Oh. Well. That was a Very Big Monster. The good news was, there were a whole lot of people around them--and Elsa honestly felt as if....well. As if this was definitely something they could all handle. It was huge, sure, but that just meant that it would go down harder.
But that howl.
It sent a shiver crawling down his spine, a reminder of meals abandoned and forgotten because something else was more important, of "finish your homework before you eat," of having to pick at a salad because nothing was confirmed kosher and it would be humiliating for the person he was with if he asked and that was the only vegetarian option and--
The hunger gnawed at him, yes, and he caught poor Parsifal staggering into him, carefully standing him up--but his attention was focused on Murikabushi. Given what he remembered, it--scared him.
But Murikabushi seemed to be hanging on, defying the creature, even, and that--was good.
"I gotta get in closer to use my magic," he said, and he reached out, gently squeezing Murikabushi's arm.
It would have to do.
The alien senshi (Grieve) that came over to them got a brief nod, but Elsa broke from the group to get in range, and let his magic flow.
"Empty Soul."
Maybe it was all in his head--but Elsa swore that it felt good to use his magic now. Like everything was finally right, and like it was excited to be used. But maybe that was just him--maybe it was just the freedom of finally knowing that everything was right.
Either way, this beastie needed to die, and Elsa was gonna help make it dead.
tatterpixie
sorry for the late reply!
amorremanet
lizbot
Quote:
Sailor Elsa speaks the name of his attack and blows over his palm. A whirl of shadows spreads out around him to a radius of eight feet, and enemies within the radius feel suddenly as if something has emptied them out on a deep level--emotions feel distant and removed, they might notice that they cannot hear or feel their own heartbeat or breathing, and otherwise they feel more like an empty vessel than a person. At this stage, enemies will also feel cold, as if the temperature of the area around them has rapidly dropped. These effects last for 35 seconds and Elsa can use this attack twice per battle.
Caliban had only just braced himself for whatever the monster was that they were fighting after they had been teleported but still felt a wave of pain hit him. Not enough to knock him over, but it certainly felt as if he hadn't eaten for days. And that he would have to eat right after this battle was over.
The stench that came long with the monster didn't help. He only smelled it for a moment, but suddenly hunger and nausea were fighting their way around his stomach, making him hungry and never wanting food ever again at the same time.
But the longer he stood there the more damage that it could do and so he took the largest rock that he could, flinging it toward one of the open wounds on the creature hoping that those were at least weak spots.
Voyager barely had time to blink and look at where they had teleported to before they were confronted by the monster that they were meant to defeat, which meant he had not braced himself at all, nor did he expect it to smell that badly, so he got a good sniff of the rot which was coming from the creature's body and made him gag for a moment, bringing tears to his eyes at how bad the smell was.
And for some reason he felt hungry as well, but the smell was not helping to quell it in any way. A visit to a cafe was going to be needed after this, though he wasn't sure if he would be able to eat anything for a while with the vision of the half-undead creature that was before them. At least his ship wasn't smelly.
He half-heartedly threw a rock a the monster, only barely grazing it as he was attempting to cover his mouth and nose with his sleeve while doing so.
As soon as they had teleported the creature was upon them and Alphubel only had so much time to cover his face with his undershirt up to his nose but still managed to get hurt by the creature. He stumbled back a bit, planting his staff into the ground so that he wouldn't fall over. A wave of hunger hit him suddenly and while it was distracting, it wasn't enough to keep him from his current task, which was helping Fang to, most likely, kill this thing in it's entirety.
It was a task that he didn't like to do, he was an animal lover and he wished that they didn't have to destroy so many creatures, but he had yet to run into someone that would be able to help in situations such as this. Perhaps one of the others here might know how, but for the moment they had to defend themselves.
With that Alph removed his staff from the ground and ran up to one on of the beast's back paws, hitting it with his staff as hard as he could, though with a little less momentum than he would have liked due to the smell being so overpowering the closer one got to the creature.
Super Sailor Helene HP: 60/75 Action: Hurling item at monster! also suffering greatly Damage: 7
Helene was heartened, to see so many people coming to help save a world. Perhaps, if he were ever to find a way to save his--perhaps, he would have half so many people, willing to help him. It felt certain, almost, that they would be successful, with so many present.
But that did not make it less jarring, to arrive on a world and smell rot, and death, and decay.
His world had long since stopped stinking in such a way, and he had not been ready for this on Fang's,. even knowing what Kaifeng had told him about what they might encounter.
And that howl.
And the awful hunger that accompanied it.
Helene felt--dizzy. He stumbled, briefly, like he had been crashed into by a sudden wave of it. Like he was back on his own world, scrabbling for whatever he could find to survive, like he'd never come to Earth, never found Kaifeng, like he was barely surviving all over again--
Like in the end, after everything, he was still doomed to perish with his world, and with so many of the people he'd loved.
But Kaifeng was here. He had to focus on that. Focus on the smell of animal decay that was long gone from Helene. Focus on--
On picking up a broken piece of stone on the ground, on hurling it at the monster with force, on then reaching for Kaifeng and grabbing his sleeve like a brief moment of holding on might make all of this.....less awful, at least.
Princess Cybele HP: 110/125 Buff Magic Roll: 7 Having a hard time with the hunger effect, buffing herself, Antisana, and Danube
This should have been her comfort zone. She stood against Chaos, against a beast, both things that she had plenty of experience with hunting, and she stood side by side with many friends and allies. There were even a few Pages who were approaching her, specifically, one who wore her own colors, one who seemed to be telling others to stand near her, like he was confident that she should be able to handle this.
The feeling of hunger that swept over them got to her, though.
It brought her back to the weeks she'd spent half-concious in the abandoned basement, feet burned to the bone. Pain had followed her through waking and sleeping, in the physical ways, but like this, too. It was something sharp, and then dull, and then sharp again, something awful.
She didn't know if the smell of rot in the air here was the Chaos, or if it was her own wounds festering.
She'd escaped when her wrists had become skeletal, too thin for the manacle to hold them. It was a miracle she was alive. Even with magic to help, she'd barely been able to lift her head for days after.
She'd been so weak then, and weaker before, when she'd allowed herself to get into that situation.
I'm not weak now, a small, logical part of her brain tried to argue, but it was hard to listen to that, even as she let her Princess wings unfurl behind her as a small show of proof. She stared blankly in the direction of the corrupted beast.
Magic. She needed magic.
"Hunter's Deadly Grace," she murmured cooly, taking the ethereal bow in a practiced motion and shooting it upwards so that the magic would target herself and some of the ones who had come close to her.
DSS Super Róka, Senshi of the Undertow HP: 75 - 15 = 60 DAMAGE: Indirect, 10 + 2 = 12 ACTION: Doing bad! Casting their super magic & attacking the boss and being as normal as they can manage about it.
For being a five-foot-something distinctly semi-aquatic alien with clearly alien traits and hair about as long as they were tall, Róka had surprisingly managed to sort of -- fade into the background, almost, for all that time up until now. Oh, they'd thought about coming as Harper, but from what they'd gathered this sort of thing often involved some type of violent engagement, and that meant Harper's glamour would dissipate in plain sight of everyone who could see there was someone else behind that face. Certainly not worth losing a disguise over.
Well. That wasn't relevant to anyone else here but them, but they'd been chasing the thought in circles for an hour, setting their face in a faintly condescending smirk on the outside as they metaphorically pinned down the thing and ripped its metaphorical entrails out. Easier to just stay and listen and note down every single thing they heard anyone say of note; that'd keep them busy, that'd give them things to look into later.
And then Fang took them all to his homeworld. It -- could have looked worse. Surely it was worse elsewhere. But it was still desolate, and eerily quiet, and nothing stirred, and it was reinforcing their own resolve to never return back to their own home, the dead ******** thing that they'd left to rot. Then something-someone, some sort of beast, the kind they would've hunted once, roared; and Róka's smirk disappeared from their face in the blink of an eye and left ⠀⠀⠀⠀a blank emptiness behind. No expression, no intent, just a lack of feeling, because --
⠀⠀⠀Oh.
So that's how it⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀so ⠀⠀that's how it⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀was. Róka made a noise that might've been a strangled laugh, something they weren't quite aware they were making, and dug their nails into their palms so aggressively they thought they might be drawing blood.
They'd almost managed to get used to eating being easy: what an idiot they were. Nothing ever stayed. They'd gotten weak -- this shouldn't have been hurting them. Not as badly as it was. They'd been so used to it, they'd been so used to it, why, now, were they --
(If it was so hungry there was meat. There was so much meat. All these bodies, live and warm, rich and red, and if they all were hungry and didn't want to develop such strange appetites, the beast was right there, already stripped enough for hands and fingers and tools to get under the skin and pull and expose -- no need for tactics, no need for anything, just use the weight of so many bodies to crush it until it stopped moving again, just take a damned bite --
Absentmindedly, they wiped their mouth off with the back of one gloved hand. Even as distant as they felt right now, someone might've gotten the wrong idea if they'd seen Róka salivating. Or the right idea, maybe. But not now. Not now. Not now.)
Róka called their magic to hand with an indistinct murmur, swallowed all that doubt and pain down and suffocated it as tightly and efficiently as they knew how, and launched themself at the undead creature faster than should've been possible -- they weren't quite on form, they knew they weren't, too caught up in their own body and that foreign-native want to really drive their weight into it. Some days they missed their claws, their fangs, their knives; today they felt that acutely, but their body was just ⠀⠀⠀⠀meat. It'd obey whatever they needed it to obey, no matter its agonies, no matter how badly it felt like they were wasting to nothing.
They'd been through worse. If that hadn't killed them then, certainly they weren't going to let it even make them stumble now. Not with strangers watching for any weakness, and especially not with anyone Róka knew watching. It'd be a pity to die on Fang for a fight they didn't even much care about! As far as they were concerned he could run right into that thing's jaws if he cared so much about salving his world's wounds, but that didn't correspond with anything they wanted anyone else to read off them, and it'd be a pity to have people deem them a villain so publicly. And now that they were hungry they weren't going to -- they weren't going to stop. That was the easiest sort of drive. They were committed, now, until they finally felt bereft of that want.
Quote:
Róka's lower arms and legs are covered in veils of water that manifest out of thin air. Anyone who touches the water generated by this attack will temporarily experience the feeling of being trapped in a rip current and dragged under; this may include feeling as if they're tumbling head over heels, being dragged down and away, being unable to breathe, drowning, etc. Although this only lasts for a few seconds, for the rest of the magic's duration they will feel as if they're underwater & experience difficulty moving accordingly. This magic is primarily an agility boost -- the primary debilitating effect only lasts as long as an enemy makes contact with Róka, although at player discretion they may be affected for longer. While this magic is active, Róka's agility and speed are increased drastically, including acceleration. This attack lasts for 25 seconds.
Open to interaction! They've just been hanging out in the back of the group and acting as unobtrusive as possible up until now.
rolling for Fang's damage to put in the next post!
genovianprince
Offline
genovianprince
Offline
Posted: Wed May 08, 2024 4:11 pm
ZOMBIE CHRYSOCYON: ???/???
The Chrysocyon yelped in pain—the constant barrage of magic, of rocks—the fantasy of death from Michel, the molten gold from Yvoire, distracting and dazzling lights from Reims—it drooled as Murikabushi's magic intensified its own hunger, felt more sick from Alastor's despair, and gargled as its lungs felt flooded from Róka's magic. It shook its massive head violently, bits of itself flying off, and then ROARED once more.
This time, it summoned miniature versions of itself, crawling out from the homes, from under the ground, and loping up from the plains around the town through the alleys.
Current Psychological Effect: None. The sheer numbers of large canid mammals might overhwelm you, it might not.
Fang shook. All around him, he could hear the sounds of people shouting, screaming, casting magic and chucking rocks and panicking. He'd done this, bringing them all here. He felt disconnected from it all, even as Ilse came before him. He was locked in the past.
Deep breath. Like Murikabushi taught. He inhaled slowly, the scent of Ida's floral magic calming him, and he looked up into Ilse's face. They were here to help. All of them—Ilse, Michel, all the people whose names he didn't know. And he needed to be strong. This was his planet.
"Fang okay," he said softly, reaching up to take Ilse's hands from his shoulders to squeeze them comfortingly. "Fang… will need many cheeseburgers, after fight."
He smiled a bit at his joke, then gathered his strength and stood. The little Chrysocyons were more normal-sized, perhaps slightly smaller, and they would go down far easier than Mother the large one.
"Double Slash!" he roared in response to the Chrysocyons, lashing out with the paws and clawing two of the smaller ones. Both of them crumbled to dust immediately. Good. He hoped everyone could handle them just as easily as he did.
Quote:
Fang swipes at his target with both hands, and two ghostly paws of a Chrysocyon with claws extended spring forth. They leave the sensation and appearance of deeper, more burning cuts, slicing into skin like a hot knife through butter. He can attack the same target twice, or two different targets, but he only has one chance to hit someone once per swipe. The effects lasts for about thirty seconds, has two uses, and has a range of fifteen feet. The magic can tear through clothes or can cause lasting damage at player discretion.
Combat Mechanics are back in this post! There are 50 normal-sized Chrysocyon zombies scattered across the battlefield that are now attacking. Each of them has 10 HP, so a magical attack will kill them. AOE magic can hit multiple of them, up to three. You will take 10 DMG for each one you hit. Track how many are alive and that you've killed in your post headers, like so:
If you plan to roll and backfill in later your roleplay, please calculate the amount of enemies left immediately so the next poster has an accurate count.
If you were quoted for Skoll's buffs from the previous round, please add it to this round's damage instead.
“Damn right it felt good,” Murikabushi affirmed with a laugh that was, for the moment, strategically ignoring all the work he would eventually need to do unpacking this bunch of latent particular emotional dysfunctions. “******** move, trying to make me feel weak in the exact wrong way.”
Tough talk aside, firing off that attack at the Big b***h didn’t make Murikabushi feel any less hungry himself. But at least a distraction had swooped in: extremely tall; overall, looking somewhere between an elf and a demon, given the one-two combo of long, pointy ears and a crown of pink horns; long, blue ponytail that would’ve made Nega-senshi weep themselves sick with envy because she got her hair like that without even trying.…… Now that he got a better look at the senshi who’d been kinda checking out his ears, a name pinged up in Muri’s mind.
“Grieve,” Muri said, taking in a long glimpse of the whole package here. “You’re Grieve, right? Kaifeng’s mentioned you before.” He’d also heard the name in that memory on his own world, when Fang had visited with him and helped Muri finally sort out his a*****e magic. But Kaifeng had provided more detail and more context—enough that Murikabushi managed to throw a smile Grieve’s way, small and tight-lipped but earnest, taut with energy for the fight. “All good things, I promise. Then again, the roughest s**t I’ve ever heard out of Kaifeng is that he loves letting Helene manhandle him, and some Negaverse idiot was very rude to his cousin’s husband.”
There was a thrill in this, too. A thrill different from that of the fight.
Per Kaifeng and that one memory, Murikabushi knew that Grieve had been some kind of space pirate and multipurpose ne’er-do-well for hire, once upon a time, a thousand years previously. He knew that Helene and the old Kaifeng—the one with the elfin ears like Airan’s and the pink ombre in his hair—had semi-regularly pulled Grieve and her Nameless comrades out of trouble. He knew that the old Kaifeng—Xingyi? that sounded right, but Murikabushi wasn’t going to run over to hip-attached HelFeng in the middle of a fight just to ask about that—had once whined like the most pathetic teenager while Airan had handed his drunk a** over to Helene after hauling him out of a tavern in the Murikabushian capital.
But most importantly, Muri knew that Grieve had known Airan. Under other circumstances, he would’ve loved to pick her brain about him for hours on end. Would’ve loved the chance to set up his phone to record and then just let her have story-time, interjecting with questions but largely following whatever narrative she wanted to spin.
Unfortunately, the present moment’s circumstances barked out another one of those awful roars. Right on cue, as summoned by some Chaos-perverted version of the pack instinct, a ton of smaller zombie chrysocyon rose from the ground. Clearly a distraction from going after the Big b***h—Yuki had told ReiKiyoshi so while explaining how he approached designing encounters in a tabletop RPG: if you want the players to feel like badasses, you give them one big monster to gang up on; if you want them to struggle, you hit them with a swarm of little monsters—but if they just allowed the little bitches to do whatever they wanted without opposition……
“Oh, kutabare,” he drawled, shaking his head and rolling his eyes as three of the little shits came for him. They could bite and claw all they wanted, though. Bite, tear, claw, kill, ******** whatever. While they each managed a few good hits, Murikabushi didn’t let them get anything too vital. “I can do this all day, omae yarou.”
As if to illustrate exactly what he meant, he did the gesture and called on his magic again—but only the basic version, this time. ******** that trash; Murikabushi would save his more powerful stuff for hitting the Big b***h again.
the senshi magic
Sailor Scout Attack: Gnawing Hunger. Extending an arm, Murikabushi bends his wrist back; as he calls the name of his attack, he curls his fingers into a fist, then jerks his hand down as if tugging a cord. Enemies within 10 feet of him begin to feel a powerful hunger or sense of craving, one they feel cannot be sated, and yet, they are compelled to try. This craving can be for anything—food, drink, affection/intimacy, alcohol or narcotics, the answers to the math homework, etc.—but it is quite distracting. This spell lasts for 25 seconds, and Murikabushi can use it three times per battle.
the gratuitous japanese
kutabare: imperative conjugation of くたばる kutabaru, a very vulgar way of saying “to drop dead.” Colloquially, basically used as “to ******** off.”
omae yarou: there are fascinating linguistic nuances to unpack here (especially about the fact that Muri’s using a pronoun when he doesn’t need to), but the bottom line is that Muri’s being Completely Extra about calling the zombie chrysocyon “bastards.”
Botein, Super Senshi of Amulets HP: 60-10= 50 / 75 Damage: 5 Chrysocyons Attacked:1. Chrysocyons Remaining:still 47/50 (as of this post... i think >.>' )
So very much was going on and honestly, even with all the fighters scrambling around her to go after that large hurt dog, her mind was very much so stuck on the empty feeling she had within her. Hunger that ate away at her. It chewed on her… she was so hungry that her tummy didn’t even growl in anger it whimpered in sadness. Botein remembered what hunger felt like, she did her best to stretch her meager budget as far as it would go but sometimes there was only so much she could do. But this… this was so much worse.
She had mentally spiraled down, her arms wrapping around herself as she tried to cope with this gaping void that had opened in her even as the crowd around her jumped into action. It wasn’t until the creature from earlier once again roared that her head snapped up and her eyes focused on incoming, smaller, dogs. They looked just as bad as the big one, if not worse. Rabid was the only word that ran through her mind. The thought of rabies, and just how horrible it was, spired her into action. With little thought Botein grabbed the closest thing she could reach, a particularly sharp looking stone, and just threw it as hard as she could at one of the animals that were getting too close for comfort.
It took longer than it should have for her brain to actually realize that the creatures were not dogs, they were not rabid, and she needed a lot more stones since there were quite a few more creatures all descending upon the crowd. “If anyone needs healing give me a shout,” She yelled out to the crowd in general, not really expecting any takers but still more than willing to assist even as she picked up more stones, ready to throw them at more of the creatures.
{Open for general interaction or requests for magical healing}
Sailor Parsifal of Alternatives HP: 25/50 Action: splits into three to distract the smaller beast in front of him, chucks a rock at it Physical damage: 1D8 = 4 damage to 1 Chrysocyon
Parsifal stared as the wounded monster split off smaller versions of itself, one of which charged right for him! Fighting off the effects of the beast's hunger magic as best he could (his belly still ached – oh, so much steak when this was over, riding weight be damned), he spread his arms to either side and shouted, "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo!" in a singsong voice.
Quote:
Sailor Scout Attack:Eeny Meeny Miney Mo! Parsifal can create up to three alternate copies of himself. He calls out the attack name and gestures to either side of himself, and three copies of himself appear and immediately spring into action. The copies obey Parsifal's intent at the time they are spawned, like "create a distraction" or "act as a decoy", and while they don't have physical mass they can be plenty distracting and annoying. The distraction caused by the copies allows Parsifal to physically attack the enemy, since it's hard to tell which is a copy and which is really him. Parsifal can use this once per battle, and only on himself; the copies can be easily destroyed with a good solid hit from a fist or a magical attack, at which point they POP and dissipate. They last no longer than 15 seconds regardless.
Suddenly there were three Parsifals in front of the creature. "Catch me if you can!" all three taunted simultaneously, their voices sounding phase-shifted and weird to anyone listening. The trio began running around the Chrysocyon, waving their arms and yelling and laughing at it in an attempt to confuse the thing and distract it from attacking. One of the Parsifals picked up a rock and flung it at the beast, striking it soundly. "Yay!" the Parsifals all shouted in unison, leaping into the air as they continued their Confuse-A-Chrysocyon efforts. One was better than none!
Ellicott, Super Senshi of Dance HP: 60-10= 50 / 75 Damage: .... 2 sweatdrop Chrysocyons Attacked:1. Chrysocyons Remaining:still 47/50 (as of this posts maybe... math is not my friend >.< )
"No problem" She smiled and nodded at the senshi even as the other fighter called upon her magic again. Internally she was in awe but Ellicott kept that feeling off of her face. She really did wish she had magic like that, rather then this fairly limited buffing stuff.
Any contemplation on her magic were quashed when the creature from before howled once more, producing lots of mini versions of its self. Creatures that were rapidly approaching. "Bloody hell," She cursed as she instinctively scrambled backwards. "Zombies... why did it have to be zombies," Ellicott practically bit out even as she scrambled for something, anything, to use as a weapon. The handful of stones she had precured didn't do much but that wouldn't stop her from finding something better. Preferably something that would keep her from having to engage in hand to... muzzle? combat.
MiddyGlow
For brief 'your welcome' interaction
Fiction1119
Original Lunatic
Offline
lizbot
No Faun
Offline
Posted: Wed May 08, 2024 4:49 pm
Squire Halle of Lysithea HP: 60/75 Action: fussing at a distance before using shield magic to block half of the damage for Lisse
It was all, well, a lot. Magic, fighting, and the hunger that he told himself was magic, it was definitely magic and he knew it would fade with time. And even if it didn't, he could go hungry for a day or two, much longer than this fight will likely take.
The clench of his stomach took a new twist when he looked around and saw Lisse with two familiar looking squires. One hit hard enough to need to be carried to safety. Things were obviously worse on that side of the fight and Lisse...could definitely handle this. Halle didn't need to hover, or be over-protective. He wasn't even the one that got seriously hurt!
He should trust Lisse and the people around him, to make sure all of them were safe by the end of this.
He. Should.
And then there was suddenly an entire hoarde of creatures bearing down upon them, and Halle, equally as suddenly, no longer cared about the shoulds of giving his brother the space to grow as a knight. A moment later, Lisse would find a huge, and familiar, wooden shield blocking part of an incoming attack.
xorangeish sherbert
Go ahead and reduce the damage to Lisse to 5 if he attacks one of the mobs
Squire: A simple wooden long shield shaped like a unicorn head Defensive magic: summons a 6'x 12' version of the wooden shield, while it only blocks magic and physical attacks from one direction, it is a physical manifestation that also blocks line of sight as to what's going on behind it. magic pool: 45 seconds
