Insidious Insects (18 ) : In the first week of July, the area around the tree is just buzzing. The call of the cicadas is loud and droning, and it’s constant. You start to hear it all over town, too. All sorts of insects seem attracted to the strange pods, and it’s not uncommon to find nearly any species curiously investigating. If you listen closely, you notice something else strange–it’s not just the bugs that you see making the familiar call of the cicada. It seems like it’s coming from inside the pods, too. Any pod that wasn’t leaking sap suddenly begins to snap open, and giant cicadas, crawl out. Their full wingspan can reach up to a foot and they’re hungry–and angry. It seems like the pods that were leaking sap were slowly rotting, but the ones that didn’t leak were being eaten from the inside out–and now that the cicadas have run out of food, they’re out for anything they can find. Though there are several notable differences between these insects and the common cicadas, their low, chirping wail makes them easy to find–as well as the fact that they spit acid. These bugs are incredibly hostile and will attack indiscriminately, powered or unpowered, human or alien, day or night. They have a protective shell that makes them easy to crush but they’re hardly the most menacing foe you’ve faced–but if they reproduce, you could be in some real trouble. Better to crush them now before they become Destiny City’s next invasive species… Note: These creatures are a violent alien species that are aggressive and eager to destroy. They will attack everyone and everything within sight. The insects can fly, spit acid, and will try to burrow into the ground to hide. They are very fast and difficult to see. This RP can be used as a battle requirement for a character, separate from your ‘one youma battle’ per stage if there are two powered characters involved; you cannot write a solo and count this as a battle, and your character must be powered and interacting with another player’s powered character for it to count. This can only be used as a battle requirement once per character, but there is no limitation for how many times a player can use this prompt.
When Irenaea had first inspected the pods with Hela there had been something at the back of her mind that had insisted that these things were not to be trusted. Anything that could move under it's own power definitely meant that everyone should be on their guard. Yet from what she had been seeing online, no one had taken the mystery of the pods appearance very seriously. Everyone mostly seemed to "oooh" and "aaahh" over the fact that this tree that had been dormant for ages had suddenly decided to send out new growth. Now it seemed as if Destiny City was reaping the price for sheer ignorance.
Even as Irenaea dodged another blast of acidic spray from the bug that had decided to drop in on her, literally, and distract the senshi from her patrol, did she get even more frustrated by the fact that these things had to be connected.
Had she compounded things though? Even as her enhanced strength managed to send her high enough into the air to tear at the creature's wing did she feel a glob of insect spit drip onto her hand and she winced. Great. However the idea of going for the wings was effective as her opponent crashed to the earth and flopped about quite humorously before it managed to flip itself over and start burrowing into the ground.
"Oh no you don't. You can't get away that easily."
Even as her attention was on her own opponent did Irenaea momentarily glance around to see where Hela might have ended up. They'd agreed to meet up, but somewhere along the way once they'd been set upon by a few insects ... had the pair of them been split up. Where had Hela gotten to?
Sara Draconia
I hope this works for a start
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2023 4:16 pm
Hela popped out of a mirror near where she and Irenaea were supposed to meet when she heard the buzzing again. "Ugh... not again. Irenaea! Are you here?!" Calling out, she thought she saw a vague outline of black that looked sort of like the other senshi. They really did have a lot of lace and adornments on them, it had to be hard to move sometimes. Hela was not jealous of all that lace, not in the slightest.
Swatting at the things as she made her way over, she wondered how many of these bugs there were in the city. Hopefully, once that tree thing died back out they would go away. She still had a few pods from their meeting earlier that she would turn in to whoever had put the sign-up requesting them.
Each time she saw one of the cicada things on the ground, she stomped them with her boot. They made the same gross crunching sound that stepping on a regular cicada did. At least this wasn't her first encounter so she knew a bit more about what to do. Crush em or spray em, either way, they were gonna get exterminated.
The sound of her foot connecting with the insect's carapace was heartening to hear. Even though the end result wasn't one that Irenaea would have wanted to deal with. Instead of the thing just poofing out of existence the evidence of her violent streak was laid bare for the entire world to see. At least when she powered down the damage that she had done to her fuku, magical and otherwise always seemed to disappear. Irenaea wondered just how that worked for about three seconds before the almighty droning of more insects was evident in the air.
"Just great, more party crashers," but above the din Irenaea caught another sound ... her name ... in the distance. It was spoken by a familiar voice and Irenaea dodged yet another insect before hollering back towards Hela, "I don't know. Ask again in another minute or so," with that Irenaea spun around and smacked another insect to the ground with her bare hands before rethinking that approach. She tried to close the distance to Hela before getting set upon by yet another potential target, "Ughh. Seriously what is up with these bugs?"
The fact that the things wouldn't cease in their relentlessness had the senshi wondering what could be done to mitigate the threat. Pitching her voice she called out once more to Hela, "got anything flammable on you? I think the only thing that'd put a serious dent in them would be fire."
xSara Draconia
Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2023 4:59 pm
Hela pulled her can of bug spray out and pulled her other arm over her mouth as she ran and sprayed the can at the swarm of insects. It would be risky to set off another fireball without knowing exactly where the other senshi was. Sure magic could probably help protect them but she wasn't one who took risks with fire around others or in forests.
The spray worked its magic and downed large batches of the cicada-like things. Making sure she stepped on them to finish them off, she looked up and saw the swarm that was around Irenaea. "Get behind me, I have a lighter and some aerosol!" Hopefully this wouldn't get too out of control, there was about half of the can left so worst case it would just run out and they could stomp the rest of the things.
"I have no idea what is up with these things but they gave Hybris and I a hell of a time. They're all over wherever those pods are so I think maybe there are different types of those pod things. They're like spitting the same acid type stuff that the sap was like."
Lighter? Aerosol. Was that flammable enough though? It dawned on Irenaea what could happen when those two elements were mixed together and she gulped before smashing into one last insect that tried to spit its' acidic spray at her face once more. Her uniform made an effective shield against the stuff although it was left in a slightly less intact form afterwards but it did the trick of keeping the spray out of her face. Who knew what would happen if that stuff got into a person's eyes. Yuck. It was disgusting to even think about it.
"On it," was the reply that she gave to her fellow mirror senshi comrade-in-arms before leaping over Hela's form to crouch low behind the other girl, "Got anything else one could use for a bug quasher?"
Even as she asked Irenaea was checking on her own inadequate supplies and coming up short on what could be useful in this situation. Would such primitive tools as rocks and sticks be useful in the follow-up to Hela's fire torch scenario? Would her own magic be useful given her sphere of spiders? She didn't even know what her magic consisted of. Widow spiders were venomous, by nature's design, and had fairly potent toxins against humans, but these were insects ... magical ones at that ... would her magic even work against these bugs?
Sara Draconia
Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 4:12 pm
Waiting until Irenaea cleared the area, she flipped open the zippo and ignited a cloud of spray toward the insects. It felt like dragon's breath and honestly, if the senshi uniforms weren't as sturdy as they seemed to be she wouldn't have let the spray last as long as she did. With the now flaming cloud of death in hand, she waved it over the swarm trying to get as many as she could before the can emptied.
"I have like one more can of spray left but I think we should be able to get most of em dealt with now that they've been doused and burned." . Popping the empty can into her subspace she pulled out another as she looked around to survey the damage. Many of them were on the ground or flitting around spastically as they had only been slightly roasted. Hela took the lead and started stomping on the grounded ones. "Even if the spray doesn't kill them, it definitely knocks them outta the air since it gets their wings wet. I think we got most of them though so now we just have to clear the stragglers."
Irenaea felt her instincts clamour at her to simply stay were she was ducked down behind Hela. However it just wouldn't do if she left her fellow senshi to deal with the cleanup as it were of insects that were now too defeated to put up anything more than just token resistance. As Hela had pointed out, those that hadn't been doused and then burned were still a liability, even if they couldn't fly. Rising to her feet the dark mirror senshi went over to prod at an insect with legs all akimbo before simply smashing her foot down into it's carapace and grinding down with the bottom of her shoe.
"Ugh. Seriously, do we even know where these things came from? Like they remind me of those strange pods from the tree, why are they here?"
There was some hope deep down inside that if these insects were tied to the mysterious pods and in turn connected to the star festival that soon everything would go back to normal, "I'm getting sick and tired of insect party crashers. Give me a nice, quiet evening where nothing happens and I'll be one happy camper."
Sara Draconia
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2023 9:08 pm
The sound of buzzing cicadas ceased as they stomped the last few stragglers. "I would totally love to just have a non-weird night of sitting at a cafe or something and eating. How does everyone deal with all the weirdness in town? I mean I guess I'm starting to figure it's just like one of those things you have to get used to if you live here but still."
Wiping her boots off in the grass she then sat on a nearby bench to assess any damage to her uniform or skin from the acid spit those nasty bugs used. Everything looked ok other than a bit of singed fabric on the overlay of her outfit. "I really hope that when those pods go rotten or something, those things go away with them. I can agree that if that tree doesn't bloom again for 50 years I wouldn't be bothered. I just hope they aren't like real cicadas and just come up outta the ground every few years screaming and making a ruckus." She shuddered and made a bleh face jokingly toward Irenaea.
