Welcome to Gaia! ::

James Lee Johnstone, Anolani, Ues Qessoc, and Victor Le Treu were, in various parts of an upper-class (military) bar atop a skyscraper in the repaired Beijing, musing as to why they'd received messages from the military, using Black Century authorization codes, ordering them to meet there.

After just shy of approximately five minutes into wondering about this, a window shattered.

As every single person in the bar looked towards it, taking cover and flipping tables (a result of a roomful of people having highly trained military reflexes), the cause became evident.

A small object the size of a tennis ball but with the appearance of an overlarge pearl, began to glow.

"Lucifex Bomb! Lock it down!" the bartender yelled into a microphone. Metallic shutters sealed over the windows. "It dies or we die before it leaves this room!" the bartender yelled, the shadows around him shimmering.

A tentacle emerged from the pearly mana battery in the middle of the floor.

Anolani pouted. "And here I was just hoping to get a drink or two." She looked over to see the rows of alcoholic beverages. It's such a waste... However, she called on the drinks with her elementalism. She turned the various drinks into icicles and threw them straight at the tentacle. It better die or else I'm going to be pissed for wasting the drinks I could have had.

Anolani melted the icicles back into their liquid form before using it as a whip to keep the tentacles away from her. Slowly, she gathered beer, rum, vodka, and whatever else was there to build up a huge amount of water. In order not to waste her precious resource, she'd create tiny needles to hit the flying tentacles. The majority of her wine and beer was being used as a shield.

Victor aided Anolani - who he didn't know, strangely - by flicking his hand forward and sending a wave of cascading shadow spikes at the mana battery itself. He began to slowly strafe away from the bar.

He glanced at James with his magical sight. Even his magic was flamboyant.

Venom says +1 AP for this epic line.

James discovered that generally, fire was much better for burning things than cutting them, as the still-emerging Lucifex lashed a gray tentacle against him in retaliation. It occurred to him in midair that it wasn't as slimy as he had expected. Tentacles were supposed to be slimy, generally, right?

Victor's shadow spikes seared the Lucifex wherever it was manifesting. It made some sort of loud screaming noise. The mana battery shattered as the rest of the Lucifex came into existence.

It was about eight feet tall, and the tentacles seemed to connect to its back, where an angel's wings would have been. Its face was like an angel's, as well, but looking as though it was carved of stone, the same gray as the tentacles (and the rest of its body). The "robe" of the same gray material was totally fixed - it was a statuesque creature, locked with its arms crossed, interacting with its environment solely through the tentacles.

She watched as the thing turned into a stone being with flying tentacles. Ew. Sooo not cute. Oh well. At least it was still doused in alcohol. Now all that needed to be done was have the fire dude burn the Lucifex. Like really soon.

An idea she had was forcing the thing to get wet - she could squeeze the wine into the stone before freezing it and therefore making it crack/explode. But no. That would take too long.

If she could, Anolani would have face palmed. A bull. The man could burn everything and get this thing over with, and instead, he chooses a bull. Just for that, Anolani was spiking the next drink he took with laxatives. Because really, burning the damn Lucifex would just be faster than summoning A BULL.

Still, she had to hand it to him that at least it was doing some damage. And look, even his pets are flaming. So maybe the bull would still get a chance to burn the damn creature. Oh well. While the bull faced off the annoyance, she ran behind the bar. "Ah ha! I KNEW they were hiding the good stuff." She found a lovely bottle of port hidden in the back. She uncapped the bottle and took a big swig of it. Damn, this is the really good kind too! It was because it was good, that it would be useful later. She had a lighter with her - if nothing else, she could make a wine sphere and then set it on fire herself.

And thankfully, there was a small stock of water bottles underneath the bar so that she could prevent the whole place from going into flames. Gotta loves the sober people who come to bars to drink coke and spring water.