “I blame Nall?” Did Nall, the semi-conscious man that Sheena had been carrying around, have something to do with Demorian’s comatose state? Baron had to wonder why, since the man was supposedly the leader of the Freedom Fighters, and they were against the Elites. The Elites trapped people with their mix of Twilight and whatever else they used, so if Nall was fighting against that, why did Demorian blame him for his comatose state? It was something that the Twin Blade would inquire into afterwards, but for now he shuffled the information away for another time.

As the group continued to climb the tower, they eventually arrived at a large control room. Or at least that was what Baron assumed it was, judging by the layout and Demorian’s prior notice. It would help if he had been paying attention before. The tower reminded the Twin Blade of something akin to a control tower in an airport, something he had only seen once as a little kid and barely remembered. There were windows on every side of the room, showing a bleak wasteland outside that made Baron’s heart sink even further. Had they escaped prison only to end up in a worst situation?

Turning his gaze away from the torn landscape, Baron instead found his gaze lowering to the pedestals in the center of the room. Each reminded him, oddly enough, of a futuristic computer from some anime or another he had seen before. He wasn’t surprised that, upon touching one, it lit up and revealed a keyboard of sorts. The regular letters that Baron recognized were on it along with a slew and a half of other keys that the Twin Blade didn’t understand. Pausing for a moment, he thought about exactly what he planned to use it for. While he thought, he glanced around and saw others at the different pedestals, entering their own queries and getting responses. Most of his questions were quickly answered by the others, leaving him with little to ask. However, after a moment he came up with something he did want to know, since it would prove to be useful soon. His fingers flew across the keyboard, quickly locating the proper keys.

“Can you up a map of the Yamiyo server, in as much detail as is allowed by users without high-end access and noting as many important locations as possible?”

A map was displayed on the table in front of him, a large map of the server in general. The entire area was one large circle, divided into a doughnut-like shape. In the center circle was a large castle with several towers on it, labeled as the central citadel. Each of the eight towers was labeled as belonging to a different person, whom Baron assumed were the Elites. It was their server, after all. In the outer circle of the doughnut were four different districts, each with important locations labeled as per Baron’s request. He took a minute to look over it and, figuring that the information would become useful, tried to see if he could get a portable copy.

“Download this map.”

All he got was an error message. Trying several different forms of the same query, Baron got the same answer again and again before getting frustrated and simply giving up. He would just have to memorize the map as best as he could. Taking a few minutes, the Twin Blade committed as much to memory as he could before walking away from the terminal, letting it shut itself down. If there was any more information to be gained from the computers, the others would handle it. For now he was going to rejoin the others, and hopefully they’d be leaving the prison soon.

Heading down the stairs, Baron felt a wash of dizziness come over him, but it passed quickly, leaving him confused. Maybe all that was happening was starting to get to him. He had been imprisoned, followed by an intense battle and a lot of travel, all without even a moment of rest. Maybe his exhaustion, pushed away for the time being, had finally caught up. The Twin Blade resolved to take a break at the bottom of the stairs with the others and rest, letting his body recuperate a bit. He had to make it to the bottom of the stairs first, though!

Light. Streaming in from above and all around, a sensation never experienced.

Baron staggered in surprise. What was that? What had just happened? It was as if there were something there, just at the very edge of realization. Almost like he had seen something, but… what was it?

A face. A mind. No, not one mind, many. But at the same time, the many minds were one, all together, thoughts separate yet together, a single being that was twelve…

Baron found himself losing his balance, his vision wavering, and he became barely aware of someone near him, a pressure on his back, and then all was as nothing while his world faded into black…

“Is it ready?”

He was floating. He didn’t know what he was in, but it was there. He wasn’t even sure why he had designated himself as a male, only that it was what came to mind. Why it mattered, or what this ‘male’ was did not concern him. It was only natural…

Where am I…?

There was a light… an off-green. What was this green? The term had simply floated to the surface, natural as…

“Project ZODIAC is underway…”

There was a surge of power. He felt… invigorated? Alive? The feeling grew stronger…

“…Must be stopped, too… for us… contain…”

“…cannot destroy… years of… time spent to create…”

There was a shift. The change was tangible, yet indescribable. What was going on?

Why are they talking about me? What am I?

“Split it’s… twelve parts…”

Split? Split what? What is going on?

Everything seemed to break, separating into shards of its former self. He still seemed to be intact, yet… he felt so alone…


“Baron-san!"

Baron’s eyes fluttered open, the Twin Blade wincing as light pierced his sight. He felt weird, like he had just woken up. His eyes were heavy, his body was stiff, and his head felt like it was full of cotton. Sitting up with a groan, he clutched at his head, feeling the onslaught of a headache just at the edge of his consciousness. He remembered… something happening, but suddenly everything that had happened in the last few seconds was just gone.

Looking up, he was surprised to find himself on the ground with Sekai and Kira nearby. “Um… did I hit my head or something? Because I don’t know why I’m on the ground or why I have a headache… ow…”

"To put it bluntly, you passed the hell out." That was Kira for you: quick and straight to the point. Baron was almost glad for it, but now he was confused. He had passed out? When? "Everything okay?"

"I... think so. My head hurts a bit, and I don't remember what happened but... I think I'm okay." He paused for a second, noticing one other difference. His shoulder stung and burned, nothing notably painful but still an irritation. Had he hurt his shoulder too? The Twin Blade gave the two a questioning look. "Did I hit my shoulder when I fell?"

The two exchanged an odd glance, one Baron didn’t understand, but he said nothing until Sekai spoke up. "Um... Kira caught you, sort of. Does it hurt?"

Baron blinked, rubbing at the spot just above his right shoulder. Kira had caught him, but he doubted that she’d do anything to hurt him, intentionally or not. She could be remarkably careful when she tried. "I... don't know. It's something between an itch and a burning-" Great, another reminder of his comatose state- "but it's not exactly painful..." He winced slightly in annoyance, rubbing at the shoulder through his jacket.

"Did you use your fingernails?" Baron choked back a laugh, hearing Sekai scold Kira, but he also knew that she was the only person who could get away with it. Baron could see his own chances of success at a similar venture ending up with a spear through him. Kira, oddly enough, looked halfway embarrassed. "Hell if I know, he was going down and I caught him, if I did, wasn't intentional."

She turned to him next, and the narrowed gaze she gave him caused Baron to shiver. He hated when Kira looked at him like that. "Off with it then, let's see the damage."

Baron gave her an uncomprehending look. "We can do this the easy way, or the hard way; take off the jacket and the shirt so I can see if I injured you from trying to prevent you from smashing your face like a drunkard, or I'll rip them both off myself. It's all the same to me."

Baron nodded slowly before peeling off both his jacket and shirt, feeling a bit uncomfortable sitting shirtless between two women, one of which he saw almost like a little sister while the other was an Amazon waiting to pounce. Suddenly he felt even more uneasy. As he took off his white undershirt though, a large black marking on his shoulder became evident; the edges were still glowing yellow-orange, as if the mark had just been burned onto the skin. The mark was similar to the Roman numeral for the number two, but the lines above and below were curved inward. The Twin Blade didn't recognize the mark immediately, though he definitely didn't remember ever having it on him before.

"Okay... that's new..."

Kira actually sounded surprised, judging by the whistle. "That wasn't me, this time."

This time? Baron choked back a laugh as he felt another small wave of dizziness. Then he sobered as he realized something. He hadn’t heard anything from either the Gemini or Libra since he had passed out, and normally one or both of them would have said something at his passing out. He sent out a mental query to them, suddenly curious.

You guys there?

Baron was greeted with silence. However, before he could try again, Sekai snapped him out of his focus, speaking again. He turned towards her, putting the matter off until he was done figuring out what had just happened to him. "...I don't recognize that, do you know what that mark is, Baron-san?"

Baron craned his neck to try and get a better view of the marking. "The mark looks familiar, though I can't place it. It's... um... hold on, it's at the edge of my memory..." He paused for a moment, his gaze falling towards the floor, and he caught sight of his shirt, Libra's mark standing out in gold across it. Then it clicked. "Now I recognize it... it's a Zodiac symbol. I can't say which one though, I don't have my notes with me... they're in the real world, with my body..."

Sekai looked confused, and Baron wasn’t sure why. He was about to explain before she caught herself. "...Ooh, okay. That's right, Western Astrology." Okay, sure. What she said. "Um, let me think... I... don't recognize it but, I'm not familiar with the symbols. How many are there again? In the Western one, anyway." A sheepish smile came out, as if she found it a little embarrassing. "Maybe if you recite the names, something might ring a bell?"

Baron took a moment to consider, trying to recall the research that he had undertaken when he had agreed to hunt down the Zodiac. "Let's see, there are twelve total. There's Libra... At that, he pointed to the symbol etched across his shirt. "There's Pisces, Leo, Cancer, Scorpio, Aries, Virgo, Capricorn, Gemini..."

He paused for a moment as he mentioned the last one, suddenly thoughtful. "I think... I think that's the symbol for Gemini, though I'm not sure. I didn't take much time to note their individual marks..."

"Gemini's symbol looks like a Roman numeral two?" Baron was about to answer before Kira, who turned her attention towards the Twin Blade’s shirt, spoke up.

"...huh, the one on your shirt, Libra, I think you said it was, looks like the one I have on my left arm, sort of."

Baron frowned, thinking it over. "What I don't understand is why it's there now... it wasn't there when we were in our slave outfits, I would have noticed it..." He struggled to remember what triggered it, and started to get the faintest inkling of a memory... before it vanished.

Shaking his head, the Twin Blade pushed himself to his feet, retrieving his clothing and slipping it back on. His balance was off for a second, but soon he was standing confidently again. "Anyway... sorry to worry you. I'm alright now, really..."

"You lyin' to the both of us, kid?" Blunt as ever, Kira spoke up, and Sekai still looked concerned about the Twin Blade’s well-being.

Baron gave the two of them a weary, crooked smile. "Really, I'm fine. Just exhausted. I'm not used to a large amount of exertion and here I've had a tough fight and a lot of stairs to climb. Just... I just need some rest, that's all." He started walking towards one of the walls to rest, staggering slightly but catching himself quickly.

"...I'll let this go, one last time. The next time I ask and you bullshit me or try and pass it off, you're not going to like the consequences. I don't like being lied to." Baron watched Kira's gaze slide to her companion, and wondered only briefly at its meaning. "Especially by people who suck at it, understand?"

Baron shook his head. "Actually, I'm tired enough to collapse from exhaustion, but I am alright. That's all there is to it..." What he didn't mention was the lack of presence both from Libra and the Gemini, and he wondered what it meant. Rather than bother the others with the details though, he simply nodded. "I promise, I won't lie to you guys. Mostly because I know what Kira will do if I think I can get away with it." He gave the Long Arm a wry grin.

Kira gave him that look again, and once more Baron almost visibly shivered. "I can assure you, what you think I'll do and what I will do are two very different things." However, she relented once he made his promise. "I'll take that promise seriously.”

Finally, the two left Baron with a few minutes of quiet, and the Twin Blade slumped against the wall, suddenly exhausted again. His head drooped slightly as he let his body relax, and he felt a wave of weariness suddenly hit him. Shaking his head and leaning back, Baron tried to keep awake at least for a few minutes. He didn’t want to have to be carried out when they made their escape.

However, sleep was starting to come quickly, and Baron finally conceded to a short nap. He could get up and going when everyone else started moving, it would just take him a second to wake up. Before he let himself pass into unconsciousness, though, he sent one more query to both Libra and the Gemini. Again he got nothing. Suddenly, the Twin Blade felt especially alone, and he couldn’t place why as he finally succumbed to rest.

((ooc: Yep. I'm back. Feel free to prod our tired little Twin Blade out of sleep or w/e if you need me for scripting.))
Last edited by Locke on Sun Jun 28, 2009 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Character Information
Baron | Level 47 Twin Blade [100/1000 EXP] | 891 HP / 265 SP
Weapon: Fishskin
Armor: Emperor's Crown/Bone Armor/Thunder Gloves/Ninja Anklet
Accessories/Books: Ethereal Angel Wings, Silver Grunty
Skills: Thunder Coil, Gale of Swords
Spells: Merrows, GiRai Don, BiVak Rom, GiGan Zot, Rai Don, Ani Don, Duk Lei
GP: 750 (As of 8/2/15)
Wishlist: Nny Scales, Lucky Shoes, Saint Cross, Greave Sticker, Pet EX-Levels/Spheres(!)

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Nighthand
Master of Games
Posts: 1265
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 9:23 pm
Class: Bladesmage
Location: ...Tracking...please wait...

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Nighthand » Fri Jun 26, 2009 3:44 am

At the base of the prison, near the exit, Sheena was growing increasingly frustrated with Nall. His data was a messy, torn up, frayed patchwork of data, far from the symmetry and beauty it used to have. But that was years ago. There was hardly a fragment of him left. She wouldn’t say it to anyone, wouldn’t show it, but she was worried. Worried this would be the last time she would be able to repair him.

Right now his data was a mess, and there was nothing she could do about it. Raine was the one with the talent to sew him up, but they couldn’t get to her now. Their only option was to make it to the town, find someone who could help get the tags off their data, and get him out. Unfortunately, that might take too long. But could they risk trying to leave and have the Elites follow them home? There was no way to balance that risk. Sheena shouted up the stairs to the people still in the tower.

”We have to leave now, or risk a lot worse! Come on people, let’s go!”

Slowly, the group trickled down the stairs and gathered at the door, doing whatever they could to sabotage the room behind them. Demorian was last, stepping casually down the stairs like he owned the place. Then again, once, he had.

After a quick conference, whispered between Demorian and Sheena, and the goal was set. They would head for the town as fast as possible, find the best place to hide they could, and try to find someone who could remove the data flags from their accounts.

“Alright guys, I’ll take the lead.” Demorian spoke, turning to the group. “I can take a lot more punishment so I’ll work well on point. Hmm… Takua, Sekai, if you two could join me for support, that’d be great. Nighthand, you hang back with Sheena and Nall, and help protect them. The rest of you spread out between us and keep your eyes open! Who knows what’ll show up.”

With a grin, the Blademaster opened the door and strode out into a humid, thick jungle environment. He paused, but nothing attacked immediately. This close to the prison, and he was worried about that… It didn’t bode well for the rest of the journey.

Nighthand hung back, as he was asked, lost in an internal dialogue.

He doesn’t look like he’s in very good shape.

Nall? What was your first clue?

The part where he’s not getting up. You have my memories. Nall always got back up. He always came back.

I’m sure he’ll be back eventually. We just have to make sure he makes it out of here.

Yeah… Still. It hurts, seeing him so weak. He was always so strong.

No. He was powerful. He was never strong.

As they walked, the terrain had changed, far faster than it would naturally. It was humid, and growing colder. The trees had turned from vine-hung deciduous to thick-trunked conifers, six-inch long needles prickling at anyone who brushed too close.

Then it started to snow.

All at once, all the humidity seemed to crystallize, and in the span of 100 yards the party were crunching through a foot of snow. It was still warm, for snow, but it just made it slippery, sticky, and perfect for snowballs.

Snowballs that they started to see, pre-formed on the ground around them. Demorian slowed his pace, his sword drawn and ready. Nighthand too drew his sword, watching around them.

The further they walked, the larger the snowballs were growing. Then further, smaller snowballs were resting on larger ones. Further along, they were full-size snowmen, but lacking in arms and faces.

Demorian stopped, and the battle started. The snowmen now had faces, they had heavy icy arms with various icy weapons, and they had skis. For whatever reason, skis made sense to them. At the least, it gave them mobility the players didn’t have.

“Form up, wrap around Nall and Sheena, protect them.” Demorian said, his blade ready. There were a lot of them.

----------------------ooc:

ALRIGHT! Here we go. I’m starting up the weekly posting now. So here’s the deal.

-Post once a week minimum. I’m sure you can handle this.

-I won’t be implementing a three-strikes rule, yet. This is because three rounds might only cover one event, which IC wouldn’t make sense if you disappeared. So… I’m going to go by feel here. Might be by events, might be five posts missed, might be enough consecutive. Not sure yet. Either way, don’t miss posts.

-As always, I’m available to script. Though for this battle you don’t need it unless you want to talk to the NPCs.

-In case you didn’t notice, I posted a thread with a bunch of info on Yamiyo. It’s information you would have gathered from the computer or Demorian.

NOW FOR THE BATTLE!

It’s a quota battle. The snowmen come in three varieties.

Level 10: Snowman
Stands four feet tall, comes in icy versions of every class. Moves fastest of the three and most of them are the lighter classes. Can cast any level 1 rue spell.

Level 30: Snowman Deluxe
Stands seven feet tall, comes in icy versions of every class. Moves at a moderate pace, and can still ski circles around most players. They favor the medium classes. Can cast any level 2 rue spell, or Merrows.

Level 50: Snowman Supreme
Stands nearly fifteen feet tall, and comes in icy versions of every class. Moves slowly, preferring to sky directly into and over people, driving them to the ground and beating on them with their weapons. Often prefers the heavy classes. They can cast any level 3 rue spell, or Merrows Ch.

Now for the numbers:

Level 10: 300
Level 30: 150
Level 50: 50

Keep this tally in the bottoms of your posts, as usual.

Oh and for the weekly sake, this post counts as Friday. Therefore, my weekly posts will come on Friday.

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Zan » Fri Jun 26, 2009 4:41 am

Zan was racing down a giant slide aimed at an ever-shifting forest in hopes of reaching his friends in time to warn them about a giant chimera that used to be an Administrator. Yeah. If someone had asked him a month ago if he’d be able to make that claim, the question would have been answered with a polite punch in the jaw.

Initially, the descent in the open, dry, cold air had the Heavy Blade in a state of mild panic. He had never enjoyed the slides at water parks Leo used to take him to, so it was no surprise that riding their Godzilla cousin was nothing short of horrifying for the player. A world he didn’t recognize - a field, a new Root Town? - whipped by him as readily as the wind that hissed in his ears. With his memories returned, time was no long skipping along like a bad record, but with the current situation Zan almost wished it would. At least until he got to the bottom. That thought, of course, spurned the realization that he’d have to stop eventually. For a reason unbeknownst to him, the slide (luckily) wasn’t allowing him to reach terminal velocity. When the madness stopped, his landing was likely to smart like a motherfucker, but it wouldn’t kill him. That was almost comforting. What wasn’t, of course, was the barrage of paranoiac thoughts that he wouldn’t make it to the rest of the Freedom Fighters in time. He’d arrive to see their bodies strewn about like macabre fiesta decorations with the batshit mutant Administrator looking at Zan like he was a Twinkie. Without his power anymore - as both the strange outline told him and his own instincts confirmed - he’d never stand a chance against something like that. He’d-

Zan was airborne.

Caught aloft in what had become warmth and humidity, he had only a heartbeat to realize the slide had cut off thirty feet above the ground before a nice thick tree offered to break his fall.

Oh fuckfuckfuck me!

Feeling like George of the Jungle, Zan’s body clapped against the broad trunk with enough force to jar every bone in his body and snap a few of the ribs that tried to cushion the impact. All of the wind rushed out of him, robbing him of breath as he tumbled. Branch after branch caught his limbs as he fell, sending him in a constant state of pained grunts and vertigo-inducing spins. Those same branches cut at his hands and sliced a particularly deep gash across his cheek before, mercifully, he landed. Face down, he let go of the breath he hadn’t been conscious of holding, the sudden expulsion of air kicking up a small cloud of forest-floor dirt. The Heavy Blade considered cursing the mirage up in the tower for the shitty genie action, but the pain that was blossoming over his body in scrapes, broken bones and nasty colored bruises held him back. For the billionth time that day, his vision swayed this way and that, something made only worse as he tugged his body to lie on its back. Agony flared and he screamed through clenched teeth. Zan knew there was a way to stop it all, but for a small while he just lay there, unable to think of what it was. Then the blue light, and Scarlet, and he remembered the magic of “The World.” He could practically feel the mental puzzle piece click into place. The player had a feeling that was going to happen, often, for a while to come. Scrolling through the rather extensive spell inventory in his possession, he found the Ola Repth on one of his currently equipped pieces of armor. It was technically for a group, but Zan was just too damn hurt and lazy to swap out to the ‘Ol Repth.’

“Ola Repth…” His voice was shallow, but it was more than enough for the incantation.

Healing energy swept as a warmth inside of him, miraculously healing almost everything it came across. By the time the spell had run its course, all but the most superficial injuries were gone. It was invigorating, and relieving, and it left all the mental space open that Zan could need to remember why he had ridden Suicide Slide in the first place. Scrambling to his feet in dirt that stained his clothes and caked the side of his face, the Heavy Blade prepared to launch himself into the wilds that constantly seemed to be rearranging themselves. He laid a hand against the same tree that had almost killed him to gather himself, to take but a second of rest, and he…he felt something. It stirred somewhere inside of him, a place so far down that only the now-dead Beast had taken refuge there before. Where his palm lay against the bark, the skin started to itch, furiously, in a way that made it feel like millions of microscopic insects were squirming their way inside of it. The flesh of his arm that wasn’t covered by the leather of his coat blushed a pale green, a look that was accented by a flow of black binary away from his hand. Around it, sucking towards his fingers like a sponge, the tree’s color was starting to drain to grey. With this visual came the sensation of the last of Zan’s injuries being repaired, being fixed. A look to one such small wound on his other forearm showed strings of emerald and obsidian dart between the tear and tug the parted skin back together. All the while he felt something move just beneath his skin, crawling, worming, burrowing… It was converting - God knew how - the data from the tree and using it to stitch him up. When the trunk cracked around his hand like glass, sounding out with static and filling with white and black television snow, Zan quickly removed the appendage and held it to him like it was tree that had bit him.

“The…hell?” The player puzzled at it for a moment, gaping like a stupid child, but shook it off just as quickly.

No time for questions. Only running.

Like a bat out of hell, the Heavy Blade took off running into the spastic forest. Its nature compelled him to constantly change route, to leap and duck at a moment’s notice when fallen logs or low-hanging branches would pop in from the ether. Zan felt like he was running some kind of obstacle course, and the thick black jacket that was flapping behind him was making him perspire like a fat man getting up to fetch his mail. That was new. Temperatures of all sorts didn’t use to faze him like this, but Zan figured that was a part of who he used to be. If he tried to think about it too hard, an odd kind of sorrow welled up in his breast, something like mourning, but he shoved it down instead. A few strides later and the jacket vanished into his inventory. It left him sprinting with only his boots, dark pants and a green shirt stained with perspiration from under his arms and down his neck. The humidity was threatening to choke him at this pace, but he couldn’t slow down. Hell, the Freedom Fighter wasn’t even sure he was going the right way. After all, he had seen the prison from hundreds of feet up in the air. After his disorienting landing, who’s to say he was even going the right direction from the get-go? Fuck it. He didn’t have time to second guess himself. With only desperate hope to guide him, Zan just…ran.

A few minutes into the crazy burst and shadows at his peripherals began to draw his attention. When he looked to them between jumps or frantic weaving, they were clearly made from beyond the trees. Traveling amongst the canopy, the silhouettes made no attempt to hide their pursuit. Darting between two trees, Zan’s boots slapping against the mud as he went, he wondered if it was Tritoch. Then, upon the recognition that the small figures came from both of his flanks, he figured the once-Admin creature couldn’t split into two. Well, that he had seen, anyway. Just then, what looked like some kind of oversized June bug with buzzing, translucent wings burst from the web of branches and leaves just in time for that same tree to rapidly sport apples, then shrivel away into rotted nothingness. The giant insect, about the girth of a volleyball, shot itself towards his face making a sound an awful lot like a lawn mower. In a jerk of reflex, the Heavy Blade slid to a stop and whirred his arms to guard his face. A small, dull pain breached his chest, but the noise of the ‘engine’ sputtering came from a few feet away. Cautiously, Zan lowered his arms, eyes peeling open to get an explanation. Nothing marred his chest, nothing that would explain the odd twang of pain he had felt, but the noise was all too easy to discern. The bug was on its back not far from him, hundreds of tiny legs on its underbelly grabbing helplessly at a piercing wound that oozed something white and orange. Huh.

Nigh two dozen more mowers seemed to rev up from around him, still obscured by the Wasteland’s fickle foliage. Swallowing down his fear, the Heavy Blade pulled out his strongest broadsword. The Smiling Blade was heavier than he was used to, its body mostly resting against the earth while Zan awaited their assault. This wasn’t the situation to wish for his strength to come back. He’d have to fight his way through this like every other member of his class. No more cheating, as some might put it.

The bugs exploded from their various hiding spots, numbering more or less to his expectations, and swarmed. The Ganz Maxima was activated in that same instant, its blade swamped with amber energy. The thrust forward caught one mid-dash while two others landed on his back. All of those legs he had seen on the dead one now dug into him, and pulled, and feasted. It was excruciating, but he had fought his way through worse. With the second thrust taking out another of the creatures, he felt a familiar ache interrupt the bugs’ efforts, and two solid thumps beat like a drum behind him. Zan spun as he flipped and completed the skill, cleaving two more of the things in twine as he tried to inspect what he had heard through the rotation of bodies in the air. Apparently, the noises had come from the insects being pinned to two separate trees. What had done the job was no longer there and only one - Zan would have guessed because of the tree bark - still hung precariously in place. With the second wave finding their opening, Zan momentarily swapped out his current equipment for his trusty Shiva’s Rings and let loose a MeRue Rom that filled the space around him with swirling crags of vicious ice and bitter water. He heard the blocks bounce off of the failing bugs and, when it was gone, all that was left of those that had tried their luck was cold, frozen sludge. Though they outnumbered them, the insects showed enough sentience to realize they had no easy meal with him, and they fled.

“Yeah. That was fun.” Dishing out his sarcasm to no one at all, Zan deposited his weapon into the binary nothingness of his inventory.

It was almost right after he had done this that one last brave (see: stupid) buggy soul flew out from behind an oak to kamikaze dive him. Zan’s fists tightened, prepared to bitch slap the thing, before something elapsed in front of his eyes that just didn’t click. Like the ones before, the inflated June bug was pinned against a tree; fidgeting and dying. This time, however, the Heavy Blade could make out what had done it. A long black tendril, slick and almost sticky-looking, had stabbed it into the trunk with a green spearhead that glistened in the departing moonlight. The viridity of the weapon head was shared by bright, pulsing spines that curved along the ‘top’ of the extension. Stunned eyes followed it right back to its source - Zan’s own chest. He blinked and the tendril darted back, sinking rapidly over his heart until there was no proof it had been there. There wasn’t so much as a tear in his shirt. Alright. First the tree-siphoning crap, and now this. The bullshit pile was starting to stack a little too high for the Freedom Fighter’s tolerance. What he could have sworn was one of Tritoch’s screeches stirred him from his staggered stupor. Later. He could have a meltdown after everyone else knew what was going on. Zan took a breath, and was bolting again.

Once he broke into a clearing, the difference in temperature was night and day. Zan’s rush hadn’t slowed enough for him to properly gauge how long he had been huffing it, but things had suddenly dropped sixty or seventy degrees. That, and the fact that snowflakes were now clinging to his face and the shoulder-length strands of his soil-brown hair, made the Heavy Blade start to wonder if all of the running about hadn’t made him start to hallucinate. Oh, and the sight of snowmen building up around him as he continued his trek only served to help that theory. Weirdly enough, the cold was starting to slow him down, to sap away his strength in a way that it…it just never had before. Reasoning should have told him that if the heat could get to him now that so, too, could the chill, but reasoning and actual experience proved to be two different things. The untrained pain his lungs inflated the burn of their overuse, and he stumbled. The bottom ball of a still-forming snow creature chose that time to swell up in his way and forced Zan into a very, very ungraceful spill. When his body was done rolling and sliding across the snow, he didn’t move. For some reason, that one break in his stride was enough to pause his form and kick his mind into overdrive. His wolf, his power…gone. It had been replaced with something wrong, something that wasn’t him. Despite his struggles with the Beast, the Freedom Fighter had always known that it was right for him. It was meant to be. This? The weird tendrils? The slither of the muck under his flesh? This wasn’t the way “The World” had intended it and Zan couldn’t shake that off.

He considered lying there, always. Television had always told him that death by cold was a peaceful death. Or something. If he wasn’t in a party and he died, that’d be it for him, right? It’d be the same thing as deletion except, if he was lucky, his Twilight wouldn’t be strong enough to bring him back a second time. He had lost himself. He had lost what made him, him. Zan had failed the Eventide Crescendo, to boot. Whatever happened meant that the Highers won. He had failed Sekai.

Sekai…

Everything bowed and groaned, and the Heavy Blade was back up and sloshing his way through the snow. Like a sign, not a few strides in and he heard a voice mention Nall and Sheena. It wasn’t a familiar one, but it meant he had made it in time. The group was likely being confronted with the same things coming together more rapidly around him, but it was them. Rounding about a dozen of a mostly-finished batch of snowmen, Zan came into the view of the group looking sweat-drenched and dirty…and hesitated. To them, the lack of the butchered, scarred side of his face might be a little less noticeable over not only his sudden appearance, but his complete and utter silence. What he had to say was important, was critical, and yet it was going to be difficult to lay the whole thing out via a shouting spree while they tried to take down Santa’s demonic underlings. If only there was a…

Fucking Flashmails. Of course.

Another piece of his splintered thoughts came together, and he prepared to write the thing up. That, too, was halted however. Exploding into action again, he dodged whatever looks might have been aimed his way and barreled his way towards a likely ‘deer in the headlights’ looking Archer. With his Corona Blade drawn, he roared out a battle cry now limited by human vocal cords, cleaving down a rather tall Frosty that had slid up behind her in a single, vicious swipe. Looking down at her, relief flooding through him like endorphins, he said the first happy thing to come to his mind. It was matched with a shadow of a smile, something almost genuine through the self-pitying maelstrom of loss that was otherwise rocking his mental boat.

“Hi.”

A circus trio of midget snow creatures massed up in the powdery corpse of their superior, raised their menacing ice wands, and didn’t get so much as a syllable out before Zan lopped them all down their middles. How that killed them he wasn’t sure, but they were apparently monsters just like any other. Well, not just like any other, but that was semantics. The reunion with Sekai was cut short and the possibility of anything like it with Dien or Raquar would be nil until they removed the rather sizable threat. After a quick swap of the Ninja Anklet into his active gear and a BiVak Rom that ignited the frigid air and dispatched another six of the weakest, cloistered monsters, a Flashmail to the group was in progress.
Flashmail!
To: The Freedom Fighters
From: Zan
Subject: Tritoch

There’s no time to go into details quite yet, but I got fairly high up into something called the ‘central tower.’ Tritoch was there and some kind of silhouette phased in to give him a reward for getting that far. Long story short, he chose power enough to take all of our asses out and the thing turned him into a bizarre combo of a dragon, a centaur and a huge colorful faerie that sounds like a harpy when it screeches. It’s looking for you guys as we speak. I asked for a way to come warn you, and here I am. When this insanity is taken care of, I’ll answer whatever questions I can.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone, but it’s good to be back.

-Zan

Flashmail! End
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

((OOC:

Level 10: 291/300
Level 30: 149/150
Level 50: 50/50

I’ll get another post in before the round is up. This one was more about the trip of his return than the fighting. I didn’t want to bog down the post too much.

:OOC))
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Raquar
Ikkitousen
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:28 pm
Location: Hiding in the shadows

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Raquar » Sat Jun 27, 2009 4:48 am

The decision was made and they were off. He was allotted a middle slot which wasn’t terribly surprising, and meant he had to do nearly no work. He simply had to follow the mob as they moved out, and that allowed for a sort of silent tranquility, his mind lost in thought as his body traversed through the plants and trees threatening to entangle and entrap them with leaves and overhanging branches. Ducking and dodging through the vines quickly turned to being attacked by pine needles as they slogged through slush weaving their way through evergreens. He wasn’t exactly aware of where the switch happened but he was aware that the little rivulets of sweat beading down his arms and legs steamed in the slush at his feet. And soon it was his body that was steaming as small flakes brushed against his body and swirled around the party. The slush at their feet became gradually larger and stickier as their trek became slower and slower. Boulders of snow were building up around them as their trek took them further and further into the storm. Large towers of snow and ice formed shapes and soon there were snowmen surrounding them like tall motionless sentinels. Or that’s what they were until these sentinels sprouted weapons and skis and began to attack.

The boy dropped back behind Nall as a smaller snowman, one that came up to about his chest zoomed forward, twin daggers of ice held poised to assassinate their weakened ex-Elite. It took only a moment and one fluid motion for the boy’s Archspear to come cleaving through the snowman’s middle section. The icy Twin Blade twitched and spun around on his skis, a new enemy occupying his sights. Its skis twirled around and the snowman zoomed toward the Long Arm braking sharply and circling around blades held low to slice at the boy’s legs. It stung a lot but didn’t hurt all that much. The main issue here was the little thing’s speed. It was almost impossible to focus on the thing it moved so fast. But it was a snowman, so hopefully it would shy away from heat like most snowmen did. The only real issue was how he was going to hit it.

The little ice fiend came skating toward him again, but this time the boy was ready. As the little snowball braked to swerve around the player again but instead found a flaming rock dropped on its head. The beast’s head caved in and it started to smoke and sizzle before the beast dropped into a puddle of slush and ice fragments. He looked around after the destruction of that first one and to his dismay there were even more icy fiends that had risen from the slumbering tundra. There were some that were gigantic, almost 3 times his size that brandished giant frozen axes and huge claymores that threatened to crack the very earth they stood on. The Long Arm drew back toward Nall and Sheena, he had to be careful that they didn’t get swamped under by the sheer numbers of the creatures.

He spotted a trio of the smaller snowmen zooming toward the Blademaster and Fist Fighter. They sped forward at nearly breakneck speed before a dark falcon soared upward thrusting through them before crashing back down in a wave of inky destruction and darkness sending the trio of smaller snowmen into oblivion. He whirled around just in time to duck under a frigid blade that seemed to make the already cold air even more harshly so. In the process of twisting around the sword he swapped out for a slightly weaker weapon, but one he felt could have even more destructive potential than the Archspear. The event in itself was slightly regretful; his connection to that weapon was beyond more than just weapon and master, it was a part of him at this point. Still there were times when you had to shelve aspects of yourself for the greater good.

He dodged an overhead swipe from frosty before wrapping his spear in flames and laying into its thick frozen hide. The beast flinched with each successive hit as gashes were carved into its seven foot hide and streams of water poured from its round orb-shaped body. An overhead slash and a thrust dodged as the Berserk Spear was returned in favor of the Archspear in favor of saving SP. He managed to parry a lunge before returning the favor sinking his spear into its snowy flesh. A final Vak Don left the Deluxe in a puddle as his feet. He had started to breathe heavier and as a result didn’t notice the rumbling behind him. He turned out of happenstance right into a giant pile of snow knocking him to the ground and driving the breath from his lungs. This thing was huge, at least ten and a half feet tall with a giant axe that seemed to shimmer with a crystalline beauty. The thing had one of those idiotic snowmen grins on its face as it brought its cleaver down on his chest. A bloody froth of spittle and the words Vak Don burst from the boy’s lips. A small flaming shard of rock crashed into the Supreme but the behemoth merely shrugged it off as he brought another blow down on the Long Arm’s chest. More blood poured out of the cavity in his chest and the boy began to feel a slight chill. It took a final blow to the head before his ghost was separated from his body and he was now dependant on somebody else’s assistance before he could fight again.

((OOC:
Snowmen: 287/300
Deluxe: 148/150
Supreme: 50/50))
Level 28 Long Arm
Archspear, Newt Necklace, Smith's Gloves, Wyrm Scale, Kuja's Thong Dress
EXP: [700/1000]

WISHLIST
Levels
Weapons: - All
Armor: Head - Scarab Earring
Body - Nothing until Mid 30's. Ninja Garb Hand - Nothing until Mid 30's. Leg - Nothing until Mid 30's.
Items: Cooked Biles, Darkness Scrolls (Any and All)

User avatar
Locke
Ikkitousen
Posts: 111
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:21 pm
Class: Twin Blade

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Locke » Mon Jun 29, 2009 12:59 pm

“Project ZODIAC…”

What is this project? What does it have to do with the Zodiac?

“Twelve… broken up… too…”

Damn it, give me a straight answer!


There was a prod at his side, and Baron distinctly heard a voice at the edge of his consciousness as he shifted in his sleep. Whatever dream, vision, or hallucination he had just been having vanished in an instant, and the Twin Blade once more forgot what had happened, only that it was important and at the edge of his memory... and then even those thoughts were gone.

"Rise and shine, we're off to see the wizard."

Baron shifted, not opening his eyes and flinching away at the poke. He was still half-asleep, not recognizing the voice. Rolling away, he spoke softly, mumbling and barely coherent. "'Kay Libra... I'll be... up in minute..."

"The Wizard of Oz doesn't like to be kept waiting in his Tower, no more sleep. Unless you want to have to catch up in the Wasteland, not a pleasant option from what I hear."

Baron winced as he finally opened his eyes, the light piercing his tired gaze as he finally woke. He pushed himself up carefully, wincing at the stiffness in his neck and back before he realized whom he was talking to. Looking up to see Takua looking down at him with an amused smile, his staff in hand, Baron blinked in surprise. So that’s what had been poking him. Go figure. "Huh? Oh, sorry... I must have dozed off. Now what's going on, Wasteland, what?"

"We're leaving, which means that we're probably about to fight whatever's out in the Wasteland. Also means that you'd better wake up quickly, or else the adrenaline will do it for you." Both gave each other the same mocking, teasing grin, though they both also knew just how serious things were. Joking was all well and nice, but when reality kicked in, it was clear that things wouldn’t be so cheerful.

Baron was again reminded of Libra’s absence, and wondered where the AI had gone. Both he and the Gemini had gone quiet shortly after the Twin Blade’s collapse, one that he didn’t even remember. However, there was this nudging feeling that there was something important about that collapse, and Baron had to wonder just what. Clearly something had happened, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him. Maybe it would come to him in the future, but for now he had a bigger worry. If Libra and the Gemini were gone, what was he supposed to do? Had they been released, or escaped? But Libra wouldn’t do that, it wasn’t like him to simply just leave when he believed in this mission too. It was so strange…

Baron nodded slowly as he was getting up, though the exhaustion was clearly evident in his stance as he pushed himself up, stretching the soreness out of his arms and legs. His eyes were slightly swollen and puffy, and his stance was a bit slouched. The Twin Blade yawned again, still trying to wake up fully, though he was having a particularly hard time of things. It didn’t hurt to try though. "Alright, sorry about that. I apparently passed out earlier, so I figured a short rest wouldn't hurt. "

"Don't worry about it. Better to take a nap now than to pass out in the middle of a fight after all. Hmm...I wonder if we'll find a yellow brick road leading us out of the Wasteland."

Baron nodded and stretched, giving the Wavemaster a lopsided grin. "Maybe the Wizard can give you a heart then, huh?"

Takua gave him a feigned look of hurt, his expression almost enough to make Baron laugh. "Oh sure, and maybe he can give you a brain as well?"

Baron grinned and tapped his head. "Who knows, it may clear out all the voices in here if I fill the empty space." He paused for a moment with a short sigh, reminded of Libra’s absence again. "I sure could use some courage now. All of this that's happening... it's a lot. And I don't know how I've held up this long."

There was a temporary pause before Takua spoke again. "You won't have a choice about holding up unless you want to die a broken man in this war. Can't help you find courage though, I suck at that myself."

"Then I guess we'll just keep running and hope that we're going forward, right? Pretty much all we can do now." With that Baron strode towards the group, only absently noting Demorian’s command to stick to the middle of the group. Takua strode past, directed to the front, and soon everyone was moving again, heading towards what Baron assumed was the exit to the place. Demorian knew where he was going, apparently having owned the place at one point, if his story was to be believed.

Baron had only one other question at this point in time, to go with the hundreds already buzzing around in his head: what next? The leaders had suggested that they’d first try to get into the town in the Yamiyo server, one clearly marked on the map. From there they would find someone to remove these “tags” on their data so they could escape, but then what? Where would they go from there? How would they work to get people out of their comatose states and back into the real world? One question was quickly multiplying into many as Baron’s pace picked up in frustration, the Twin Blade’s hands clenching and relaxing at his sides. He tried to push it out of his head, but the questions were still there, always.

Lost in his thoughts, Baron didn’t notice when the landscape changed from a lush forest to a frozen one, his breath starting to mist before him as he continued forward. His eyes stayed low to the ground, but he didn’t see anything, only walking on autopilot, so to speak. There was nothing else left to say, nothing else left to do but walk and hope that they reached the Root Town soon. So far it seemed like everything would go smoothly… until the ambush showed up.

Baron looked up in surprise at the first sounds of combat, his eyes immediately narrowing as he noticed the snowmen surrounding them. The monsters were all jobs and sizes, making it difficult to gauge their difficulty. Pulling his blades from their sheaths, the Twin Blade considered quickly and decided to go after the smaller ones. It was an obvious choice, as many of them seemed to be the lighter classes, like Archers and Wavemasters. Immediately swapping out a full set of Vak gear, expecting that the mobs would be weak to it, Baron brought out his Akatsuki, Dragon Head, Iron Anklet, Smith’s Gloves, and Firedrake Mail. Wishing he had an Ap Vakz spell on hand to make it even more complete, the Twin Blade ran towards the first trio of snowmen he saw, all of them light class.

The first snowman skied towards him, a Rue Zot erupting beneath the boy’s feet. Dodging around the pillar of ice that shot up, Baron sent a combination of a Dek Vakz and a scorching Vak Don at the monster. A sizzle of steam came up as the spell connected, halfway melting the snowman. Orbs of blazing fire fell from the sky and tore it down to less than half of its health before it was quickly dispatched as Baron ran his blades through its melted body. Slush and snow scattered everywhere before the quick attacks left it destroyed and inoperable. Another Dek Vakz went off towards the remaining two before a Vulcan annihilated both, an Elemental Critical destroying one with ease. The other melted under the flaming dragon-like shape that tore through the duo, the extra damage from the burning beast more than enough for the creature’s health.

Baron grinned, thinking that the fight would be easy. The small snowmen were weak, and though they had the advantage of numbers, they would fall quickly enough to make it a moot point. The Twin Blade charged forward at another pair, one wielding a long spear and the other using a bow. Approaching the first one, Baron slashed out at the arm holding the spear, deflected by a twist of the shaft that sent him a step back to avoid being disarmed. Another quick pair of slashes actually made contact, the first driving the spear upwards and the second stabbing back into the snowman’s torso as the Twin Blade spun. The wound wasn’t fatal, even with the level difference, and Baron cursed his low attack strength as he pulled his weapon out. A Rue Rom exploded around him at that moment, the cold winds biting both into his skin and his HP as he stumbled out of it. A Vak Rom was his answer to the attack, melting the Long Arm snowman instantly while doing some small collateral damage to the Archer.

A pair of ice-tipped arrows came towards the Twin Blade, but Baron quickly ducked beneath them and ran forward, his blades slashing through both stick arms and leaving the icy bow on the ground. Another slash decapitated the snowman and left it to dissolve as Baron quickly moved to find another target. Unfortunately, the target found him in the form of one of the giant snowmen that plunged towards him on its skis, intent on crushing the boy into the ground. Diving to the ground and wincing at the scrapes on his arms and knees as he encountered frozen soil beneath the snow and frost, the Twin Blade barely avoided the massive snowman’s charge. As he turned, however, a spire of ice stabbed into his arm as a LaRue Zot exploded next to him, the level three spell draining most of the Twin Blade’s life and leaving his arm a tattered mess. He was thankful for the ice, leaving his wound numb and allowing him to ignore the pain for now. Nonetheless, a quick switch to his Lightning Cap for a Repth healed some of the injury, though blood still streaked down his arm.

Baron started to toss out another one, but the snowman came back around with a massive broadsword formed from ice bearing down to decapitate him. Ducking beneath the blow, the Twin Blade slashed upwards with his blade, slicing a chunk of snow out of the creature’s body but doing only a small amount of damage. Baron cursed the level difference as he always tended to, but tossed out another Vak Rom to chip away at the behemoth’s body. The snowman melted somewhat, but more than enough of its body remained for the broadsword to come around again. The flat caught Baron in his stomach, sending him flying back to crash into a frozen tree, wincing as he heard a very loud and distinctive crash.

Ow… yeah, I definitely felt that one…

The boy fell to the ground, his HP low and his body torn between pain and something very much like frostbite. All he knew was that he was in a mix of pain and lack of feeling that was oddly disturbing. Murmuring the words of another Repth spell, the boy sighed in relief at the blue light brushing away some of the pain and most of the freezing, wincing again as he pushed himself up to his feet. A quick burst of flames from a Vak Don drove the large snowman back before the monster’s broadsword came down for a sudden final sweep. Baron didn’t have a chance as he was torn apart by the massive weapon, and he was ghosted instantly, shivering at the weird feeling of… whatever that feeling was. He imagined it was what dying felt like… regardless, he was technically dead.

Well, at least it was quick…

((OOC:
Snowmen: 282/300
Deluxe: 148/150
Supreme: 50/50))
Character Information
Baron | Level 47 Twin Blade [100/1000 EXP] | 891 HP / 265 SP
Weapon: Fishskin
Armor: Emperor's Crown/Bone Armor/Thunder Gloves/Ninja Anklet
Accessories/Books: Ethereal Angel Wings, Silver Grunty
Skills: Thunder Coil, Gale of Swords
Spells: Merrows, GiRai Don, BiVak Rom, GiGan Zot, Rai Don, Ani Don, Duk Lei
GP: 750 (As of 8/2/15)
Wishlist: Nny Scales, Lucky Shoes, Saint Cross, Greave Sticker, Pet EX-Levels/Spheres(!)

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Zan » Mon Jun 29, 2009 3:44 pm

How did they always end up in these situations, fighting things that could only really be defined as comically strange? Either the Elites had a sense of humor or, given the nature of the Wasteland, Twilight itself liked to clown it up. Whatever the case, harmless snowman folklore didn’t apply here. What the monsters lacked in intimidation they made up for in numbers. Zan had learned to never underestimate a good swarm. With a few seconds of peace before they’d be on top of him again, the Heavy Blade equipped the Face Guard and his aged Magnifier. The Ap Ruem - more to defend against the Rue magic whipping about then to give him power in that field - was first, flushing his body with cerulean magic. Next came the Ap Vakz, igniting the muscles under his body with a crimson hue that was gone as soon as it had appeared. Lastly, acting as a transition from his current weapon to the eventual re-arming of the Corona Blade, Zan’s Plasma Blade was called to hand. Offering him another skill that would help him wade through the magical abuse, the Ap Vorma acted to reinforce his otherwise questionable defense against the arcane. When all was said and done and his equipment had come full circle, the Freedom Fighter felt ready to bring the G-rated nasties to their knees. Charging as best as he could through snow with a heavy broadsword carried in tow, Zan raced to meet his attackers head-on. All of them were on the smaller side of the spectrum, cracking iced whips and pulling back frozen bows. They were nothing.

In mid-sprint the first wave of glinting arrows shot towards him, threatening to poke weak little holes through his body before he reached them. Zan hadn’t planned to dodge, or roll, or any other kind of acrobatic fanciness, but it seemed whatever was within him now had other plans. Another tendril, oil-slicked and covered in bright green spines, erupted from his stomach and dug home into the snow. A sudden force tugged at his stomach in turn, forcing the Heavy Blade to lurch onto his gut just as the projectiles sailed over his head close enough to whistle. The sensation of the extra ‘arm’s’ presence vanished. When Zan scrambled again to his feet, it was just in time to catch a few lovely lashes of freezing cold whips. They hardly scratched his Hit Points, of course, but they had gotten their message across to him. They wanted to die. The three ‘Whipmasters’ and three ‘Archers’ had started to fan out around him, but he didn’t give them the time to complete the formation. What he didn’t catch in the first sweeping half circle of his Corona Blade was taken out individually, icicle limbs removed or big spherical torsos skewered. They had no hope against him, but a look around showed there were much bigger threats to be spending his blade time on. There were others that could handle the shocktroops and he had to let them. The tallest snowman near him, standing at well over ten feet and firing off a giant polar bear of a summon at one of his allies, was the kind that should have the brunt of his attentions. He’d give it just that.

Stomping his way through powder that soaked into his boots and weight down his clothes, Zan tried to build up the momentum to ascend its back like a stepladder. It was too tall, however, and the player just hadn’t been able to muster the needed speed quick enough. Even as he jumped to try and clear the first of the spheres, he knew he’d fail. That was, of course, until two of the disturbing little obsidian tentacles ripped from their hiding places under his flesh. Tipped this time with three emerald hooks placed around at the points of a triangle, one came from either shoulder and found purchase within the oversized fiend. Knowing what he wanted - or maybe he was controlling them, but didn’t know how? - they worked to climb the snowman, stabbing weakly into its thick body again and again in the process. It was managed quickly, efficiently, and by the time the Heavy Blade’s foe had started to turn he had already reached his goal. The tendrils keeping him stable, he lifted the Corona Blade over his head and sank it into the cranium of the creature. Again and again he did this, each stabbing punctuated with a grunt or a furious shout. It, of course, didn’t take too long. Despite the entities frightening demeanor, it wasn’t much beyond him in terms of strength. Its face rearranged with pocked holes, the snowman slumped forward and Zan rode its dead body all the way to the thud in the ground. Removing his weapon with a violent jerk, the panting cowboy jumped down.

Upon his landing, a would-be clever troupe of miniature snow people tried to converge on him from every compass direction. They must have thought, he reasoned, that this kind of strategy was original and they would somehow jump up several rungs of power because of it and strike him down. Instead, shrugging off a laughable chain of Rue Roms, a simple stab forward through the icy storm ended one of them immediately. Recalling his strike and flipping the blade to face behind him, a second thrust ended the one that had approached him from behind. The final two were taken out just as swiftly. Spinning his body around to allow for a third jut of his weapon through the menacing face of one of the snowmen, he snapped out his boot behind him and took off the head of the fourth. Dead. All of them. In wiping off the slushy bits that remained on his Corona Blade on the nearest tree, one that was at least a hundred feet high, Zan found something of an idea cropping up in his mind. The player grinned as best he was able. Even if it didn’t work, it was going to look awesome. Looking to the same tree, he took a few tentative steps back and let loose a BiVak Rom on the unsuspecting oak. At first there was nothing but melting snow and resistant wood, but the power of the spell finally did as he hoped and caught a branch or two aflame. Ha! The mystical fire were hot enough - again as he had hoped - that their spread was happening quickly, threatening to eat up the entire construct in a matter of seconds. Now for part two.

Lining up along the trunk with his weapon readied like a baseball bat, Zan swung it with a grunt and sunk it only a few inches in. Damn it! This was going to take longer than he had. The tree was going to burn up and burn out before he had a chance to finish his Paul Bunyan experiment. If only he was strong again. Then he’d be able to do this. Then he wouldn’t look like some kind of pointless pyromaniac. In that moment of bitter longing, of reliving his despair for what he had somehow lost, the Heavy Blade felt his body change. For a second it was as if the very embers that cried down from above him were filling his blood. It was hot, scalding even, but oddly lacking in pain. A look to his arms showed their veins flushing with black and an array of greens, splitting off here and there like forked lightning. Then the influx of strength came and, God, did he feel it. Having settled with his new physical restraints, feeling himself break through some of them was freeing. For the first time since he knew he was different, the Freedom Fighter was gracious to whatever snaked under his skin. Though he didn’t know it, his green eyes had begun to shine like jewels caught in sunlight and the web of veins around them had darkened into the hue of ash. Was this all it took now? He only had to want something enough, and his body made it real? The Freedom Fighter boggled at the potential, ignoring for the time being that his instincts screamed fifteen different kinds of ‘warning’ and ‘caution.’ Reorienting himself and hefting back the sword a second time, a sword that now felt as light as a baseball bat, Zan swung.

This time, the six foot slab of steel sank nearly completely into the base, leaving all but an three or so inches untouched. Yet again, the broadsword was craned back. By that point, all but the trunk he was hacking at was glowing and breathing flaring gouts of red and orange. The snowmen were keeping their immediate distance, but they didn’t seem to realize the tipping potential of the giant fireball. Zan’d help them. The final stroke came and the lumber fell, creaking and cracking and hissing its way towards a small sea of the monsters. The few that were now fully aware of the imminent danger turned and skied frantically away. The rest? Well, the rest were either caught under the tumbling force of the makeshift weapon or bathed in the fiery aftershock. The sound was akin to a sonic boom, its strength rippling All but the strongest were slain immediately and even they were left to crawl away from clouds of falling snow and the melting sludge that used to be their comrades. To these poor sods, Zan went around with the Corona Blade and systematically ended their six bloated bodies. They seemed to sigh with their deaths, oddly humanoid, before that inevitable silence came.

Rest in peace, motherfuckers.

Though not entirely of his own volition, he felt his new strength drain away and all of the small physical alterations that had come with it. Cue Dien calling after him, the punch to the jaw, and probably one of the most inappropriately timed and uncalled for conversations. Zan felt his absences a little more than excused, but he also couldn’t expect the Blademaster to know. After all, that as one of his points, that his fellow sword against the Elites and their many lackies hadn’t been there, hadn’t been open. For anyone but Dien, Raquar and Sekai, that kind of frustration would have been met strictly with a ‘fuck off.’ Luckily for him, though, none of the other Freedom Fighters seemed too concerned with what he was up to. That’s the kind of general attitude he had expected from everyone, really, and it shouldn’t have surprised him that his friends wouldn’t be so chipper about his lack of communication. At the end of that particular thought train, Sekai made her own debut with a hug-tackle so fierce Zan was surprised it didn’t bowl him over completely. By the time they had parted ways again, the Heavy Blade couldn’t ignore the small pulse of happiness in his heart. The Archer always had a way of making him feel oddly loved, cared for, in a way that he hadn’t felt since Lowen had been stolen away from him. In his peripherals, the sight of two dispersed ghosts were met with Rip Maens; one for Raquar, one for Baron.

With a shout, Zan launched himself back into the fray. They had a long ways to go.

((OOC:

Level 10: 262/300
Level 30: 143/150
Level 50: 43/50

Aps: Ruem, Vakz

:OOC))
Last edited by Zan on Tue Jun 30, 2009 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

User avatar
Takua
Ikkitousen
Posts: 115
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2008 12:19 am
Class: Wavemaster
Location: Walking the line of madness

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Takua » Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:30 am

Quite a lot seemed to have been happening while most of the group played with the computer terminals. It didn't take very long after Senna talked to him though for the Wavemaster to go back down the stairs, well before the general call to get the hell out of the place. Twice he had seen something that looked remarkably like the shadow of Xenobia, and twice it had been nothing. He'd figured that living with hallucinations until he got out of here was going to be a bitch, but he hadn't realized that it was going to be like living in a horror movie the entire time. Several of them, in fact, with him in the so called starring role, although he could very well die if he let the hallucinations get to him...or ignored something that was real when he thought it was fake. Trying to appear normal though would be hard if he was constantly reacting to every single thing that came at him, but his method of figuring out which people might attack him and which wouldn't was pretty fucking shot at the moment. Taken out behind the woodshed as it were and dealt with like that red-headed stepchild.

Given that they were in Yamiyo though...he probably couldn't get a message out to Centrus again beyond the one that had already gone through anytime shortly. Slicer too, who would likely have found out already that one of his friends was in a coma. Unfortunately, he also had no chance of getting any help from anti-psychotic drugs, since he hadn't been able to be diagnosed before going into a coma. Hell, he hadn't been able to get out of the fucking house before he was in a coma. Thanks to that, he was just a little pissed off at Xenobia and absolutely no chance of being able to kill her at the power level that he was now. Probably never be able to kill her one on one, given her power to control him. For that matter...how did she do that? Maybe he could ask Demorian after they were in Luchairt Cradh and safe. How odd to use that term here...Yamiyo, where the Elites reigned supreme, and he was thinking about being 'safe' there.

Looks like he needed a bit of a reevaluation of what he was thinking about and what he considered. So, what he really needed was some time to actually think without having to worry about being attacked. Something that didn't really seem that likely, considering that, from the sounds of it, the city itself was pretty damn fucking dangerous at all times. Well, maybe the place they chose to lay low would be safe then? Yeah, that'd be good. Unlikely in his mind, but he wasn't exactly unbiased. His thoughts were all distorted, and he couldn't tell where rational thought ended and paranoia began. He knew the line was there, but he couldn't...tell. It bothered him that he couldn't decipher his own thoughts, and knew that that would be the case for a very long time.

The Wavemaster managed to distract himself from his line of thought by talking with Baron, although it didn't truly succeed in getting his mind off of it. There were a few things that still stuck around...like how he hadn't cracked already. It had been close in Juk, but they had gotten out of there, been forced out of there, and he'd been saved as a result. How quickly he could have realized what was going on while inside of the field was questionable and-

“You can stop dwelling in the past and move your ass, or I can take over and do it for you. But if I grope Kira right now, I can guarantee that you're not gonna like it very much.”

Twitching as he realized that she was do it, he walked forward and joined up where Demorian wanted him to be. It was then that he realized that he had to be one of the higher levels in the group...and that was just a little disturbing. As a Wavemaster and a Light class with a giant amount of SP, it meant that he was on magic duty and had to heal the hell out of everyone if they wanted to make the most of his reservoir of magical power. Then again, everyone was likely to heal, they weren't going to leave it to just a single person. Not when it was the entire party's life on the line and failing meant dying.

But still...supporting Demorian. Not a bad position to be in really, it also meant that Demorian would help him when it came down to it. Still nerve-wracking to be on point as it were, where monsters were most likely to attack. Given that he was incredibly weak to physical attacks, the odds were good that if monsters attacked, things would become painful rather quickly. Of course, that didn't stop him from handing out an Ap Do to himself, Sekai, Kira, Dien and Demorian in case they were attacked. Now that he could make use of his fast SP recharge.

The thick jungle that they had walked through at first turned gradually into a forest, and then sudden and out of place snow. Snow that sucked away all of the humidity in the air to form a carpet on the ground. Shivering both in anticipation and cold, Takua let his Ruem Wings out, ice and water forming two wings on his back in preparation for a fight. It wasn't that long before snowballs appeared...and Demorian and Nighthand drew weapons. Following suit, the Wavemaster took out his Firedrake Bone in preparation for a fight with Rue based enemies. After all, if the Wasteland decided to follow typical rules for terrain and monsters, they were about to fight ice or snow beasts.

Which ended up being exactly what happened, although Takua really hadn't expected to see...well, snowmen. Anywhere from little tiny little things like the one that formed right at his feet, a mere four feet tall, to the ones that were over double his height and looked ready to lay down a serious smackdown. Still...he supposed it was about time to get to work. Clubbing the little guy in front of him to its death and feeling slightly mean as he did so, he looked around to see what everyone else was doing. Odds were good he'd need a lot of SP restoratives in this fight, but that was fine.

Focusing on the bigger snowmen, knowing that the smaller ones were likely to die in mass amounts as his spells went off anyways, he found something named Snowman Supreme right next to him and...well, not very happy at him. The Wavemaster could have cared less about that though, and a rather fresh RaVak Don sent three blazing spheres hurtling into animated snow. Damage was good, but it wasn't enough, and he had to bend over backwards to get out of the way of the monstrous axe that the beast wielded. Fortunately the Ap Do seemed to still be active and was the cause of his ability to dodge, something that he took advantage of as he let off a Vulcan Ch from the Starstorm Wand.

The shrieking, blazing phoenix cut a swath of destruction through three smaller snowmen before it exploded with a fury, partially melting the snowman's entire middle with the leftovers of it. That left it near dead, but still not quite there. It needed the helping hand of another RaVak Don (that ended up clipping another Snowman Deluxe while it was at it) to send it to the grave. But then Takua was dodging a very unhappy Deluxe's strike, although only long enough for its friend to get close enough and send an icy spear into his leg.

Cold blossomed as the spear withdrew, blood pouring out of the wound before a muttered La Repth sealed both his wound and those of his allies nearby. Grimacing, he knew it was time to step things back up a notch. But not against these two. Instead, another RaVak Don sent them both to their deaths a la burning hell. It didn't sound like a carpet bombing just yet, but the sizable explosions were enough to get the pyromaniac in him very happy indeed and looking for a second helping.

Which it might have had considerably later had group of little snowmen not launched an all-out assault of ten spells at a single time. The icy barrage of several Rue spells might have gone ignored if he hadn't happened to be feeling a little angry at the moment, and if he hadn't seen a few of them as a level two variety. A moment later and a BiVak Rom obliterated several of them in a burning vortex that momentarily cleared a spot on the ground for the snow to fall on once again.

After that was done, Takua took the opportunity to refresh his SP supply with a Mage's Soul. He was tempted to start flying, but the concept of trying to do it in a snowstorm wasn't appealing, and with hundreds of monsters around him, he didn't relish another Wild Hunt like situation with fifty spells going off on him at the same time.

Still, he also didn't like being on the ground when icy arms nobody else seemed to notice or be bothered by were reaching for him. Taking off a few feet to get out of their icy and probably imaginary grasp, he found another Snowman Supreme nearby. Finding his target surrounded by further victims, he cast another Vulcan Ch. What he didn't notice was that Dien happened to be in the way.

What followed was nothing short of boggling for the Wavemaster. The molten bird sucked in the Blademaster and took off as if it had just acquired some form of afterburners on Powerthirst. The titanic detonation that obliterated all but the single Supreme in the middle of the formation delivered a man that was still very much on fire...and one who brutally murdered the Snowman Supreme a few seconds later.

Casting it off as some sort of a reaction with an ability that Dien had, Takua turned just in time to see an blade made of ice lung for his middle. Sidestepping as quickly as he could, it still took off a fair amount of flesh from his side, and pain flared. Refusing to scream even as his eyes grew large, he concentrated as much as he could and launched another spell. The RaVak Don slammed down on the Snowman Supreme (who disturbingly seemed to wear the face of Nighthand...or Zan, it flickered between the two) in front of him, but there was no stopping the second swipe from slamming down on the partially stunned Wavemaster's head, splitting it like a cantalope. Ghosting with the familiar sensation of horrible illness, Takua waited for someone to revive him. Soon.


((Level 10: 238/300
Level 30: 138/150
Level 50: 41/50 (One moderately injured)))
Takua - Lvl 57 Wavemaster
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Wishlist: Levels, Stun Rod, Hag's Wand, Wand of Truth, Ex-Level, Ex-Spheres, and Myth: Demiurge, FL Fukuoka

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Dien
Exalted Player
Posts: 226
Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 1:59 am
Class: Blademaster
Location: The "Who's Online List," Stalking People...

Part 9

Post by Dien » Tue Jun 30, 2009 3:59 pm

All serious conversations aside, it was time for the team to move again. The door opened into a jungle, and while Dien did resent not being in the front of the pack, it made good sense. After all, against the stronger threats they’d have to face, he’d probably be better off in a supporting role. So while Demorian took point with Sekai and Takua in formation, Dien was left to straggle somewhere in the middle. The combatant in him didn’t like the arrangements, but that part was quickly silenced. Logic wins.

At least he thought it did, until they were able to walk from a steamy jungle into the depths of a frozen wasteland. All hell broke loose, inasmuch as hell could be described as a horde of angry snowmen. By God, some of the things these elites came up with were simply ridiculous. Nonetheless, danger was danger, and the most susceptible among them to danger was Nall. It was a matter of course when they circled around him at first, though as the fighting broke out what line they’d formed was quickly dissolved. For Dien, it was a quick cast of his typical set of aps: Ap Do, Rig Geam, and Rig Seam before he turned and clotheslined one of the zippy snowmen on his Fire & Sky sword. The foolish opponent had tried to zip through their group and make a pass at Nall. Wait, how had some of them gotten past their lines?

Hi.” he heard, and cocked his head to one side in confusion. Is that…? The thought was cut off by a flashmail, which he promptly read, confirming his suspicions and adding some new ones. But wait, the first communication with the blademaster since their first quest together to face off against Primal and there’s no apology? What the fuck? Turning to face the heavy blade, he slowly approached from behind after he sent off his spell.

“About time you wrote,” he said, following up with a fast, hard punch to the man’s jaw as he turned. That’d teach him to leave without saying a word to his friend.

With a recently defeated snowman's powdery innards decorating his broadsword, Zan turned to respond to the familiar face. The small smile that had formed was immediately erased as, before he could even complete the movement, knuckles bounced off his jaw and split his lip.

Uh. Ow.” For a second, the Heavy Blade waited for the rage to swell…but nothing. It became a weird cocktail of shock, subtle joy, and no small amount of confusion. “So.” He turned his head, spitting away a glob of red and…black? “I’m going to go out of my way here and guess that something’s wrong. What with the suckerpunch and inappropriately timed anger.

“You’re damn right there is,” the blademaster said, both fists clenched as he struggled to keep himself from delivering another blow, “you abandoned us-abandoned me. You didn’t even respond to the flashmails I sent you, instead just running off to go get plastic surgery with whatever cheap surgeon you could afford.” Dien could feel the heat melting off him in droves as the manifestation of his Twilight flared to life on account of his emotions. It was a miracle that he wasn’t bathed in flame, delivering renewed punches to the man in front of him. Each heavy pant of his breath heaved his shoulders up and down as he continued to glare in wait of the man’s response. He had some serious ‘splainin’ to do.

The Freedom Fighter watched as the snow began to melt around his friend, affected by the literal heat of his anger. As a simple defense mechanism, Zan tried to muster up the same anger, but the farthest he got was exhaustion. The man’s nerves were fried from something he couldn’t even remember, his wolf was gone, and his brain had been rattled around as violently as a malfunctioning magic 8-ball. Taking a pause to cleave down another two of the small creatures that had tried to flank him, he’d face the furious Blademaster a second time.

I want to explain, Dien. I’d love to put you at ease. Make you feel better. Give you friendship butterflies. But…” He let the Corona Blade’s tip drop to the snow, held only by one hand. The other peeled its way down his face, slow and steady. “I don’t know. I can’t right now. Something happened to me. Something wrong. My wolf is dead and there’s…” He fought for the right words. “There’s something else inside of me. Something that shouldn’t be there. I have way too much to figure out to make you feel secure again. I promise, when I’ve caught a little more of my balance, I’ll try and explain to you where I’ve been. For now just…just get over it, man.” He didn’t sound angry. He only sounded tired; so tired.

“Get over it?” Dien replied, subconsciously flaring his Corona out behind him to devour another pair of snowmen who thought they could take advantage of his attempt at a heart-to-heart, “is that your brilliant solution? Just forget how you left me with no one to rely on here? How I let you in and trusted you with my pain, and how I shared in yours? Come on, Zan,” he said, spinning around in a silent skill that chopped down another would-be assassin before its blade could reach him, “when are you gonna grow up and realize that we want to help you sort through this? God,” he said, silently casting a Vak Rom to destroy another snowman in the distance, “all I want, Zan, is to be open with you again. I missed that…” his voice trailed off and he gazed into the snow, the fiery Corona around him shrinking slowly as he let out a sigh.

Zan took his own breaks in listening, using Dien’s forced pauses to slice and dice a trio of the midgets that stupidly kept approaching him. Didn’t they have easier prey? “I’m not saying to swallow all of this crap down and forget about it. I’m simply pointing out that our current predicament—” The player lobbed his weapon towards Dien, the timed strike skewering the head of a seven foot Frosty that had gleefully charged between them. “Isn’t making for the best grounds to reconnect. Oh, and then there’s the whole ‘I don’t know what the hell to tell you’ thing I tossed in there, if you noticed.” Feeling a shadow of the old anger he used to be able to muster up, Zan waltzed over to the twitching creature and freed his weapon. “Whatever you want to know, it can wait. Half of the answers I don’t even have to give right now, alright? Back off.” A solid kick to the snowman's white torso ended its struggles.

“You are SO lucky we’re in a combat situation,” Dien scowled, turning and unleashing a Vulcan summon on a random clump of snowmen, freezing them in their tracks as the fires roared through them and demolished them. “We’re gonna have a chat, you and I,” he continued before giving his sword a couple swings through the cold air to get the blade singing, “get caught up on all that’s happened since you ran away.” Before another word could be said, the blademaster was off, heading towards the mayhem he’d just caused to try and finish it off before he was finished himself.

Of course his Ap Do was pretty much gone by this point, so as he began to run (inasmuch as his romping through the snow could be called ‘running’), he let the spell surround him again, extending the renewing the life of his enhanced speed. He also invoked another spell to give him an advantage—one that he wished he’d thought of sooner. “Ap Vakz.” He found it strange how he was titled an Emissary of Vulcan, but had no real advantages in the native element aside from being able to burst into flames.

His first target was the biggest in the group that he’d hit, who was only now starting to turn and face the one who’d attacked. It was a hulking mass of snow and ice that was the melted semblance of its prior form. The blademaster’s attack had melted the joints which refroze and seemed to cut down on the thing’s mobility a bit, but he doubted this would last very long. Already it was twisting its head to face him, and he could feel the chill of an ice spell about to come crashing down on him. As best as he could, he dove to the left, hoping that the radiant heat from his body would let him slide a little bit on the snowy surface—which it didn’t. It was also too soon, though, because none of the attack missed: a pair of gargantuan icicles rose out of the ground and drilled around each other, carving a hole in his stomach that tore out his side as their younger siblings perforated the rest of his body. In the real world, he would have died from such an injury, and as it stood it was staggeringly painful, but the reality of this World said that he’d only had about half of his HP removed. He groaned, pushing himself upward and downing a Health Drink to aid his regen in self-recovery. This needed to end fast.

Cracking his neck, Dien was on his feet again, charging as quickly as he could through the snow to the ski-bound mammoth. Even with its health depleted and its joints frozen, it still moved better in the snow than he did. What I wouldn’t give for a shovel, he thought, his breath heavy from the abnormal running motions that were required, or wings. He sighed, watching as the other combatants merely floated over the snow like it was nothing. For them, keeping pace with the snowmen would be relatively easy. Now, though, he was finally in range.

“Vak Crack!” he shouted, leaping into the air and cleaving his now ignited weapon straight through the snowman’s lowermost section, giving it the semblance of a buttcrack. Granted, this elicited the snowman’s attention, and the icy shaft of its massive spear sped in a wide arc towards the blademaster who’d just attacked. Dien raised his sword, attempting to deflect the butt of the weapon away, but still finding himself knocked back by the sheer force of it. No sooner had he hit the ground than a flurry of snowballs grew around him into large chunks of ice and slammed into him, constricting him momentarily and leaving him gasping for air after they vanished. The damage wasn’t as severe as the last spell: maybe 10% of his HP had been depleted. Still, he needed to keep up his assault on the mammoth behind him.

Or rather, the mammoth on top of him. The pain from having his lower legs lacerated by the long blades of ice that the snowman rested on had been delayed in its onslaught. Dien cried out, craning his torso and neck to try and get a glimpse at the oversized spearman as he began twirling his weapon about. For a moment he panicked, fully expecting the shaft to be driven straight into his skull and end this digital life. He threw his face into the snow, trying his best to make his head inaccessible, though knowing it was a futile move. He flinched, and it was over.

…what? he thought, feeling the pressure on his legs relieved as he pushed himself up in the snow. What was more, the cold around him was gone, and gazing down at his arms in front of him, the faint orange glow that had been persisting since his ordeal on Theta server was no longer quite so faint. His leg on the mend already, he turned to face the beast which had pinned him, only to find the mostly melted husk of what looked to have once been a snowman. A moment later, and the glow had returned to its usual state.

“That’s odd,” he commented aloud, watching as the thing tried to regroup from…whatever had just melted half of it away. He wasn’t surprised that it was still alive—after all, it was a hacked monster, and was probably almost twice his level, but there couldn’t be much left to its HP after an attack like that. A moment, and the weapon in his hands was changed out for something a but more fiery. It was time to do this beast in for good.

“Vak Revolver!” he shouted, and Jinsaran went to work, cleaving two lines of fire into what was left of the thing’s lowest section, bringing it to the ground. But it wasn’t over yet. As soon as the skill was done, the blademaster rushed in, hacking slice after slice into the monster before it was nothing but an icy carcass. Finally, the thing faded through red to digital dust, and he was left to face the rest of the snowmen who had taken part in his summoning special. From what he could see, there were only a handful of partially melted snowmen in the vicinity: five of the little zippy ones, and three of the bigger ones. Current tactics suggested he make one of the bigger ones his next target, and as he began to move, he froze.

Not one, but two of the bigger snowmen were looking straight at him with their menacing charcoal eyes. Reflex called for an ap spell to either magical defense or magical evasion, but neither of those were in his repertoire. Well, neither in a means fast enough to be readily accessible. Blue runes carved their way into the sky over their heads—runes that continued to grow past what would be expected for a mere spell. He had one option:

“Vak Don! Vak Don!” Simultaneously, the spells formed over one of the snowmen and crashed down through the rune, crushing it in a bath of fire before the summon could form. At least now he’d survive the attack from the other one, which he promptly turned to face. No sooner had he looked than a bolt of ice shot straight out of the thing’s chest and connected with his own. The very life seemed to be sucked out of him as the crystalline structure vibrated and pulsated in its insidious blue hue. But the spell wasn’t over. As he grasped the shaft, spikes of pure ice shot off it and trapped his hands there, turning them into something more akin to the tops of salt shakers than hands. From within his chest, the same thing happened, the ice growing and spreading out, splitting organs in its wake and leaking blood everywhere. Dien coughed, the crimson stain burning cold as it worked through his throat and mouth.

And then it was over, the lost HP and lingering pain the only thing to remind him what had just happened. Falling to his knees let the World fall into blinky red syndrome, and he let gravity carry him to the snow. The good news was that he’d just survived a Merrows summon. The bad news was that it had completely exhausted him of any energy he would have otherwise had. Get up, he told himself, the difficulty in moving his arms incredibly staggering, you’ve been through worse than this before! It was true, and as he pushed off the frozen ground that had so readily welcomed him, he looked up to see if his attacker was still nearby. He felt heavier than usual, his movements sluggish as he forced his body to numb away the exhaustion. Consuming a Healing Potion did nothing for this, though it did undo the damage that the Merrows had done.

Dien stood, his Ap Do having long since extinguished. He’d have to draw the snowman in if he wanted any kind of a real fight. Fortunately for him, Vak Don remained in his inventory, and calling on it incited the wrath of the icy twinblade. It rushed towards him, and he held up his Jinsaran, preparing to deal out ever more of that fiery lovin’ that the sword was good for. Another spell was cast to keep it stationary, and the blademaster closed the distance, dealing a single Vak Slash to the thing’s torso to send it to the ground, where a quick followup stab drained the last of its HP. By his count, that left one more of the medium guys, and sighting it, he pulled a Flame Blast scroll from his inventory. It would take a second to target the thing from this range, and he also wanted to wait for a pair of the injured little ones to be in range (it would make things a lot easier). A split second, and he called the scroll’s name, igniting a fiery whirlwind about the snowmen that whittled away the last of their HP.

Out of nowhere a chunk of ice fell on his head, sending stars through his vision and dropping him to his knees once again. Dien shook his head from side to side, trying to get rid of the dizziness and find the snowman that had thought it funny to pack his snowball full of ice. “Probably one of those three,” he muttered, wondering for a moment what exactly Danielle was doing as he watched a trio of snowmen archers taking position on the hill. Another pair of scrolls were pulled; Fire Tempest scrolls, to be exact. Even though his was a close-range fighting class, he needed to fight a ranged attacker with ranged attacks. The spells erupted out of the middle one, and consumed the snowmen, leaving the field immediately around him relatively empty.

With a sigh, he rolled onto his back, staring into the clouded sky as snow fell. The reprieve was brief, though, and for reasons he didn’t know and couldn’t explain at the moment, his comrade’s cast of a Vulcan Ch happened to catch him up with it. Dien’s mind was wasted, and the usual rage that filled him during his fiery transfiguration was reduced to barely more than apathy. He surged towards the intended target, another of the gargantuan snowmen, and plowed straight through its middle section, sending a wave of flame outward that obliterated any of the smaller snowmen who were nearby. But the big one wasn’t dead yet, and the blademaster looped around and plowed through it again, and again, and three or four more times before the thing was, like his last target, rendered lifeless. A cocky smirk crossed his lips before he plummeted into the ground, steam rising from the impact that left him a ghost, lying still in the shape of his corpse.

This was exhausting as hell...what had that flashmail Zan sent even said? He brought it up and let its contents pour into his mind. Tritoch—or rather, what was left of Tritoch—looked to be their most serious challenge in this wasteland. God, this was going to suck.

(OOC: The count!
Level 10: 202/300
Level 30: 132/150
Level 50: 40/50 (one moderately injured))
Last edited by Dien on Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Image|||Level 35 Blademaster (+200 EXP)
Wishlist: EXP, Ends of Earth, Armor with Status Effects

Lord Canti
Exalted Player
Posts: 300
Joined: Sat May 13, 2006 3:58 pm
Location: In da' plains of hell, natch.

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Lord Canti » Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:33 pm

(Being a fly on the wall, so to speak, was rather useful to the winged Twin Blade. While waiting for the others to do their thing, ask and sabotage as they needed, he had been waiting along with Nall and Sheena, keenly aware of the things said or done around him. The things you hear just by listening... It was good to know where people stood on things, for instance. He'd heard now about what happened with Angel now, what REALLY happened with Angel, thanks to Sekai.he wondered if he might talk to her later about something later, maybe get some advice. The double-minded player had a big thing about mercy towards others. True, Canti didn't see that as possible in some cases, but maybe there were some... Well, he wouldn't let himself be bothered about that right now. She'd just been delivered here with friends of hers into this suck-ass situation. Time and a place, Canti-me-boy. For not long later, Sheena had spoke the magic words of "We've got to get out of this place.". Not word for word, but they had to get out, period. Demorian seem to get on top of that after whispering with Sheena, outlining the game plan. Well, he DID know this place better.)

“Alright guys, I’ll take the lead. I can take a lot more punishment so I’ll work well on point. Hmm... Takua, Sekai, if you two could join me for support, that’d be great. Nighthand, you hang back with Sheena and Nall, and help protect them. The rest of you spread out between us and keep your eyes open! Who knows what’ll show up.”

(Of course, he didn't precisely know what was going to happen, mind you. The Wasteland was apparently so chaotic that even those that worked here were in the frigging dark about it, most of the time. The formation put a number of their strong in key places, with all the rest taking mid-range positions in a sort of combat team scenario. Given the appearance of things as they came outside and found a jungle, Canti started to get a feeling not unlike Predator. That trilling alien sound, those glowing eyes on an invisible body, that plasma gun... What he hadn't expected was for it to suddenly get cold. One moment, growth filled jungle, and the next...snow crunching beneath his feet. What...? Canti stepped back from that a second, confused. And then it began to snow, causing trouble for movement here. He allowed his feet to stop touching the ground as soon as he found that traction was going to be a problem. More or less, the Twin Blade was walking through air now, going through the motions of walking without actually doing it. He was only a couple inches above it all, though. Demorian halted as soon as he saw some snowballs. But that'd be perfect, right? Well...only in the case of this being the land of fun and games. Since this was Yamiyo, he obviously didn't hold up to play around. As they tried to keep moving, the snowballs grew larger and started to move on their own. Okay...this was not normal. The Twin Blade followed suit and drew weapons. He wasn't being taken off guard here. And that's when they had enemies to face.)

Canti: Whoa... Frosty The Ass-Kicker and all his frozen pals.

“Form up, wrap around Nall and Sheena, protect them.”

(One thing of significant importance, aside from the fact that they had the icy-equivalent of all the class weaponry, was that they were on skis, able to move around easier. For Canti, this wouldn't be a problem. For the others, it would definitely be so. They were snowed in, quite literally, and surrounded. Keeping his eyes on the enemy, the winged Twin Blade's hand went out to a screen that was suddenly hanging in mid-air, and went down a selection of music briefly, 'till it hit a particular track, and then he hit PLAY. Battle had been joined. Taking proper flight, Canti took to swooping down on a particularly-fast line of advancing foot-soldiers. Smaller ones who were made of dagger-pushers, say. The idea was to take them off guard while the others fought hard. He was keeping pressure off of Nall and Sheena this way. The aerial view allowed him to see any gaps in the defense and descend upon them without mercy. He knocked down the first few on their faces. They were a lower level, not really as hard. Canti had flung himself amoungst a group of five, swinging about his daggers while they were caught off guard. He kicked the head off of one that tried to blindside him. It would've been funny if they weren't fighting for their lives. A couple more of the regulars attacked with the ones he was working with and Canti was donked on the head with chunk of ice for his troubles. So saying, he retaliated and watched all but one of the Snowmen he was dealing with melt away.)

Canti: Sure was toasty. Bloop, bloop, bloop...

(Uhhh...don't ask. In any case, he scissor-slashed the last one of that particular posse in half, down the middle. Hey, they weren't THAT strong. He could feel it. Time for the next group of unruly assassins! The others were already deep into their own battles. That's when he saw a medium-sized evil Snowman leading a few of the small fries as akin to an assault group or...possibly Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Canti immediately flew over there and sort of rammed into the side of the seven-foot-tall Snowman Deluxe...only it didn't work out as well. Remember, these guys are snow, so...he found himself caught inside the thing's lowest snowball up down to his waist. The Snowman looked down, curious, and began to strike at Canti with its sword.)

Canti: OUCH!

(The other ones were forming a line to have at him next. There was the sound of grumbling, and then Canti embedded himself further into the Snowman Deluxe, who looked around at itself to figure out what the hell was going on. Seconds later, the Twin Blade pulled a chest-burster, lashing out with Thunder Coil and kicking the monster down before slashing it apart personally to finish it off. He laughed, almost maniacally, that is...until he found four regular Snowmen and two more of the Deluxes frowning at him.)

Canti: Oh, uhhh...heh heh. Hi.

(Okay, now I want you to think back, way back...to the original Megaman X game, with Reploids and Mavericks and all that. Try to remember Chill Penguin, who would try to kill you to pieces. Remember his special attack, Shotgun Ice? Well, the combined Rue Zot attacks of several Snowmen at once was pretty much like that for Canti, who was thrown back by the force of it, a fair amount of his HP suddenly taking a vacation. He started to pop some Health Drinks as a result, while those six came in at him again. He was currently grounded, so they had the upperhand. That was when...)

Canti: Red light!

(...one of the Deluxes froze in place. Ironic. Canti swiftly cast Suvi Lei again and the other one stopped as well. Following that, he took no chances with this little grouping and fired gouts of the Darkness Flame from his hands at the two paralyzed foes. It wasn't fairplay, but then who exactly was counting anyway? The Snowmen weren't weak against Darkness, per se, but Canti's particular power was fairly potent anyway. They smoldered after a few quick blasts, and the other four regular ones were left to look back with a feeling of unease at their now-decimated personal support. The Twin Blade laughed and equipped Magatsu as he stepped towards them. Their fate was sealed with Flame Dance. It was shortly after that he saw a familiar face and a Flashmail to boot. Color him hella-surprised on this one.)

Canti: Holy shit, it's Zan-the-man!

(He would've had more to say on the matter or even checked the Flashmail, but an impact threw him off into a tree. Canti stood again and looked up. Oh...crap. There was a fifteen-foot-tall Snowman glaring down at him, in a manner only peeople from Ghostbusters can appreciate from the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man. This one had a big freakin' hammer made of the hardest permafrost. There was a muffled roar out o the thing, and it swung down at him. Ah, but all in all, Canti was waiting for the hammer to fall...so he could get out of the way. A heavy thud, the Supreme turning, and...it jumped!)

Canti: Oh crap.

(It took high maneuverability to avoid getting suddenly pounded with a ton of Snowman or his King Dedede ice mallet. Canti hopped off of the weapon whilst it was on its downward arch and blasted the creature in the face with a large stream of Darkness Flame! The face of the large creature melted, coals falling for a moment, but...it quickly reformed. That was sort of an "Uh oh" moment for both of them. That is...until Canti stole its nose and ran with it. Well...flew. The Snowman Supreme was put into a sudden rage about that, and it began to pound after him incessantly. The Twin Blade THEN exploited its one true weakness: Its backside. Think about it. Big F-ing Snowman, bulgy snow-body... So, therefore, limited reach! Canti swooped in behind and attacked it without mercy with his daggers, slashing and stabbing and making sure it couldn't turn on him. Unfortunately, he failed to notice the Snowman simply reversing his body so he was facing the other way without moving and WHAM!!)

Canti: Ow.

(That...was a good deal of HP gone right there. If he hadn't healed from before, he'd be dead now. There was now a mallet-shaped hole in the snow with Canti making a snow devil with his imprint. That's when he chucked a Flame Blast at the thing, and then a Hellstorm. The thing let off a roar, but the Twin Blade was already moving again, this time kicking the beastie in the face, waiting for it there, and then dodging out of the way so it hit itself in the face. He then Flame Dance'd the back of the neck, and soon after found the head toppling from the body. He would've played a bit of King of the Mountain, but this was serious business and his health was low. Canti needed a moment to recuperate, and thus he took up the defensive to keep creatures at bay. Best to be more careful next time. These guys had sorta' critical'd him on at least a couple occasions.)

Canti: Go figure we have to face a horde of ice-users...

OOC: The count!

Level 10: 191/300
Level 30: 129/150
Level 50: 39/50 (one moderately injured)
I'll have a doozy of a sig later, I swear. It'll reflect ".hack//CODE" an' everything.

Hey look! A profile! It's got items and stats and things! Cool! If it isn't fully up to date, it will be, so don't worry 'bout it.

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Zan » Wed Jul 01, 2009 2:06 pm

Out of various angles, Zan could tell Dien was tearing a fiery swath through the snowmen and their precious wintery wonderlandy field. His level wasn’t permitting him to be as efficient at it as the Heavy Blade was sure he would have liked, but he was working with what he had. The Blademaster was getting the most out of his Twilight and it was, without a doubt, something to see. Still, as visceral and beautiful as the whole spectacle may have been, the Freedom Fighter didn’t have time to gawk all day. There was still a virtual army of the sons of a bitch left and God only knew when Tritoch was going to swoop down with his ridiculously mutated body and try and take them out. If the gods of “The World” had any mercy, they’d put it off until they were done with this particular obstacle. Drawing in a breath, Zan readied his Corona Blade for the umpteenth time, and immersed himself in the madness. In the distance, a Snowman Supreme (really, that’s what the game had named them?) conference had apparently come into session. Standing between him and mass powdery murder was a phalanx of the weakest creatures. Icy blades glanced off his body and equally weak spells struck him like pebbles as he waded through their numbers, chopping them down like a jungle man breaching the wilds with a machete. Two, four, five, seven of them fell under his persistence. Before he could close the distance completely, a ghosted Wavemaster was returned to life with a Resurrect. He couldn’t help the kid with his zero Skill Points problem, but he figured one of his class came prepared for that sort of thing.

Although some of his own SP had returned to him since their burnout, a swap to the Blessed Blade and the proceeding Rig Geam assured a quicker return. With their attention elsewhere, Zan charged the creatures. A tap of the switched Ninja Anklet’s BiVak Rom flared the cold air around the five Supremes into the hundreds, softening them up into angry sludge as he finally came to slide (almost to his detriment) to a stop before them. A few crazed overhead strikes, like a man trying to furiously cut up blocks of firewood, ended its life. Good news aside, however, the attention of the remaining four was a little frightening. A duo of broadswords tried to drive this point home, but some frantic slip n’ slide tactics just got the Heavy Blade out of harm’s way. The fact that he was still upright was quickly alleviated by the crash of powerful glaciers from overhead, ones that Zan zig-zagged from the best his exhausted legs were capable. Most of the damage was avoided, mercifully, but it left him face-planting into the artic Wasteland. When he turned to get a better assessment of the threat, Lady Luck finally turned her back on him. A freaking Kraken made of frost berated him with huge tentacles, smacking him down again and again…and again and again. Just when Zan was sure the pain would have to stop, it hit a few more times. When it was over, he was left a bloodied, broken mess, his vitae staining the snow around him.

He was, however, still alive and this time not ignorant of the healing spells in his arsenal. Wanting to conserve his magical reserves, however, Zan resorted to slamming down three Health Drinks like his dad used to do with shots of tequila. It repaired enough of the trauma - though he’d like dream about the Kraken beat down for a while - to get him on his feet with revenge burning in his eyes. All but the one who had cast the spell seemed to have dismissed him as dead. Another BiVak Rom forced their minds to change in a whirl of hissing, crackling flames, but the ELEMENTAL CRITICAL that bled above their heads staggered them and made them sitting ducks for the handful of seconds it took for Zan to chop each and every one of them down to size. Sadly, their marshmallow roasting demise had called the attention of more of their ilk to him, and the Heavy Blade was again on the run. Unlike the magic of the weakest snowmen, their Supreme cousins could actually lay a hefty amount of damage into him if he didn’t keep on the move. It put him into a blizzard of kicked up snow as spires the size of streetlights exploded up from beneath him and tornadoes of ice and freezing rain tried to capture his fleeing form. It didn’t matter that he was keeping out of the full force of their onslaught, for even being nicked by the half dozen high leveled spells was started to add up. If only the damn things had shittier aim!

And there it was again.

A single moment of superb willfulness, and something in him changed. He wanted it badly enough and whatever existed in place of his wolf deemed it a suitable request. When gashes ripped along his neck like gills, however, Zan thought something had gone wrong. The pain was only slight, even as the gashes began to tear randomly across the exposed portions of his arms, but paranoia mounted just the same. If he wasn’t under a barrage of magical ferocity, the player would have stopped to panic. As it were, he could only watch as a green mist started to pump from his wounds. It plumed out around him like a protective cloud joined not a second later by a thick black smoke. This morphic darkness pushed at the edges of the emerald mist and shuddered, and twisted, and spread. Within its cocoon of fog, the smoke shaped itself into terrible things that warped the mind and made their creator fall with vertigo. His head spinning, Zan was still able to catch a glimpse of the Frosty league. They appeared to be having the same trouble targeting him, their spells missing him even in his prone state - though they were getting closer and closer - but it wouldn’t do him any good if he couldn’t maneuver with the odd smokescreen. And then his eyes…throbbed…and it was gone. No, no it wasn’t gone. It was faded. The Freedom Fighter suspected it was only even that visible because of the white backdrop of the snow. Well didn’t that just defeat the whole purpose? A moment of annoyed observation later as he clambered back to his feet and the answer was a fairly clear ‘no.’ The Snowmen Supreme still seemed to be off their aim just so. Had it dimmed for him alone? The rest of the party aside, though such a fact was unbeknownst to him, the answer was an apparent yes.

With a new smug smirk, Zan prepared to bring his assailants down, only to be caught in the dead center of an OrRue Rom. Huge, jagged blocks of ice bounced off of him like he was a bumper in some Elite game of pinball, every jarring impact rattling his brain around in his skull and lurching him this way and that. He was left disoriented and critical, but an Ola Repth took care of most of that. Knowing now that his new ability was far from perfect, he charged the snow fiends with the same caution and the same practiced tactics as he had before. Only the one - presumably the one that hit him - had chosen to stay focused on him, and Zan stuck the thing half a dozen times like a pig. It had died on about the fourth such crazed skewering, but he made sure it paid in full for its magical misstep against him. Bitter much? Nahhhh. The overdramatic kill had put oddly menacing coal eyes back on him, and the Freedom Fighter found the sudden need for a decision. The Corona Blade was a bit stronger than the Sharktooth, but its skill would kill only one of the four entities now intent on obliterating him, whereas the Sharktooth’s Vak-oriented Skill was a group gun. Going with the area effect plan, Zan pulled the absurdly long katana from his inventory and went to work.

“Karin!”

The weapon ignited, wreathing in red-orange flame as he made his first horizontal slash. The Skill sank through the three in front of him, melting whatever ‘flesh’ it came into contact with and making it hiss as steam a second later. The next slash brought his entire body into a three hundred and sixty degree spin, catching the last of his mobbing foes’ numbers that had tried to sneak in a back attack with the rest of them. It was this same Snowman Supreme that earned the wrath of the final strike in the form of an overhead swing that roared with fire and crushed with physical might. When it was all over, his Sharktooth left carving a tired line into the ground, the Heavy Blade huffed at the lack of deaths. They were all fairly close and, despite his reluctance to use Skill Points, he called upon them yet again and slap a hand against the ground and call another of his favored BiVak Roms into spiraling existence. The scorching whirlwind did the trick, reducing them all into heaps of sludge that pooled pathetically around him. Four more down, but Zan was starting to run out of fuel. After his blurry adventures through the central tower and his mad sprint to even get here, he had entered the fight already burnt out. Now all of this? The Freedom Fighter didn’t know how much longer he could push on, but supposed it didn’t really matter. There was no real choice. Only when Tritoch was dead, the whole reason he was there in the first place, would he take a breather.

The chimera couldn’t arrive too soon.

((OOC:

Level 10: 184/300
Level 30: 129/150
Level 50: 29/50 (One Moderately Injured)

Aps: Vakz, Ruem
Other: Rig Geam

:OOC))
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

User avatar
Senna
Awakened Player
Posts: 150
Joined: Sat Jul 01, 2006 10:28 pm

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Senna » Wed Jul 01, 2009 7:35 pm

The conversation with the Wavemaster was diverting, and it was good to get to know the new faces, put names with them, put temperaments with them. But in the end, and at her own action, it was a short conversation, and once diversion ended, thoughts returned to…

Ugh.

It was unfortunate, actually, when all you really wanted to do was haul off and smack someone – or several someones – but circumstances forbade that action. Senna’d rarely had such an experience, but it was a pretty constant state in this place, and it was making her anxious. Twitchy, maybe that was a better word. The need to do something crawling over her skin, with no way to release itself.

Alright guys, I’ll take the lead-

Speaking of things that made her twitchy. Carnegie had the right of it. Inaction breeds doubt and fear. It also breeds obsession, to a point. Increasingly, all she could think about were getting out of here and *hurting* something. Odd how those two urges increased when their enemy gave voice as their leader. When had they subserved that thing over themselves?

Well, whatever. Getting along required going along, so she went along. She was glad to see most of the people she trusted most situated along the center. If past experience was any indication, the worst was certainly yet to come.

They left the area they had been in, and entered a jungle. Odd sort of thing, but a perfect place for the enemy to have placed an ambush. Absolutely perfect. Weapon at the ready, Senna eyed every moving leaf, glanced over at every sound. But the ambush? It never happened. The twitchiness grew.

In contrast, the jungle shrunk. It happened rather rapidly for nature, but about on par for something set within The World. Everything got colder (and once again, Senna regretted her choice of clothing for her avatar. She supposed, this might constitute “you made your bed, now lie in it.” Or in this case, you chose sandals, now deal.) Snowballs began to dot the landscape like odd malignant growths. Suspecting that (again if this remained true to past experience) cold and snow meant either water or fire monsters coming up, she switched to her best water kit. Added defense on one side, or added offense on the other. Either way, it seemed logical.

And true to form, the snowmen began to grow. Not individually, though she wouldn’t put it past someone to code that, but just as a general rule. The further they went, the bigger they were, the more obviously snowmen and not just random spherical formations. About the time they started having the hints of features, she understood what was going to happen. Nor was she the only one.

Whoa... Frosty The Ass-Kicker and all his frozen pals.” she heard from Canti. There was time for a single laugh, sound forming to light mist in the cool air, then there was the familiar creaking of wet snow packing down, of movement and compression, and from up front the shout of their new defacto leader.

Form up, wrap around Nall and Sheena, protect them.

She started to react to his words out of pure inbound instinct to follow orders issued in authoritarian ways. It was only in remembering who and what it was ordering them around that she jolted herself out of the motion.

Attack first, then move. God, so many. If they all cast, we’re all toast. If even HALF of them… The thought was left to fester, but there was nothing like worry on the Long Arm’s face. There was… eagerness perhaps? She couldn’t see, couldn’t really tell, but could guess. In the next breath she was activating a Speed Charm and then unleashing a Rai Rom. She wasn’t a light class, but clad in largely light class armor, and the spell was enough to do for the three small ones caught in the center of the spell. Then she was running, dodging through a moving maze of snow, scanning for signs of other players. Specifically, she was searching out the newcomers, to render assistance if need be.

Another Rai Rom. Another two of the little ones down. God, this was going to take forever! She dodged around one of the medium sized monsters, then came to a stop and ducked as something roared overhead and the air changed. Fire. Something big was on fire. She wanted to see, but the snowmen were stacked so deep around them. They were ALL she could see

Frustrated now, she swapped the Air Bracer for her Fire Bracer and started trying to move closer to the main body of the group. “Vak Rom! Thin out, damn it!” she hissed as another three were caught up in the fiery vortex. But even as they melted away, it felt like twice as many moved in to take their places, cris-crossing the landscape on those accursed skis. She paused, panting, and realized she had a Flashmail. I hadn’t even heard the chime.

She opened the listing and closed it again just as quickly. She’d seen two things, and they were enough to convince her there were more pressing things to do than read it. First, it was LONG. And second, it was from Zan. If it were just the latter, she might have given it a chance, bu5t in these conditions, taking a pause to read a Flashmail dissertation was a good way to get speared by a few weapons.

As though guessing at her thoughts, one of the mid-sized creatures with a set of punching daggers on its hands in a cold approximation of a Twin Blade skied past and cut at her hard with one of the two weapons as she closed the menu. The cut wasn’t terrible in and of itself – the drive-by nature of the attack had minimized the true strength of the class – but the speed at which it had been going added momentum to the attack. It spun her around once, hard enough to completely disorient her and throw her off balance. She ended the ungainly pirouette sitting on her butt in the snow.

The AI on the monsters must have been decent. Seeing her on the ground and thus unable to reliably use her spear, several of the smaller snowmen converged on her location. Again, a Vak Rom came to her aid, stunning and melting two of the three completely and leaving a third crippled. Senna rocked forward, to have one knee and one foot on the ground, and used her spear for a final thrust to put the thing out of its misery.

To her left, the medium creature had come around and was making another pass. She got to her feet, still aware that standing in one place would be suicide, and charged at it. Between the speed boost she had and the skis it was using, the rate of approach was somewhat frightening. In a regular game of chicken, Senna would have veered almost immediately.

This wasn’t a game of chicken. Still running, she invoked, “Rai Wipe.

A small divergence from her path led her to its right at the final, critical moment. As her body went into the automatic motions of the skill – the first glittering swipe causing a burst of snow to fly from the point of impact – her mind focused on letting the blade on this side pass through instead of bisecting her.

She was partially successful. The sensation of a blade suddenly catching partway through her body and tearing out through her back was just as painful as having it go all the way through, she thought with some mild surprise. Her mind expected this to end with another trip to the ground, but the skill was still in activation, and the conclusion of the sweeping attack also blew through yet another of the little level 10 creatures, bisecting IT and leaving chunks of packed snow thunking to the ground around her. She downed a Health Drink, and momentarily wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to soothe away the lingering pain of the wounds the thing had inflicted on her.

It was just a moment, just a MOMENT of stillness, but in that time a blue glyph painted over the ground. Then another came, just slightly offset from the first. Held in their thrall, she found herself at the center of both a tornado and a converge spell, both water based and both thankfully just level one.

As the splinters of ice cleared the air after the brief magical assault, Senna was again left gasping. Good thing their enemies were so stupid. If they’d all cast at once, they could probably just wipe out the group.

Even a she was thinking this she was again on the move. The medium-level one she’d charged down was on her trail, whisking along in her footsteps and threading through its brethren as easily as she did. Up ahead, she thought she saw a ghost form and unleashed a Resurrect on it* then dodged right again, and it was back into the sea of snow and ice weapons. She needed a place to stand. Running wasn’t helping, and it also wasn’t satisfying that weird need to do something. Now, unleashing the Rai Wipe? That most certainly had.

Up ahead, four of the creatures were standing in a rough group, having perhaps collided on their skis. Seizing the opportunity, she called another Vak Rom centered on the middlemost of the four.

It died, but the others got lucky on their rolls. Two were in terrible shape and one in decent shape. Senna skidded to a halt in front of them, swinging her spear at the same time. The momentum of the swing helped her stop completely, and the furrow it dug across one snowman’s misshapen midsection was all it took to finish it. She was forced into an awkward block then, arms nearly crossed as the mildly injured one’s sword swung in a quick arc toward her neck. As her arms uncoiled, she turned the motion into another attack. At level 10, even though it wasn’t that badly hurt, it stood no chance. A cut across where it’s neck would have been, followed by a butt-end strike to the side of its face dislodged the thing’s topmost snowball in one of the least bloody decapitations Senna had ever personally caused. A quick strike ended the third’s life just as her buddy the level 30 arrived.

Senna crouched and regripped her spear. As before, the two were facing one another down, the distance between them closing. This time, she didn’t move. She didn’t need to. There was only a slight shift, driving up and forward at just the right time, and…

Hnh.

The grunt of pain escaped unbidden. They’d both impaled one another, her spear clean through it while one of its knives had grazed her side and the other – the cause of the sound, truth be told – was buried in her midsection, just below her ribs. The impact had driven her back several feet before they ground to a halt. Grinning in a manner she felt sure she didn’t want to see, Senna released her spear with one hand and grabbed the thing’s icy arm.

Vak… Rom.

It seemed like it was trying to cast too, but the fire spell hit an elemental critical and finished it before its own spell came to fruition. When the knife and the arm went away, Senna staggered a bit drunkenly back, her hand migrating to the bleeding spot briefly before she remembered that it was a Repth or two, not pressure, which would make that feel better. She cast one, then wheeled around-

-to find herself face-to-face with two more snowmen. One was the size of the middle-man she’d just vanquished. The other? He was much bigger. And the axe in its hands looked positively enormous.

Shit,” she commented, her tone almost amused. This was about to get even more interesting.


((OOC:

*Dien, this was meant to be for you if you weren’t rezzed yet – I wasn’t quite sure. If not, next person to die gets a free one :)

Level 10: 168/300
Level 30: 128/150
Level 50: 29/50 (One Moderately Injured)
:OOC))
Senna, level 33 Long Arm (710 HP/180 SP)
Most common kit: Ichigou, Racoon Earcaps, Air Bracer, Snow Panther, Winter Coat, Graceful Book
Spells/Skills: (Critical Hit/Death) Repulse Cage, Ap Corv, Ap Vorv, Rai Rom, Rue Zot, La Repth
Click for full equipment and items
14300 (1/23)

Raquar
Ikkitousen
Posts: 108
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:28 pm
Location: Hiding in the shadows

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Raquar » Thu Jul 02, 2009 7:42 am

He gesticulated the tip of an invisible hat to his resuscitator. He was somewhat surprised to see the Heavyblade with them, but more for the timing issue than the loyalty issue. It didn’t matter much as in the end he was another, powerful, sword to lend to their army. Speaking of army, Frosty and his chilly pals had been definitely thinned out, but there were still quite a few of the little monkeys that needed dealing with. For whatever reason, as he dodged a Frosty spear and returned his own favor, the Frosty the Snowman song popped into his head, albeit a slightly different version. He couldn’t have said why, or what prompted such an event, but as he carved a couple more gushes into a soon-mushy snowman the song was there and soon he found himself singing along.

”Frosty . . . the snow . . . man,” a pair of blades dodged, a pair of Vak Dons and a pile of slush.

”And all . . . his . . . bitchy friends,” a Rue Rom, a Rue Zot, a trio of shadow-enhanced spheres of pure menace and half a snowman torso.

”They decided tonight . . . that they should pick . . . a fight,” a sprawl accounted for by a whip around the ankle, a vertical overhead slash, a stab through a snowy gut and another deceased snowball.

”And off away they skieeeeeeeeed!” Apparently a twin pair of archers were not overly fond of his singing it seemed as he was forced to weave in between a double salvo of icicles, dodging most but getting a fair few stuck in him. Hunting down archers was generally out of the question so he improvised a little. He ducked under the flying tackle of a deluxe at just the moment were another round of salvos came his direction. The quick duck allowed him to avoid the charge and use the Deluxe to shield himself from the ice arrows, both actions which were beneficial to his health. Using his spear as a one might a pole or an oar, he propelled himself forward ramming his shoulder into the Deluxe with as much force as he could muster. It staggered a bit forward but it put him just close enough to the two archers. With a smile he unleashed his summon and broke into the second verse.

”Frosty and his snowmen, and the Freedom Fighters they found.” He would never get tired of watching his falcon soar. It had an inky sort of color to it, but it was like a clear starry night, his falcon the night framed against a bed of overlapping stars. Even when his falcon crashed down into the ground the waves of frothy darkness that rushed over and consumed his opponents had a kind of ethereal beauty about it. The two little snow bastards died instantly although the Deluxe took a few follow up slashes before it went down. He was starting to feel invigorated now, and his singing came back with a fervor.

”They got their fight and served them right, they learned not to fuck around!” He close lined an approaching snowbag and performed two quick downward thrusts mulching the creature. The time for the final verse was approaching, and therefore, the final crescendo of his little dance.

”Now Frosty the Snowman, and all his icy buds,” he took a frozen bastard sword to the ribs as a Deluxe behind him approached unannounced. He turned off the blade and returned with a slash of his own, small bits of blood leaking from his mouth and side as he moved onto the final few sentences.

”They got turned into slush, they were pounded into mush,” his battle with the Deluxe had turned into more of a fencing match than anything. Parry here, riposte there, feint once in a while, but no real damage done on either end, but it was with the final line that the boy found enough fury for a push to overwhelm the creature.

”Because they were just a bunch of duds!” Ducked under a slash to perform his own, twist out of a thrust to hack chunks out of the torso. The boy took a couple hits of a couple feints but overall he was the last one laughing as his spear tore into the powder of the creature and eventually reduced it to a fine powder. That was better, he was starting to enjoy himself again.

OOC:

Snowmen: 161/300
Deluxe: 126/150
Supreme: 29/50 One Moderately Injured
Level 28 Long Arm
Archspear, Newt Necklace, Smith's Gloves, Wyrm Scale, Kuja's Thong Dress
EXP: [700/1000]

WISHLIST
Levels
Weapons: - All
Armor: Head - Scarab Earring
Body - Nothing until Mid 30's. Ninja Garb Hand - Nothing until Mid 30's. Leg - Nothing until Mid 30's.
Items: Cooked Biles, Darkness Scrolls (Any and All)

User avatar
Lighteria
Well-Oiled Machine
Posts: 176
Joined: Fri Oct 01, 2004 12:59 am
Location: :noitacoL

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Lighteria » Fri Jul 03, 2009 4:17 pm

Lighteria is, as usual, lost in thought as the team moves onward, into the wasteland and the truly bizarre scenery changes.

Well, messing around with the terminals didn't do a whole lot to help us. They may as well have hung a big banner in the middle of the room that reads "You're screwed." We'd pretty much have gotten the same information. No advice on how to get out of here... no adivce on how to cross the wasteland... no advice on how to get back home. You know, part of me was hoping the solution to us waking up would be stored somewhere in some place held by the elites. ...But I guess I have to give them credit. If I was going to hide the one thing my enemy wants somewhere, it sure wouldn't be an easily escapable prison complex where I put said enemies. But then again, all action movies do that anyway. They never just flat out kill the good guys, they always have to capture them, or gloat, or laugh at them. God forbid they put a bullet through their head and break for lunch.

...Hm. You know, I just called them the 'bad' guys. But I doubt they see it that way... I'm sure they've warped the situation around in their minds enough to see themselves as perfectly decent people. Just like Demorian did... He used people... played them like damn pawns on a chess board, even got them killed, all to save his own ass. I wonder what makes him think he's better than others...



“Form up, wrap around Nall and Sheena, protect them.” Demorian says, his timing perfect and actually causing Lighteria to pay attention.

"-And what makes you think you can just bark orders?!" Lighteria says suddenly, accidentally saying his thoughts instead of thinking them. He blinks at his own words and coughs, getting a full body shiver, his blood running extra cold now from embarrassment and the sudden temperature drop.

“...Uh… what I mean is-“ He trails off and coughs again, looking to the newly formed…

Holy crap, this is practically- no not practically, this is an ARMY! We are facing an ARMY of… of… …snowmen? What the hell?! Is this just a random occurrence? Is the wasteland just THAT unstable?! …And if it IS that unstable, why couldn’t it have randomly generated a giant army of, let’s say, fruit smoothies? It has to be the Alpine, Carrot-Nose Death Battalion? Can’t be something benign? GOD our luck sucks.
…Ugh. Ok… How- do we avoid getting completely swamped and overrun? Let’s see we can-… …uh… we can… …uh… …

GOD our luck sucks.


In an instant, Lighteria’s hands flick towards his belt pouch and pull the Akatsuki. The blades, multi-colored and dotted with little dark flames on the surface, flicker for a moment as he surveys the incoming mob. He watches for just a moment as the team storms forward, meeting the fray head on and… mostly get killed actually. No matter, Lighteria has more on his mind at the moment… like killing things. There’s a good reason he switched out his stronger Rashou for the Akatsuki. There’s nothing like a good string of elemental criticals to start a day off right after all. The twin blade charges right for a swarm of the little snowmen, a few medium ones scattered about, all of them skiing towards the group with weapons drawn. Though they may have a faster speed in the snow, the twin blade is positive that giant balls of snow and twig arms will never match a human being for dexterity, especially a class specifically designed around that. Though the snow certainly doesn’t facilitate a leap, the twin blade makes a leap for the effect anyway. He sails just over the swinging blades of two blade master type snow men. His blades suddenly light aflame…

“Twin Dragons.” He states, the blades coming down on the creature’s heads and essentially carving them in two, the flame coated blades slicing effortlessly through the packed snow. With a growl, and his blades still burning hot, he makes a forward flip, dodging a wide swing of a heavy axe snowman, slicing through its chest and coming down on a charging twin blade snowman, Lighteria’s blades coming down the front of its body just as it makes an overhead strike, leaving two deep gashes in its front, slaying it almost immediately. Without skipping a beat though, he makes a fast forward tumble through the snow, making it puff in a cloud of flakes and powder rolling to the feet of a long arm he makes an immediate uppercut, flames searing up its front and slaying it almost instantly. As he lands from the uppercut he blinks, seeing one of the deluxe snowmen growling and swinging its giant axe down towards his head. The twin blade gasps and tumbles forward between its legs, using the last of the flames from the attack to scrape its ankles and legs, taking the moment its stunned from the blow to rise up and swing his blades into its back. The flames pop and fizzle in its back as they go out, the snowman’s insides melting and its entire body collapsing into the powdery snow.

After that display, the twin blade glances to his sides, noting that his attack, while certainly fun to execute in its own way, did pretty much nothing to stem the numbers. Already, snowmen have surrounded him, a few arrows of ice falling from the sky pretty much directly onto his position. He gasps, deciding this is a probably a good time to keep moving. He darts forward, three separate arrows plunging into his footprints. He starts off by targeting a snowman whipmaster. He rushes forward, taking a brief lash across his chest before plowing his blades through the snow, making it burst in a puff of powder. Almost immediately he moves onto a long arm deluxe snowman. He clashes his blade with the tip of its spear at it swings, moving in and giving it a good stab in the chest, making sure to stay close to discourage the caster and ranged snowmen to attack him for fear of hitting their friend. Of course, this doesn’t prevent a much smaller long arm from whizzing by on its skis and taking a pot shot at Lighteria’s back. A tear rips through the back of his shirt, causing Lighteria to yelp in pain, unable to retaliate so instead chain stabbing the poor long arm right in front of him, keeping up pressure to make it difficult to counter. Unfortunately, the long arm manages to lift its spear shaft up suddenly, making an upper cut to Lighteria’s chin. He gasps and staggers backwards, the spear coming down squarely on his front while he’s stunned from the blow. Before he can even yelp out, an arrow plunges into his back as well. The timid twin blade gasps, momentarily fearing for his life before making a fast tumble forward, between the deluxe snowman’s legs and swiping at its ankles, causing it to fall forward, just enough damage to kill it off.

“…Oh. ….Hi.” He says quietly, finding himself having tumbled directly at the feet of a fifteen foot tall heavy axe snowman. It rears back its weapon silently over its head and brings it down with a crash, just in time for Lighteria to shift to the left. “Crapcrapcrap!” He says quickly, switching out his weapon for his superior Rashou. The snowman takes a moment and makes a wide swing, causing Lighteria to shriek and barely manage a duck.

Need healing- need healing-! Need plan, need plan!
…No stinging yet though…
…Huh. No arrows this close to the big guy…


He nods to himself and stuffs a blade into his belt, holding up a hand almost mockingly to the heavy axe. It gladly obliges the mock though with an overhead chop. The axe sails downward towards Lighteria’s outstretched hand, the size easily enough to chop him in two. …And Lighteria doesn’t dodge, surprisingly. The axe plunges right into his outstretched hand… and stops dead in its tracks, not even a drop of blood drawn. If snowmen could look surprised, they probably would at this point. Lighteria taking the opportunity to fire off an Ol Repth on himself, cleaning up pretty much most of the wounds he took.

Phew… If that Suvi Lei had resisted, I’d be very dead right now.

He laughs weakly at himself and digs into his pouch, a Resurrect sailing across the field towards Baron while he has the spare time to heal. “Well now that THAT’S out of the way…” Lighteria says, a little menace in his eyes. He grins and punches his fist into the paralyzed leg of the snowman, easily digging his hands into the wet snow and climbing slowly towards its head. He laughs bitterly, the archers not picking him off for fear of hitting the big guy square in the back. Of course, the twin blade makes it a moot point, the moment he reaches the top of the snowman he pulls the blade from his belt and makes a clean swipe across the beast’s neck, cutting its head clean off and setting them both tumbling down into a pile of snow. The twinblade disappears in a Lighteria-shaped hole in the snow for the moment and wipes his face off.

This is gonna take a while… My best bet is probably… hm…

He leaps out of the snow pile suddenly, making a beeline for an injured snowman supreme. He charges forward with a yell, arrows plunging into his footprints as he flings himself at the beast’s stomach, his entire body glowing red. There’s a bright spark on the thing’s stomach and the sound of a wild flame from out of nowhere. From the spark of light suddenly appears well over a hundred tiny points of light. The tiny orbs flow over the beast’s body in a huge torrent of elemental shocks. Somewhat akin to dying of flaming beestings, the creature hits the snow and collapses, the red glowing orbs hurriedly spreading out over the battle field, each pulsing red. Flame magic now glows brighter and hotter… and ice magic now fizzles, its blasts weakened.

OOC:
Vak Aura is active
Snowmen: 154/300
Deluxe: 124/150
Supreme: 27/50
Last edited by Lighteria on Fri Jul 03, 2009 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Lv. 37 Twin Blade (180 SP)
Weapon: Rashou (Thunder Coil- 30, Suvi Lei- 20, Mumyn Lei- 30) (Life Drain)
Armor: Holy Tree Mail (Juk Kruz- 20) - Scarab Earring (La Repth- 20, Rip Maen- 40) - Time Sandals (Ap Do- 15) - Forest Gloves (Juk Kruz- 20)
GP: 14384

Wish list (In order of priority): Angel halo accessory, chibi angel wings, Bone Armor, Professional

Lighteria: "Obsessively updating my profile since Fri Oct 01, 2004 7:10 pm"

User avatar
Nighthand
Master of Games
Posts: 1265
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 9:23 pm
Class: Bladesmage
Location: ...Tracking...please wait...

Re: Captured! Jailbreak of the Century

Post by Nighthand » Fri Jul 03, 2009 6:43 pm

Demorian, as yet, hadn’t stepped up in the battle. Aloof as he was, yet as down-to-earth as he seemed, he cared about Nall and Sheena, and their well-being. As such, he stood near them, using his body as a shield for incoming attacks. He didn’t attack back; to do so would be to risk losing track of the snowmen around, and let attacks through to Nall and Sheena.

As the battle progressed, the snowmen stopped moving. Their numbers didn’t lessen, but they returned to their dormant state when they were killed. The party was as surrounded by snowmen as before, it was just the number moving that declined.

The snow around them was becoming a trampled mess, and Demorian was getting less and less effective at protecting Nall and Sheena. He heard the fist fighter cry out as a large ice arrow struck the ground near the fallen Blademaster, and turned his gaze on the archer responsible.

Just then, Lighteria made his transformation, becoming a series of speckled lights around the battlefield. His aura would weaken the snowmen, and strengthen the power of Vak spells, but Demorian didn’t care. For an instant, it felt like his bones were on fire. He sank to a knee, then rose, shoving the pain aside. He put on his best war face, and stared at the snowman archer.

This archer was one of the biggest snowmen around. Its ice bow was easily the size of two players, and the arrow could have been as big as a tree. That much ice at such a velocity would be highly dangerous, even to him.

“Infernocall!” He shouted, just for fun, since he could activate items easily enough without having to shout out their names.

Above and behind him, the avatar of Vulcan appeared, a great roiling cloud of smoke and cinder, and twin beams of white-blue fire lanced out at the snowman. The icy beast took them head-on, the area around it bursting into steam.

When the steam turned to snow and fell, the snowman still stood. It looked largely unharmed, despite the ferocity of the spell Demorian had let loose. Even though the Vak Aura was in place. The icy Blademaster turned to look back at Sheena.

“Sorry dear, but I can’t stand here any more.” Without a second glance, he dove into the fray.

His ice-form blade slashed left and right, quickly turning a pair of oncoming miniature snowmen into puffs of powder. At least his ice was still strong enough to do that at his level. He jumped, and kicked, and knocked one of the middle-sized snowmen on its side. As it tried to pull itself together, he stabbed it, then stabbed again, then kicked it for good measure. It didn’t rise.

A massive pillar of ice struck the ground next to him and sent him flying. He picked himself up off the ground and eyed the Supreme Archer warily, watching for a second strike. The strike came, and he started running. He jumped up and ran along the ice log, and leapt off it onto the monster’s giant bow. He slashed and cleaved it down, stabbed, and slashed again. His blade flashed in the thin sunlight, and the monster fell into its component pieces. Then he dove back into the fray, temporarily safe from gigantic ice arrows.

---------------------------------

Nighthand had started out by helping Demorian protect the pair of leaders, but he had rather quickly left to fight on his own devices. He didn’t bother to watch his fellow party members; he knew they had themselves well in hand. Instead, he and Silverblade lived in their own little world, filled with magic and snowmen and his Corona Blade. He absently noticed the arrival of a flashmail, but didn’t bother to open it. There would be time for that later. He also was subtly aware that Zan had returned, albeit differently, but that too he didn’t acknowledge.

Incoming OrRue Rom.
Take it?
Got it.

Nighthand’s eye changed from black to silver, and suddenly it was his alter-ego in charge of the body. This man with different powers was perfectly suited to magical combat, though his skill with the blade was similar to Nighthand’s. As much as the two were the same, they were also different.

”Hellstorm! While internally, Nighthand cringed at the use of one of his only high-level fire scrolls, Silverblade activated what power he had. He was still unsure of the entirety of its power, but he knew he could cancel out spells. The Hellstorm rune appeared underneath them, landing square on top of the OrRue Rom, and the two tornados rose at the exact same instant. Both spells collided, and when it was all done, no damage had been taken and the air was clouded with steam.

Go.
Going.

The eye faded black once again, and Nighthand charged where the spell had come from. ”Vak Divider!” The Corona blade exploded into flames and he slammed into the snowman, cleaving it clean in half and nearly vaporizing a miniature snowman on its other side.

A trio of level 1 rue roms went off around him, but he dove through them as well. He didn’t really care about the minor damage it caused, and he could always chug a health potion if he got too low. He stabbed through one snowman, scraped around into a second, and yanked upwards. They fell, and he rose, spreading his wings and flying high.

As he flew into the sky, he cast a succession of spells on himself, almost reflexively swapping out the equipment necessary to do so. He had done this for so long… Ap Vakz, a Wizard’s Blood, a Hermit’s Blood. Rig Saem, just for good measure.

He avoided spells that were sent his way. He flew through some, around others, and up and up until there was little to the fight than specks on the ground. Up here it was almost tranquil, the air was warmer, the clouds thick and concealing.

Going for a wide AoE with your last scroll?
Yeah. Hopefully I can thin out the number of the tiny snowmen by a bunch. Don’t need a lot of damage to take them on.
Using our Eye, and if I help, we might be able to stack three effects before the spell slips out. If we’re lucky.
We’ll do that then. One to power it up, one to change the spell form, and one to split it into several spells?
Sounds good.

He pulled his last remaining level 3 fire scroll from his pocket-lined cape, and began to unfurl it. At the same time, he forced open his scarred-over eye, gazing not only into the air around them but the elements of the field beneath. It stunned him, for a moment; the sheer chaos of the land below. It made his own powers look stable by comparison. Below them, at least, was a relatively stable area surging with rue energy. He could almost see the individual flecks of rue energy that were the snowmen, and could barely make out the flecks of vak that were Lighteria. It was then he noticed; he had somehow carried a couple of those vak flecks up with him. He smiled.

”Thanks Lights. I can use you here.”

He pulled open the scroll and let it loose, the vak energy swirling around him, targetless and unformed. His first step was to intensify that energy. (19+5=24) He poked and prodded and tugged and the fire flared to his senses. Lighteria’s orbs flared in unison as well, adding their tiny bit of help to his power-seeking ability. The spell, already level three, perked up and expanded. The fire raged, not just seethed, and already it strained at his grip. Should he lose control of it now, it would doubtless converge upon him, fry him where he hovered, and leave a charred corpse to fall to earth. He couldn’t let that happen.

His next goal changed, given the power before him. While multiple spells were harder to handle, they caused fewer problems if they got out of hand. This energy he gathered, and moved to split into a trio of smaller globes, balls of fire to orbit him, only visible to his hack and his eyes. (12+5=17) The split happened, clean enough, though it left the spells uneven. With a little continued growth from him holding them back, he had the equivalent of two level three and a level two spell on his hands. Still, each was a Converge; a trio of targets wouldn’t help him much.

Now he focused once again, and to turn the globes of energy, which were already forming small meteors to converge on the nearest foe, into an AoE spell. He was too slow, too late to make it into a full Rom spell, but perhaps he could direct those marble-sized meteors downwards, have them strike the ground rather than a creature. (17+5=22) And he did. Each spell began forming small globs of flaming rock, and each moment one was formed, he sent it raining downwards.

On the ground below, Sheena dove to protect Nall from an incoming spell, but the spell never landed. All around her, peppering the landscape, was a sound like rain only not. It was like hail mixed with steam, as superheated rocks fell into snow and snowmen and trees alike. The one or two that struck players would glance harmlessly away, but they would bury themselves into the heads and bodies of snowmen, snapping branches of trees, and while it didn’t catch anything on fire, it littered the area with tiny explosions.

Many of the tiny snowmen fell, and many more were injured. While most of the tiny meteors missed their targets, they formed an almost minute-long rain that thinned the herd.

Above, Nighthand was congratulating himself when he both saw and heard terror.

A hideous screech tore through the clouds, and a huge dark shape barreled through nearly on top of him. To his hacked senses, it looked like a bundle of energy, three elements chaotically merged into one being. To his eyes, it looked like a shadow dragon, and sounded like a horror from nightmares.

The heavyblade immediately furled his wings and dove for the ground.

I just read the flashmail. Zan warned us about that when he came back. That beast is Tritoch.
Shit, really? I’m not surprised, but… damn. We can’t let it find us.
Unfortunately, your display probably drew him closer. The clouds protected us for now… but we can’t do this again.
Right. I’ll be back down soon.

Moments later he was on the ground, using his momentum from his dive to plow through one of the giant snowmen, leaving a cloud of snowballs in his wake. He landed, skidding to a halt and brushing snow off, mere feet from Zan.

"Huh... Well, that was unexpected. Hi?" He said to the heavyblade, who had apparently reached the same level as Nighthand himself in his absence. Good. The party was becoming stronger. Maybe they’d stand a snowball’s chance.

Then again, he thought, looking around him at the carnage his fire had left. Maybe that’s not good after all.

---------------------------OOC:
Lighteria’s Vak Aura is active: Rue weakened, Vak buffed.

Snowmen: 119/300 (31 lightly injured, 12 moderately injured, 5 with critical HP left.)
Deluxe: 120/150 (9 lightly injured, 4 moderately injured.)
Supreme: 24/50 (7 lightly injured.)

Locked