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 Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 9:29 pm
Blarney was avoiding the following elements of StarFest 2k25: puddles (and the demon starfish that resided within them); fireflies (and the electric stinging that accompanied them); strange half-finished buildings (and the Negaverse Senshi that called for a meeting within it); and, most of all, the demon chicken eggs.
So far, he'd been successful. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that the right thing to do - the moral thing to do, the righteous thing to do - would have been to seek out the stupid demon chicken eggs and their stupid demon chicken parents, too. Crush them and fight them and destroy them before they could hurt anyone else. That would've been the brave thing to do.
However.
Blarney had already fought one of them. He'd done his duty on the chicken front, hadn't he? Surely, even the most righteous, goodest and truest Knight of Earth - or of any other planet, surely - wouldn't expect him to fight another demon chicken.
Surely.
Surely the universe wasn't that unkind. Surely there was some sort of karmic one-per-customer limit on the demon chickens, right?
Surely.
Alas.
Alas, he'd just returned to corner of the DC park that he claimed as his own, ready to transform back into just Mason McCaffrey, ready to call it a blessedly uneventful evening of patrolling when--
Crack.
Blarney froze, already wincing. Unfortunately, the sound of eggshells breaking was fairly unique, and he had the displeasure of knowing what followed immediately after that sound, in this park, in this city.
Blarney swung around, eyes scanning the shadows of the park. Why did everything look like chicken now? At least before it had been a daylight battle, but fighting one of these things at night (without Joy, without the weird and wonderful Pal) was going to be--
BKAWWWWK
Blarney flinched and spun toward the noise - where he thought the noise had come from.
"Come out come out wherever you are!" Blarney shouted, more bravely than he felt. "Or are you chicken?"
Stupid demon chicken reducing him to stupid chicken puns--
BKAWWK-AWWWK
Blarney spun the other direction. Surely there weren't more of them, lurking in the shadows. Surely they hadn't displayed frightening levels of sentience and teamed up against him.
Surely not.
A flutter of wings from somewhere nearby. Blarney swung his stick, then caught himself from swinging it again - don't waste energy, especially when you don't know the number of your enemy. Blarney set his jaw, his shoulders, and backed up until he hit treebark: at the very least, he could make sure that the demon chicken didn't sneak up on him, right? If all else failed, he could leap into the trees and Tarzan his way away, at least far enough for him to be able to call someone for help - god would he ever be able to stop calling other people for help this was why he wasn't supposed to patrol alone--
That was about when the demon chicken fell from the tree branches directly onto Blarney's head, and when it clucked at him, Blarney could have sworn the damn thing was laughing.
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2025 9:55 pm
Honestly, so far, Karakorum thought she'd been having a pretty fun Star Festival. Sure, two encounters with a demon chicken from the darkest depths of Hell wasn't the best, but she'd beat it both times with help from some charming alien boys, and that was like...a win, in every possible sense. Plus, tonight, she'd found a pretty little opal star charm, and she twirled it around her finger as she walked through the city. She wasn't big on collecting them, but grabbing one or two here or there was always nice, and they made for great decos on bags and therefore super cute props for Instagram photos.
She'd been having a pretty quiet night so far, just taking a few walks, and had wandered her way into a nice little park when she heard it in the distance.
An ominous b-gawk.
"Oh, s**t," she sighed, and she turned towards it. What was she gonna do? Risk that some poor civilian was caught up in this weird chicken nonsense? Absolutely not. So she ran in the direction of the sound--and of a Page's aura, vaguely sort of, which meant hey, she might have backup again--and she came to a stop to see the chicken on the poor Page's head.
Well, that was some bullshit.
Alas, she was starting to get very, very used to bullshit.
"Hey, you stupid chicken! Try this on for size!"
She summoned up her magic, firing off her bow and hoping to distract the chicken before it could do any serious damage to that poor Page.
"Get the eggs as fast as you can!"Quote: Magic: While Karakorum channels her magic, her bow glows a soft silver. Ethereal silvery arrows appear when she draws it back, and she can focus on any target within 15 feet of her. The arrows she fires will inevitably hunt them down as long as they are within range, even if they must defy normal physics and travel in an unnatural way, and as long as they are her target, they will feel as if they are prey for a hunter. Her arrows strike with the force and pain of a real arrow, and the sensation of pain will remain as long as she is channeling, with lingering bruising possible at player discretion. She may channel for up to 35 seconds at this stage, and can only focus on one target at a time.
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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 10:17 pm
Blarney felt claws and feathers digging into his scalp, his neck - oh, was that blood? He couldn't be sure, maybe it was sweat, but he was seeing stars and--
And then the pressure on his whole body lifted with a terrified/terrifying SKWAWK, and Blarney became aware that there was another person suddenly on the scene - he hadn't even felt them arrive on his internal radar, because--well, because chicken.
"Get the...what?" Blarney asked, dazed, but he did his best to be obedient to the voice; eggs. He knew what eggs were, he was sure. Round little guys. White, usually but not--not these, because these were demon eggs.
Right. Demon eggs. Demon chicken. Okay.
Blarney shook his head once to clear it and then rolled to his feet, but didn't go far; he scanned the area for the aforementioned eggs, and finally--
"Ha!" Blarney said, bringing his stick down on the remainder of the cluster he'd begun to step on a few moments ago. "I hope it hurts, you big dumb bird--" Blarney looked around, it occurring to him for the first time to look and see who had arrived to save his butt this time--
He paused, momentarily distracted in his quest to smash the eggs to smithereens. He had become used to a lot of weird things in his two-ish months since awakening into Blarney, but the girl in front of him...
Unbidden, he thought of Artemis, the hunter, in Greek mythology. She and Apollo were, naturally, Madeline and Mason's favorite gods, and he knew logically this girl had to either be a Senshi or a Knight, not a goddess, but just for a second--
BAWWWK, the demon chicken howled as the shot fired from the goddess-girl found its target. Blarney jumped and went back to egg-smashing, knowing his stick wouldn't be much use against that thing, if it was anything like the other chicken he'd encountered. Where was Pal, Joyeuse Garde's demonic (but cute!) magical dog when you needed it?
"Thank you!" Blarney called over his shoulder, frantically searching for more eggs to smash - maybe they'd get lucky and this thing would fly off in search of another, less-populated place to roost if he could find and get rid of them all.
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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 10:39 pm
Honestly, Karakorum felt like she kept getting lucky, finding these battle partners who were good at taking the simple direction of go smash the eggs. Silly that it felt lucky, but, well, she wasn't sure what kind of magical coordination most people got. She'd mostly been tripping into figuring things out, or working with her brother or Achird or someone else she knew pretty well; random dudes following her directions was pretty great.
So far, the chicken just seemed extra angry, but that was fine. She'd gotten it off the poor guy's head, and she glanced over--there. A little clutch of eggs. Hopefully the last ones.
"Once the eggs are gone," she said, and she turned to run towards the ones she saw, firing off another shot to keep the monster occupied, "it should disappear! It did before!"
She slid to a stop in front of the eggs and then, with very much malice aforethought and determination, she stomped on them, hearing a satisfying crack under her feet; one, two more, and she was pretty sure all the eggs were crushed.
The chicken stopped. She stared it down, drawing up her bow to shoot at it again.
And then, with a dismal, distressed wail, the chicken popped into awful sulfurous smoke, and vanished.
"Holy ******** I hate that thing," she gasped, jogging over to the Page and frowning at him. "Are you okay? That thing looks like it got you pretty good."
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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 10:46 pm
Blarney paused in his ferocious beatdown of what remained of the eggs, watching to see if what the girl-goddess said was true; it had been such a blur with Auntie Joy and Pal that Blarney couldn't have told you what made it disappear, just that it finally had.
And disappear it did. Blarney let out a sigh of relief, his shoulders slumping slightly - he could still feel the adrenaline pumping through him, but the pain was starting to pulse along side it. Why did he have a feeling he'd be sore as heck tomorrow?
"Thank you so much," Blarney said with a sheepish smile. "I'm okay." He moved one gloved hand to the back of his neck, and grimaced as it did in fact come away bloody. "I mean...probably. Demon chickens don't carry rabies or tetanus or anything, right?" It was mostly a joke, but where did powered people go to heal up? The hospital? Everyone's health insurance bills must be astronomical, pun not even intended.
"It'll heal," he said a moment later, shaking his own blood off his hand. "I'm Blarney, Page of Earth," he said, "and I am very grateful you happened to be passing by, 'cause I think otherwise I would've been the world's first case of 'tastes like human' for a chicken. What's your name?" Blarney asked, then glanced at her outfit. It didn't look like Aruna's, so he hazarded a guess: "Are you a Knight too?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 11:00 pm
Karakorum frowned. Yeah, that was definitely blood, but was this one of those "head wounds just happen to bleed a lot" situations, or was it serious?
"If you're really hurting," she said, "I can send a Knight note to my brother; he does healing, and he can fix you up, probably." Shuangxu was incredibly useful for that, actually. Probably the most useful he'd ever been to anyone outside a video game, actually.
(Belle would try to kill her for thinking of his beloved that way, but Kara was Shuangxu's little sister, she was allowed to talk s**t in her own head.)
"No diseases as far as I know," she said, "but still. Better to treat it fast." She exhaled. "I'm Karakorum of Cybele, and yeah, I'm a Knight, too. Glad I got here when I did and that I've got the connections to help you out."
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Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2025 11:09 pm
Blarney reached up again and winced as his fingers found the second of at least three or four gashes along his hair-line. Probably he was just lucky they hadn't hit bone - neck injuries were nothing to mess around with, and even if it wasn't serious, he couldn't very well slap a bandaid on it and go home to Madeline like this.
Plus, he was starting to feel a tiny bit woozy, and leaned against the nearest tree with what he hoped was an air of nonchalance and not bloodloss-related weakness.
"That would be awesome," Blarney decided with a grin. "Wait, your brother's a Knight too? That's--I mean, that's awesome, but also like...that must be pretty scary," he added, thinking of his own sister; he never, ever wanted her to get involved in this whole thing. As evidenced by his own bleeding headwound, it was way too dangerous. "If you're sure it wouldn't bother him, I mean, I guess I--" Blarney felt himself sliding down the tree. Hey, wait, he hadn't given permission for that! But his body didn't seem to care - apparently it was Time To Sit Down Now.
"Yeah. Probably healing is...probably a good idea. Thank you again, Miss Karakorum of Cybele."
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