Difference between revisions of "4865/Paladin"

Latest revision as of 05:53, 9 January 2017

William Pauwel has posed:
    Tellus isn't all wasteland and ocean. Even the great Frontier isn't completely blasted. Indeed, much of the recovering world is covered by thick, nearly impenetrable forest. And in fact, much of it is virgin, having not been visited by humans of any stripe for hundreds of years. Chasers give the woods of the Frontier a wide berth for a reason; not only are they difficult to navigate, but they're also home to some of the planet's most terrifying wildlife.

Nobody wants to run into a hungry Archtiger.

Nobody.

    But this is exactly where Will's GPS system is pointing. Not just in an ordinary stretch of woods, but one located far off into the Frontier, where civilization has largely given way to wilderness, and the only thing for miles and miles is nature run rampant. To this end, he has... Prepared.

    There's something that looks not quite unlike an ambulatory pine tree creeping through the forest. Every so often, its legs skitter forward and then duck back down when something- anything- makes a sound overhead. Once the noise passes, it rises and skitters forward ahead. Progress is slow-going, especially considering the tightening grasp of winter, but it's the best way to get from place to place without being eaten.

    "Ain't far now," Will whispers into his communicator, because there's no way in any multiversal hell that he's going into a forest without a BUNCH of support. "Just over this next ridge, then half a mile, I reckon. Everyone still doing alright?"

August Kohler has posed:
After about a week at his parents, having been arrested and released into custody, August has convinced them to let him go out again, even though they're super worried about him. The reason?

Because Will has crazy adventures in a world that Darwin would find most impressive, that's why. And for some reason, August keeps getting drawn to them. Is it...is it possible he's having /fun/? Not that he'd ever admit it, that is. The redhead is dressed in ACTUAL CLOTHES, not one of Will's weird suits, though he does have forest camo on to let him try and stealth. The Tin Soldier is pre-emptively out, because while it's bright, it is /entirely/ silent when not killing things, and can make a good eye in the sky. Or, well, eye in the trees, because it can't fly, but it can jump!

"Will," August says, noticably not calling him Pauwel, "The fact that a /forest/ requires elaborate stealth manuevers in your world justifies every complaint I've ever made."

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Pauwel, I ever mentioned your world is a little insane?"

    Mel is taking the lazy approach. Mel is floating along riding a felled tree - a NATURALLY felled tree, this time, no telekinetic destructiveness - at somewhere in the neighborhood of the treeline. High enough she won't have to worry about ground predators, low enough that air predators and other airborne threats won't have an easy bead on her, and she can push aside the leaves and branches in her way with a simple, V-shaped telekinetic shield.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone was running herself hard as of late, but that was all right for her she was living an life she'd thought would be fiction only. This is not the case of it in the multiverse, So here they were somewhere no living human had been for a while and then they run into something or at last she thinks she does.

"Right so why do you avoid the woods anyway William?"

She's sadly not heard about the Archtiger given the amount of firepower they were bringing in? She had to wonder just /what/ might try to jump them.

August Kohler has posed:
August just looks at Kotone, smirking as he replies. "Probably because his world's a hellscape? I'm suspecting murderbears and man-eating trees. Also those archtiger things, whatever they are."

William Pauwel has posed:
    "What? No, my world's not a hellscape! It's not insane, either! The bears hibernate in the winter, too! That's why right now is the best time!" After all, needing to dodge both bear AND tiger is a very good way to get yourself killed in a superpredator tug-of-war. And then also eaten. Will harrumphs quietly at everyone's (completely reasonable) protests and their relative laissez faire approach to snaking it through the bush and crests the next ridge.

    Stretching out in front of him is... Something that could possibly count as heartbreaking. It's... a neighbourhood. An array of houses completely overrun with vines, trees and rampant growth. A road network snakes neatly through the homes, broken only by the occasional tree whose growth has shattered the asphalt. Half a mile down that way is their destination, a home apparently a good deal larger than those around it...

And next to it, having apparently smashed straight into the center of town, something that can only be described as a monolith. A huge, black /thing/ like an obelisk that juts irregularly out of the ground and rivals the trees for height.

Here, the forest is... still. Quiet. Serene, even. Will frowns, stripping away his ghillie suit once he skids down to the far foot of the ridge. "...It's... Why would that part be in a place like this?"

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "...cripes."

    There's nothing else Mel can think to say. This used to be someone's homes. With her hands in her pockets, the Marshal quietly frowns. "...don't know. Maybe someone took it for safekeeping. Maybe it's random chance. Hard to say. Bet that big thing over there is involved, though."

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley is also here. She's here because a handful of allies are out and about doing something dangerous and she has the ability to focus on defensive purposes. She floats along near Mel, hovering as if gravity simply did not apply to her unless she wanted it to, making it easy to avoid notice by any of the local wildlife. She keeps her eyes peeled for threats to her fellow heroes and adventurers so that she can cover them long enough to preserve the advantage should violence start happening.

    "Mmh." That is all the insight she has toward the solemn sight of former civilization. She doesn't seem overly disturbed by the sight.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
When William asked Yuna if she could help with another investigation on his world of Tellus, she agreed to help almost by reflex.

Then he told her what they needed to do.

She almost asked if she could back out ... but she doesn't like going back on her promises - and William *is* a friend, after all.

It wasn't even the fact that they'd be in the territory of various dangerous, excessively predatory monsters that made her wish she could say 'no'; it's more the fact that it involves SNEAKING through the forest full of dangerous, excessively predatory monsters, and Yuna's Light Suit is about as far from 'sneaking around' equipment as you can get without putting spinny lights and noisemakers on it. She's trying to make do, though - having gotten a length of camouflage-pattern cloth, like they use to *make* ghillie suits, and fashioning it into a crude cloak with a hood. It's going to stop being useful as soon as they have to start fighting, but for now, it covers her blonde hair and the white-and-blue (and occasional gold) of her Light Suit *fairly* serviceably. Still, she's keeping her pistol ready in her right hand, her left hand free to catch herself should she fall, or to assist in climbing over things that need to be climbed over, and the name of her kite shield is ready upon her lips in case something charges at her with enough warning time to bring the kite shield to bear in her defense - or in anyone ELSE'S defense, for that matter.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    Hikaru's particular skillset isn't very good at 'wilderness survival', but this seems important to Will, and Will's been nothing but helpful (if sometimes /unhelpfully/ helpful), so Hikky wants to help him out. He's taken advantage of William's offer of suitable clothing, which means that, today, he looks the part of a PARTICULARLY STEALTHY COWBOY. It's classic. Ainsley and August will surely rib him about it later. He doesn't care, he's rocking it regardless.

    While others make their own safe way around the forest, Hikaru's following Will's lead, with tactical bush action. "Sorry, Will, but your world /is/ a little, er... how do I put this..." Hikaru pauses, before saying, quietly but with emphasis: "/Everything is trying to kill us./" It's a problem! Hikky almost brushed against a deadly tree earlier! He clearly can't trust /anything/ on this world.

    Once they come to the abandoned village, Hikaru follows William's lead, shrugging off his camoflague and looking around. "What... what happened here?" He asks, looking from the vines to the obelisk. It's like the entire town just... died. He's never seen anything like it before.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
If Yuna had heard the bit about the bears - or rather, if she had known that bears would be competing with tigers for prey in the woods they've had to traverse to get here - then either she would have turned on her heel and left anyway, or (more likely) refused to go anywhere until she had, say, Jiina of the Earth with her, to offer the option of Powered Form. Or maybe the whole Matrix of Light, so she could whistle up El-Line in a pinch. As it is, Elner is, as usual, hovering roughly near Yuna's shoulder; the rest of the Matrix isn't anywhere near Tellus at this point.

The sight of that obelisk is enough to make Yuna sort of wish she had El-Line with her anyway, though. "It looks like something burrowed under the town and stuck that up through it," she suggests, folding up her ghillie cloak and letting it vanish into storage. "I wonder ... was this town supposed to be in the middle of the forest like this?" Yuna continues. "This kind of overgrowth had to have taken some time, trees don't grow this abruptly overnight."

August Kohler has posed:
Well, nothing kills them! August is pretty happy about that, even as he snarks again at Will, "Will, have you actually been to another, more civilized world?" He stops snarking once they notice the houses. Well, this is eerie. "I assume archtigers don't have communities. How old could this be-"

And then there's that monolith. "Will, I have a /terrible/ feeling about this."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa says "No it's not a Hellscape it's just a post nanotech apoch juding from what we have dug up so far. Your lot more lucky than Rory's home world is William." She's mostly just teasing but then something else is coming upon an old neighbourhood. She sees what used to be oeople's home overcome by the cold and endless grinding of nature. "No idea here Will, we'll have to find, out right? Just we should keep on our toes with this."

William Pauwel has posed:
    "It looks like a settlement," Will says, observing the obvious, considering the network of streets running through it. Not just little rural things, but a full on traffic system; one that would be part of a much, MUCH larger metropolis. "Roads, but not the ones like the Iskandrians build. These are-- were Ancients. But... But a forest? A forest around a town like this? This... This ain't right." His eyes move towards the enormous monolith as Mel makes mention of it and the explorer hesitates briefly. "...Maybe. Let's see if we can't get a closer look."

    Will starts down the main thoroughfare, hopping over a few winding roots to close the distance with the huge /thing/ and his actual destination just next to it. The serenity of the wood seems to hold as he approaches the aged home. It's... held up well, by all accounts. Though that could also be due to the enormous tree trunk that seems to have grown into its second floor, spreading a nest of branches that hold the house upright. Will's lips draw into a thin line as he then steps /past/ it towards the enormous black thing rising from the ground next to it.

    The monolith is... perfect. Geometrically perfect. Like someone had somehow produced the ultimate metaphysical representation of 'an obelisk' and stuck it, crooked, into the ground, in the middle of an ostensibly populated town. The vegetation has wrapped tightly around it, with ancient vines coiling up the walls of the structure before blossoming into a veritable cornucopia of life.

    Will stares up at the thing, his brow furrowing tightly. He reaches up and flips a visor down over his eyes, then moves forward as if he were going to go... Is he going to touch it!? "What in the world /is/ this?"

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna doesn't even *say* anything, just bolts forward and grabs Will's wrist, trying to pull his hand *away* from actually trying to touch the obelisk. "Elner," she calls out, "do a full scan of the obelisk - physical construction, materials, power signatures of any sort, how far below the ground's surface it goes and what directions it goes in once it's down there."

She gives Will a sheepish grin, "Let's ... seriously, let's not touch it until we know for sure that it's totally inert, okay ... ?" If Will's going to refrain from touching the unknown obelisk now, she lets go of his hand and takes a step away.

Yuna's keeping her pistol ready, too. She's STILL on edge, and maybe moreso now than in the forest.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    "Hold on, Will--" Hikaru calls out, but luckily, Yuna's on top of it. Hikaru shakes his head, coming up to stand beside them. "If you have troubles with scanning it, let me know. The Fox Sister might be able to give us some insight, too." He's... never /tried/ using her outside the Forest, but the Tin Soldier works just fine, so surely she wouldn't have too much trouble.

    Hikaru adjusts his neckerchief as he looks over the obelisk, and a hand goes down to his belt. He's taken a gun from the collection Will brought them, and he's got his bo staff compressed at his belt, but he still feels remarkably unprepared for what this world has to offer. Hopefully, Archtigers don't /really/ live here.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley follows the others to the mysterious obelisk, still unaffected by the ruins around them. The reason for this becomes clear when she says, "Forests grow where men cease to be, reclaiming the land. It's not the first city like this that I've seen. I first saw a city like this when I was eleven years old, as a sort of... field trip." She frowns, finally, remembering that unpleasant note in her past.

    Ainsley is also about to warn William not to touch the Obelisk when they reach it, the lizard woman breathing a shaky sigh as she anticipated something bad happening. She then decides to activate her Sight to scan the Obelisk for any information built into it. If it's computerized in any way, she may be able to read the components, or if it contains messages or warnings or ... anything meant to communicate what this thing is supposed to be. Her eyes glow with the magical circles and her hands gently wave through the air as she weaves spells to help her focus on different types of information it may contain. "I'm giving it a look," she adds, helpfully, to the others.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    As always, Mel walks with a steady gait and her hands in her pockets. She's a little behind Will, at least at first, but he's taking the lead, and after a moment, she even calls out, "Hey, Will, slow down a little. No telling what's-" Oh god he's gonna touch it.

    The looks Mel gives Yuna is grateful, even a bit relieved. "Yeah, let's... let's be a little cautious here." She comes to a stop next to Hikaru, waiting quietly for the better-suited people to do their investigating here. "Let us know," she replies to Ainsley.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa says "It does look like it was one but it looks like Nature had it way. Or knowing this world there's some cousin of the damn coral here in plant form." She really, /hates/ the coral oh god does she hate that stuff. She's also understandin the level of tech on Will's world at one point was at the point of might as well be magic. Kotone keep smoving and she pauses for a moment as the reach the strange monlith.

"Will wait, what are you doing! Don't just out and touch it!"

William Pauwel has posed:
    Will is an inquisitive little bugger, but even he should know better than to touch mysterious things- especially in his own world. Fortunately Yuna is around to save him from himself, tugging him back in time to keep the obelisk... /relatively/ undisturbed. "Y-yeah, sorry," he shakes his head. "Don't know exactly what I was thinking, there."

    Far safer methods of Examining A Thing are, however, underway. Elner would find the obelisk to be difficult to penetrate. Its very structure seems to repel conventional scans, though it is able to determine that this is just the tip of the structure. It extends down. Down, down, down, before finally disappearing from scanning range. It may even go down into the planet's mantle, vanishing into the magma layer there. Ainsley's magical probes have some more luck, however.

She is able to read its structure.

Or rather--

Their structure.

    The obelisk is not a single object. That's why Elner couldn't penetrate its interior structure. It's an uncountable, unfathomable myriad of tiny, almost vanishingly small objects.

And as she probes them, she feels them, direct their attention at her.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Elner reports quickly on its inability to scan the object. Yuna's not TOTALLY surprised by this; Elner's sensors are impressive, but among other things, she and Elner both know that the robo-faerie has trouble with magical phenomena. And she had a feeling that this might be magical in some sense.

But what Elner *can* report makes the blood drain from her face. "Bigger than you can scan?" she echoes, looking at Elner. "I didn't think your sensors had that kind of a range limit ... you've pulled off interstellar teleports before, haven't you?"

The robo-faerie doesn't reply, and Yuna's attention shifts to Will. "Maybe it's magical enough that it entranced you somehow ... but if it's got enough magic to do that -" She abruptly stops talking, taking an extra step or two back from the obelisk, her gaze sweeping slowly over the unusual object. There's a little corner of her mind that wonders if it counts as an OOPART, an 'Out Of Place Artifact,' but ... this is the Multiverse, and more specifically, this is Tellus. She's not sure what even *counts* as 'out of place' ...

August Kohler has posed:
August spends a good solid few minutes staring in terror at the monolith. He's seen movies. He knows what this means. Eventually, though, he snaps out of it, and backs away. "Uh, Will, where is this thing you need? Please tell me it's not inside there."

William Pauwel has posed:
Will looks to August, then shakes his head and points vaguely at the house, "I'm... I'm pretty sure it's in there." Beat. "You thinking we should maybe... go find it? Before something terrible happens?"

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    "William, get away from it /right now/, everyone be on your guards, it's looking at me now or however it detects things," Ainsley says, as she quickly waves her hands and dispels her Sight. It saw her and it is looking at her and so she is going to make sure that it is absolutely clear she isn't a threat to it or, well, its target.

    "Hello?" Ainsley tries, reaching out with all methods of communication she knows of to see if the Obelisk is intelligent and responds. "Can you hear me? Please tell me you can hear me." She has tried this before on other adventures and 9 times out of 10 it turns out to be a homicidal monster of some kind that immediately tries to murder her for being the friendly one.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    Ainsley warns them to get back, and Hikaru puts some space between himself and the obelisk, holding up his empty hands just in case it's aware of the rest of them too. He glances over to the house William indicates, but he doesn't make any sudden movements yet, because he doesn't want to hurt Ainsley's chances.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Mel listens quietly to Ainsley and Elner's information, considers things briefly, and then takes a few steps forward so she's right behind and to Ainsley's left.

    And then she calmly reaches up and tugs her limiter off.

William Pauwel has posed:
Someone is attempting to make contact.

    Ainsley does what Ainsley does. She communicates. She reaches a hand out to the enormous monolith in a gesture of friendship. Unlike the vast majority of horrible monsters that she tied to talk to before everything descends into chaos and explosions, this one actually... reaches back.

But its voice is madness.

    The first impression is like a slick black oil seeping into her ears, an awful, greasy sensation on the inside of her head. And then it /screams./ A trillion voices or more, shrieking in a wild, cacophonous union before coming together into a singular, high-pitched voice. It sounds like a child's cry.

And then even that gives way. To silence.

Then.

To a voice, and an image. An aged, grinning face in the darkness, so wrinkled that it looks more like ancient, gnarled bark than the flesh of man. His mouth opens, his words tear up the connection she establishes and threaten to burn themselves into her brain.

                          Ah. Finally. An excuse.                          

    Then, the connection falls apart. The obelisk soon follows, but not simply coming to pieces as much as it begins whorling upwards and outwards, the incredibly dense mass unfolding a torso, limbs, an enormous, serpentine lower half. Heat signatures suddenly SURGE. Yuna would be able to sense it coming up from below, an incredible spike of thermal energy. Magma jets up into the cloud and is then torn apart, shredded by an internal tornado of tiny machines that build a skeleton of volcanic stone from the blood of the earth.

Until, finally, the thing solidifies.

And as it roars, lava drips from its maw.

                        --Herald of Fertile Earth--                        
                               --Cabrashel--                                

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa looks to Will as Yuna pulls him back and she pauses looking the monolith over with a good deal of fear. Well it's an obelisk to be eact and she's also scanning it with what she's able to do with her body but it's not much. She's not sure how massive this thing is but given the people who made most of this old tech? The Hubris levels were as insane as what they knew was scary. She takes a step back from it.

"Great we're going to have to go into it?!"

Then it gives an answer, no they will not have to go into it, it's gong to be worse, it's trying to kill them and has formed itself out of the living materials of this very world.

She goes for her weapon but what good are bullets' going to do here? She opens fire anway and starts to move about, like hell she's staying still.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley gets a reply. It is a shriek like that of pain. And then something unreal, and terrible, stabs into her mind. A psychic connection. Ainsley undergoes what is quite possibly the most painful experience in her life, if you discount the half-dozen other times she tried to do something like this and it blew up in her face. She howls in pain on reflex, the sound drowned out of her own ears by the psychic ringing.

    She collapses to her knees and clutches her head. She is helpless as the creature comes to life because it utterly shattered her ability to function for long enough to be in danger.

August Kohler has posed:
FUCK THIS WORLD. August has officially rated it worse than the Mirror Forest, as he stares in horror. He stammers over the radio, and is /really upset/ because this is the one sort of thing he can't deal with. It's a giant murder /fire monolith/, he has no ability to combat it effectively. It takes Hikaru Kurosawa to bark at him over the radio for him to snap into reality. It turns out that despite seeing the Forest, August totally hasn't seen everything, as he runs over to Ainsley, moving to pick her up, letting Hikaru help him if she's too heavy (he has no idea how much scales weigh). "Alright, Ainsley, we're getting the fuck out of here! Go go go go go!" And then he runs to...well, whatever is safer than here.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    Ainsley tries. Hikaru's glad that she tries, because he always did believe in /trying/ to reach out to people. Even if... sometimes people are obelisks.

    But it just doesn't turn out, at all. Ainsley crumples, and the obelisk pours out of itself, spiralling up and carving magma from the earth to form its blood and its bones. The radio blasts with activity for a moment, Hikaru faltering at first before barking out some instructions, and he runs over to Ainsley's side. The Fox Sister is a psychic warrior, who can make her illusions into very real fire - and neither of those things are helpful at /all/ here. So instead, he helps August pick Ainsley up, and works with him to get her /away/.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna has no way of knowing what Ainsley hears back from the obelisk. but when the obelisk starts to disintegrate, she can tell that SOMEthing is happening. Almost as quickly, with the obelisk's mass swirling about and rearranging itself - *building up* instead of falling apart, yet - Yuna comes to the conclusion that this 'something' is terribly, terribly *BAD*.

"Shugoseiheki!!!" Yuna shouts, conjuring her kite shield with a flash of light, and then trying to interpose herself between the 'obelisk' and Ainsley, staying protectively in front of her even as the 'obelisk' gets bigger and ...

Turns into a giant freaking monster.

It's not quite clear at whom Yuna's grousing as she complains, "You just *HAD* to wake up something like this when the Matrix of Light is all doing stuff for me elsewhere, didn't you?!" Elner is already sending an emergency call out to Jiina, Marina, and Erina, but each of the three is literally on a different world and it's going to take *time* for them to get to Tellus ... time which is going to be in horribly short supply, if Cabrashel is as violent as it looks and sounds. Without the Matrix Figure, there are only a couple of things Yuna can even try to do, and the only one that's certain is that she's likely to die trying to fight. Even with the Light Suit and the Wall of the Guardian Star, she's not likely to accomplish much more than postpone the inevitable. The one thing she can try that MIGHT not result in an excruciatingly hot demise?

o/~    You may dream, follow them, these honest feelings
    If you can tell them, dreams come true
    You may dream, a pure white love turns into wings
    To fulfill an angel's pinky-promise

... yeah, she's singing. Maybe just as a distraction, maybe to try and get the magma elemental to calm down ... maybe to buy time to figure out how to fight a monster big enough to slaughter her without even realizing it. Maybe all of the above. Maybe none of it.

At least it lets her focus on something besides the absolute terror of the situation, that's got to count for SOMEthing. And she is, in fact, backing up step by step.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    The instant Ainsley lets out a scream, Mel is in front of her. The instant the beast rises up, her hands flex.

    A split-second after it begins roaring, three thousand tons of telekinetic force hits it.

    This is nothing like the power anyone here has seen her unleash before. The flickers of light are not sparse. They are not short-lived. It's a torrent of shimmering, gleaming streamers of purple light, dancing and rushing through the air - and the air itself /ripples/ with the sheer force. The ground tears apart. Any buildings behind Cabrashel come apart. With a mighty, furious roar of pain, Mel Brock unloads everything she is capable of, with no restraint. The tie holding her hair in a ponytail snaps. Her coat billows out behind her along with her hair. Her eyes light up a glowing purple, and the ground /under/ her starts to ripple and depress.

    She's going to regret this for days. But for once, the Marshal is sick and tired of waking up monsters and running in terror. So with her limiter off, she fully intends to tear the thing apart before it can even begin to properly threaten them.

William Pauwel has posed:
So many things go wrong so quickly.

    Cabrashel unfolds from its resting place in the earth. Ainsley drops to her knees, at the tectonic colossus' mercy. As it rises to its full size, the heat rising from its shoulders begins creeping up into the canopy above. Leaves and branches begin to dry up and burn, falling to the ground as cinders. The behemoth of flame lifts its hands, heat gathering there even as more molten stone begins filling in the gaps within its enormous body. It seems to stare at Yuna- and her song. Is it incensed? Or is she just providing a decent target? Brilliant, orange fire begins gathering in its palms--

And then Mel Brock proves that you don't need a goddamn Lens to wield inhuman telekinetic force.

    The sound Cabrashel makes is almost comical. A dull note of surprise, followed by the sound of a construct of magma and nanotechnology being walloped by someone throwing the equivalent of a naval destroyer straight into its face. It sounds vaguely like a billion bugs hitting a windshield all at once.

    The town behind Cabrashel is levelled. Hot magma blasts backwards, spewing in a tremendous spray of molten fury that sets the broken buildings on fire. The giant of flame has its upper torso virtually evaporated, though it's questionable whether spreading that many nanites over such a large area is a good idea in the long run.

Will stands on the stoop of the manor, his mouth hanging ever so slightly agape at the scale of the destrction. The door is open, at least. So there weren't any traps there.

    But if it were that easy, these things wouldn't have been a threat. The black mass that had remained buried in the earth begin bubbling upwards, stacking back on top of itself. It seems to be trying to... regenerate, forming into a vague, worm-like shape. The thing folds in on itself, and a terrible blast of heat pours out from its glowing maw, directed firmly on the woman who just utterly humiliated it.

It has about two seconds of uptime before second blast of kinetic force splatters the thing, again, from somewhere high above.

An armored figure drops to the ground opposite to where Mel is standing, carrying an immense lance and a similarly massive shield. August would probably recognize it. So would Yuna.

Marchosiel.

"..." he says, staring at the thing already beginning to draw itself back up from even that assault. "I detected an ominous signal and came to investigate, but... It seems like you have it handled? Remarkable." He shakes his head, "Don't let your guard down. We must deplete its supply of cells to stop its regeneration."

Sure enough, the beast is drawing back up from the earth, but it seems... Shakier than before. Definitely less intimidating now that Mel Brock has fully stopped tolerating any of this bulshit.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    When the first blast of force ends, Mel lets out a shaking breath that turns into a quiet hiss of pain, her hair and coat both settling back down. The psychic doesn't lower her guard yet, though; of course it's not gonna be that easy, she knows better. Already, the earth around her shifts and rumbles, lunging up into a thick barrier of dirt and stone at just about the time the blast of heat begins-

    And then someone else smashes it down.

    The Marshal looks upward, briefly on her guard - but whoever that is, they're an ally. "I got tired of this world's shit. Now help me tear this thing apart or get out of the way, I don't care which!" This time, when she draws her right arm back, she holds it high and behind herself, almost as if preparing to throw a spear - except with her palm open, rather than curled. A second later, she swings it forward, /slamming/ it down as if to smash the earth beneath her feet apart-

    -and another torrent of incredible, impossible force rains /down/ on the regenerating beast. The ground absolutely craters. And then she does it again. And again. And again. And /again/. Each time punctuated with a swear word, a growl of pain, and eventually just a strained string of words. "STAY. THE. HELL. DOWN. YOU. STUPID. PIECE. OF." You get the idea.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna's song is cut short by a couple of things happening in rapid succession. Mel is one of them; the sudden eruption of raw telekinetic force unleashed by the sheriff catches the idol singer by surprise, but it's the impact her efforts carry - the fact that Cabrashel is actually knocked for a loop - which makes Yuna fail to start into the next verse of the song she'd begun.

And then, Marchosiel drops in and clobbers the magma elemental even harder, just before Yuna can find out whether the Mizzium lining of her kite shield is as proof against magma as it is against most everything else she's run into. "Marchosiel, glad to see you," she calls out in a shaky but relieved voice. Taking a deep breath, Yuna then takes several more steps backwards, attempting to gently draw Mel back with her so they aren't in immediate 'step on you for instant death' range from the magma elemental. She drives the bottom point of her kite shield into the ground, pulling with her left arm (still in the straps, for the moment) and using her right hand to help push it in; she's not trying to bury it, just wedge it into the ground so it'll stay upright.

Then she pulls her left arm free of the shield's straps and replaces her pistol (dismissed moments earlier) with the full-sized Matrix Divider, hunkering down behind her shield while she builds up as strong a charge as she can focus into her weapon. "We can hurt it, you guys!" she calls out to her allies. "That ought to mean we can beat it!"

Then she pulls the Divider's trigger, and a crackling, flaring bolt of concussive radiant force - weapons-grade hard light, really - erupts towards Cabrashel's head, in between Mel's hammerblows of psionic force.

August Kohler has posed:
As they escape, August stops. He sees Mel be, well, terrifying. And he sees them all fighting. And Marchiosal arrives. And he looks into himself. He's being a coward. Yeah, he's weak to it. Yeah, his primary attack source won't touch it. But there's things he can do.

"Tin Soldier, to me!"

Leaving Ainsley with Hikaru, August rejoins the fight, but maintains a distance. He closes his eyes...he only needs one pair right now. The Tin Soldier starts by charging towards Mel, before shooting at her with his gun. Instead of bullets, she gets a DEFENSE BOOST, a healthy amount of endurance which may be able to help her with the burning and the pain! Then, August just flicks his fingers towards Will and Yuna, the Tin Soldier following, firing off both attack and defense boosts at them. It then retreats, ready to keep up a buff cycle if needed. August isn't the fighter here...he's support.

August Kohler has posed:
Kotone gets a defense and attack boost too! Yaaaay, lucky cyborg.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Everyone is laying into this horror, seriously why does this keep happening? She sighs inwardly and keeps moving as she watches Insley, Yuna and MEl opens up. her bullets don't seem to do much if anything to the beast. She's going to have to turn up the heat and so she's gong to do so. Kotone springs and he's going to try to get close as the thing seems to be tyring to regenerate and rthat's when theplasma grenades comes out she's arming a plasma grenade and then stops as something takes the thing out and she pulls back for a moment shifts and thanks to August helping with his magic? She runs in agin with the grenade and moves slam the grneade into the thing. Thanks to Mel? She has an opening.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" She then leaps the hell away and most of this is thanks to the extra boost tht August gave her.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    It turns out that one of their number is crushingly, /terrifyingly/ strong. As Hikaru and August take Ainsley, the woman beside her unleashes the sort of power Hikaru never even knew was possible. He only stares for a moment, before he focuses on getting Ainsley up and away - taking her from August after the teenager decides to get into the fight. He's not the strongest guy, but being a Persona-User puts him above the average, and Ainsley's pretty light, so he's able to support her weight and get her clear of ground zero without any problems.

    He can hear - and feel, the earth beneath him trembling - the fighting behind him. He glances over his shoulder briefly when a new voice enters the fray, who Yuna identifies as Marchosiel, and he just hopes that he's a friend rather than a foe. Any help against the magma beast seems welcome right now. As Ainsley comes around, Hikaru supports her, with an arm looped around her shoulders. "Hey, there you go," he encourages her, his voice quiet. "You okay, Ainsley..? That seemed pretty rough."

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley felt her senses come back as if she had woken up from a coma. Light and sound came back into focus slowly but surely. The reptilian woman had her senses back and she hated every second of it. She was just bricked in the head AGAIN by something terrible and incomprehensible and it reveled in the excuse to attack anything that it came across. She was not pleased by that. She dimly heard the sound of someone explaining that its cells need to be depleted to be destroyed...

    She stands, shakily. She glances at Hikaru, frowning her answer at him. Her eyes are bloodshot.

    Then they glow.

    And she reaches out at the nanite colony, coated with magma and already smushed by Mel and the newcomer, and mumbles, hoarsely, "Fuck. You."

    And she tries to actively disrupt its ability to remain cohesive by just blasting it with white noise, because she saw how the pieces communicated. She forces so much magic out at it that she is hoping to corrupt its code and make it unable to put itself back together even if it had any fuel left to do so.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Marchosiel nods in response to Mel's demand. It's not like he can exactly contribute more strategic insight to a battle that roughly amounts to 'smash this thing harder.' The ancient cyborg raises its lance, the whole thing bisecting down the middle. White-blue light begins flooding from the weapon, wrapping it in a halo of coruscating electricity. The air begins to smell of ozone. A plasma weapon?

If it's anything like Will's--

    "Die monster," the cyborg growls, lunging forward to drive the tip of his weapon into the point where Cabrashel meets the earth. A gout of raw plasma thunders into beast's roots, blasting up through cracks that spiderweb across the ground. A point blank discharge of enough plasma to vaporize a small hill pours into the earth.

    At the same time, Mel's assault strikes the nanotechnological horror from above. Hammers of telekinetic force pound the monster downwards, forcing it back into the crevasse from which it spawned. More and more nanomaterial pours away in sheets, even as the monster struggles to reform its body, only for its head to be shorn off by a tremendous bolt of golden energy.

    And then, there's something from the house. Or rather, from right in front of the house. "Electromagnetic energy should dissociate the--" Will hisses, "Shush, you! Last time you talked around that guy, he dang near shot six of us!" August's blessing fills Will with power! More importantly, it fills his gun with power. His gun that is now humming with nearly-invisible ripples of electromagnetic force.

    He pulls the trigger. The air seems to ripple. Ainsley's spell follows and joins with it. Two immense waves of pure white noise sweep across the colony. As they do, its regeneration seems to screech to a sudden halt, black material falling away like loose volcanic sand. Mel keeps pounding into it. Marchosiel's plasma finally burns its way up from below. Cabrashel tries one last time to reform, only for its form to rise, shudder, and then...

Ash. The whole thing falls to inert, grey ash. Volcanic stone, crushed to pieces, falls to the ground amidst the dust and detritus.

    Marchosiel aims at the ground and fires again for good measure. It turns to glass as he does. The cyborg stands still and ready for a moment more, before seeming to visibly relax.

Will falls back onto his butt.

                              --HERALD SLAIN--                              

    "...Well." Marchosiel huffs, stepping over the ruined mound. "I did not expect to encounter you all here," He seems to be looking over towards Will, August and Yuna. "No. That's not right. I expected to see the one with the gun," he gestures at Will. "But we will get to that later."

"I would assume that you want answers as to what... That, was."

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    "Please," Ainsley replies, in the wake of all the dust and debris and chaos, "Explain what that was and why it was so eager to kill us all with the thinnest of excuses." She sounds hoarse, pained, but she seems to be calming down very quickly. She pats Hikaru once as she walks by to get a look at the deceased creature from a relatively safe distance. Nothing but a pile of volcanic stone and dust now.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Eventually, Mel's attack stops. It's right around the time Ainsley and Will unload. The psychic holds herself still, breathing heavily, as her hair settles down around her head again. Half-hunched from the followthrough of one of her downward punches, she slowly, carefully straightens herself up.

    And then utters a quiet, strained noise of pain, like someone who's just bumped a still-healing wound. She stumbles back a few steps before managing to catch her balance, but by the bloodshot color in her eyes and the flush of effort on her face, she's not having a good time. And this is with August's defensive boost bolstering her. How bad might it have been otherwise?

    "Hnnnh... yeah, that's... that'd be nice to know," she grunts, reaching up to slap her limiter back on her right cheek. "Anyone... anyone got a spare hair tie...?"

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    A clothen sound from Ainsley's direction, and she has pulled the red ribbon out of the feathers on top of her head and handed it over to Mel, without looking away from Marchosiel.

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
"I wouldn't mind knowing," Yuna admits, now that the battle is over. August's power-up boosts came at an excellent time, letting her put even more punch behind her blasts ... but she still has the feeling that it was mostly Mel and Marchosiel who did far more than she could ever have done. Plus, she came through that WITHOUT El-Line, which is a boost of sorts in its own right.

"I mean ... when we got here, that ... being, I guess ... it looked inanimate. Just an obelisk poking out of the ground, with the rest of it burrowed in further than Elner could map out with her sensors. Was it magical? Was it natural? Was it a thing that somebody made deliberately, and why did somebody make a weapon like that?"

She dismisses the Matrix Divider, picks up Shugoseiheki to dismiss the shield ...

Then goes over to help Mel tie her hair back again.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Ainsley gets a grateful look, as does Yuna; but crouching down to have her hair tied back again is off the table right now, so instead the Marshal steps over beside a lump of fallen dirt. That should give Yuna enough of a boost.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    Hikaru supports Ainsley as much as she needs, nodding to her as she frowns. She swears at the magma creature, her eyes glowing, and Hikaru turns his head to look at it as the end comes. The combatants make /horrifyingly/ short work of it. Hikaru feels some regret for not helping them fight, but Ainsley is safe - and he's not sure she would have remained that way if she'd been disabled in the middle of all that. He smiles to her, briefly, as she pats him on her way closer - and he, too, steps forward in response to Marchosiel's offer of an explanation.

William Pauwel has posed:
    The Elites have questions. Marchosiel, it seems, has at least a few answers to give. "When the war began, the Enemy's heralds emerged from the earth in vessels much like that one." Marchosiel gestures at the glassed remains of the obelisk. "These heralds have a... direct connection to the Enemy. They acted as commanders. Control hubs for its war machine."

    The question then is why it got up to attack only once someone tried to poke it with a stick. Marchosiel continues. "The Enemy's goal is the eradication of all human life. I presume that it deactivated once this region was... depopulated. It would likely have reactivated eventually, regardless, but if you did anything to disturb it, it likely responded to what it interpreted as a threat."

    "...I do not know what you mean by 'magical.' But it was definitely not 'natural,'" Marchosiel shakes his head. "I suspect, given the activation of Judgment, that this is not the first time you all have encountered the Enemy's agents. It is a danger to the continued existence of humanity on this world. It is my Emperor's eternal foe."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
She watches the plasma do it's bit and she holds back now as everyone else tears into it. Will, Mel, August, Hikky. Eveyrone is tearing into it and she takes a dep breth as she sees the thing is finally down and their mysterious helper comes in and she looks at Marchosiel for a moment.

"Didn't expect anyone else here either. Wait you know about Will's gun?"

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    "The heralds emerged in vessels like that one," Ainsley repeats aloud, commiting it to memory. If they're all weapons meant to kill people... then she understands what its message was about. She woke it up and it had a reason to be ambulatory again. She frowns at the remains of the Herald, grimacing at the mental noise that still rings through her head.

    "I'm going to think of a better way to deal with one of these if we run into it again. That thing was pure bad juju." She closes her eyes and rubs her face with both hands, her brain trying to escape her skull through her forehead, so to speak.

Hikaru Kurosawa (1039) has posed:
    Hikaru scratches at the back of his head, olive green hair falling over his hand in the process. A war? It would explain the state of William's world. "Control hubs, huh..?" Kotone mentioned nanomachines earlier, so it made sense. They were more like machines than people, probably. Machines designed to kill people. Which... probably means they shouldn't try reasoning with them.

    It's pretty weird, but the Multiverse is proving to be pretty weird in general. After murmuring something into the radio, Hikaru shrugs, gesturing to Marchosiel. "Sorry, I'm kinda new to all this - but what's the deal with your Emperor?"

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
The hump of earth isn't the best footing Yuna would have hoped for, but it's enough for her to reach up and tie Mel's ponytail back again. It may not be as tidy as it was before, but ... well, Yuna's dealt with her own ponytail often enough to know how to do it, even for somebody else.

And she listens while she's doing it, her lips tightening a little at Marchosiel's explanation. "A synthetic commander for ... war machines."

She falls silent, thinking about some of the other things she's seen on Tellus. Lots of giant robots, the Iskandrian robosoldiers ... Marchosiel's draconic ally. No, magic doesn't really seem to be a thing here, even if the magma monster was decidedly elemental in appearance. "So, the town here must have been built after it went onto standby or something ... ? Didn't they know what the obelisk was, what its presence here meant?" She looks at Elner, "Scan underground again, is there anything *left* of that thing?"

Elner does indeed start scanning again - actually floating over to whatever's left of Cabrashel, or where it emerged if there *is* nothing left, and begins scanning, Yuna's hope, and Elner's tentative expectation, is that all of its underground mass was drawn up to the surface when it went into combat mode.

Gods help them if there's anything left underground.

August Kohler has posed:
August helped save the day! Buffs work! Yay. Now he looks for loot, anything valuable they can use or may need in the future. But he also turns up to Marchiosel, finally. "Oh, you. Hey." But as he's searching, Judgment mentions some things. And August clicks some things in his head. They're very loose hunchs, but he's going to need to try and dig and see if he can't suss out what the truth is. So as he speaks over the radio, he talks to Marchiosel.

"I want to know about the Enemy, and about you. What are you doing up in space...how long have you been there?"

William Pauwel has posed:
    "No. This herald emerged in this community just prior to the end of the war," Marchosiel answered. "The ensuing calamity caused it to deactivate, I believe. However I would need to check the records." He shakes his head. "The calamity signalled the end of the originators' civilization."

Underground, there's... Nothing of the obelisk, at least. Elner's scans detect no trace of it left. Perhaps they really did succeed in destroying it?

"The Emperor," he answers, "Has watched over the world for hundreds of years. He is the protector of mankind. The final guardian, and the architect of our victory." There's a... reverant tone to his voice. Perhaps the Emperor is regarded as something of a god-king?

"As far as the Enemy--" Marchosiel's voice darkens. "It was hubris. Man overstepped his bounds, and created something he could not destroy without also destroying himself. Technology gone mad." He shakes his head, "They turned their weapons upon it, knowing that it would mean their own end. For this, we must be grateful. However, the Enemy remains. It stirs, and someday it will return."

"To that end," Marchosiel turns towards Will, and steps forward, a hand extended. "Please. Return Judgment to me. It will be... necessary for what will come."

    Will, for his part, stares at the Cyborg like he'd grown a second head. "Wh- my gun? I can't just... Just hand it over! It's the only thing I've got--" He clutches the weapon to his chest, "My dad left it for me. I ain't just going to give it up!"

Marchosiel stands and stares at the boy. His expression is unreadable behind the mask.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Mel takes some steps forward now that her hair is tied back. They're a little stiff, but she manages to stand tall and square her shoulders. "Alright, so to head off the inevitable yes-no here- nnnh..." Okay, so maybe she's still a bit achey. "We're not gonna hand it over. But we understand you need it. So... look at it this way. /Until/ you need it, if Will holds onto it, it's being held by someone relatively unknown, mobile, and capable of getting it offworld in an emergency. And depending on what you need it for, if you're willing to share information, maybe we can work with you, so he doesn't have to hand it over."

Yuna Kagurazaka (385) has posed:
Yuna is outwardly fairly quiet for a moment, focusing on the radio. When the moment passes, she looks at Marchosiel, with a look on her face that's mostly gentle and friendly ... but does reveal a hint of determination, ready to be brought to the surface as steel. "I'm with William on this one, Marchosiel ... but so far? We've been in the same places at the same times with a fairly good track record; you may need William's weapon in the future, but so long as our paths keep intersecting, you don't need to take it from him yet, certainly not here or now."

Her lips quirk in a faint smile. "Besides, William's on a quest that you might not have the time or attention for. Isn't it better to let him, and his friends - that is, *us* - pursue that quest while you're responding to other situations that need your attention?"

William Pauwel has posed:
    Marchosiel stares for a moment longer. He reaches forward and Will shrinks back. He's seen what this thing can do. He knows... He knows it could probably crush his head like a grape-- but there are things he just can't give up.

The others speak. Marchosiel is still, his eyes shining beneath his visor. Then he... Draws his hand back, and-- hesitates, briefly, as it nears the crest of his own head. Then he sighs, and palms his face. "...I will give you time to come to terms with... Your situation."

"However, I will come back for Terminal Judgment," he says, then. "When its power is necessary, please, return it to me." The cyborg turns and begins moving away, apparently... Okay with this agreement? Or at least, okay with letting Will off easy for the day. "If there are no other questions, I will be returning to orbit."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa is starting to understand what's going on a bit better as Marchosiel explains a few more things to them. "More information on what happens is good and really? Cause it looks like there's world ending nanotech laying around here. Hubris? that sadly makes sense a lot of sense but now ther's talk of a God king? That worries her.

"Wait you want to take Will's Gun?" She narrows her eyes a little bit She also tenses the hell up at this point but it seems a fight isn't going to happen just yet.

William Pauwel has posed:
As Marchosiel departs and the shattered, ashen remnants of Cabrashel slowly wafts away in the breeze, the group is finally given the room and the peace to actually do what they came here for.

What they find is... A home. An old, broken home. Three bedrooms. A kitchen. A fridge full of decaying food. They find a set of notes written in words thousands of years old, and they find a workshop hidden in the basement with the device they were searching for.

...And a photograph of a proud man and woman, white labcoats over each of their shoulders-- and two armfuls of family, perched on the desk.

But at least they in the present are all safe. And they've got what they came for.

And if anyone cares to root around in the ash of the monster outside, they might just find a strange, orange-yellow sphere. HOW MYSTERIOUS.