[BATTLE] Condemned? FUNDEMNED. (Nerissa, Elektra, Thuban)

[candy lamb]

Sailor Nerissa and Sailor Thuban were on the prowl.

Actually, they were the two people least likely in the universe to 'prowl' anything, and had been chasing -- well -- meandering -- after a youma for a mile now. They hadn't even meant to go patrolling. They'd bumped into each other in the outskirts of city-suburbia -- Sailor Thuban with his new, ahem, weapon, Sailor Nerissa who had been busy with a Baby Ruth in one hand and a cellphone in the other when they encountered each other in the encroaching dusk.

Sailor Thuban's 'weapon' was 'some pieces of wood' 'cobbled' 'together'. Sailor Nerissa admired it appropriately.

"Dude, that's ghetto, Gepetto," she said unhelpfully. "I mean maybe you could hit something with it, or we could get some more planks and we'd have ourselves the beginning of a seriously sweet treehouse."

He had fixed her with a mean, squinty, Charlemagne Boyle expression, hefting the piece of wood in one hand (sweeping his Miss America dress train with the other, as otherwise it was going to trail on the ground collecting gum wrappers). "Or a serial killer's murder shack, no one would find you for weeks. Next time I'll be sure and bring the master sword if you remember to bring the unhelpful fairy."

"You are my special boy," she said. "Dape for a ref. that is actually topical and current since 1995, T-Bird."

They daped. This seemed to be the sign that Sailor Thuban/Sailor Nerissa have joined the party!

She hadn't really been intending to actually chase anything, just walk a couple blocks with Sailor Thuban and find out if anything seriously important was due in the next week and whether or not she should be copying off him or someone else. It was unfortunate, then, that skittering out from underneath a car came a horribly elongated, deadly silent Thing that looked like a spider only with -- palms and fingers tapering at the ends of its legs? -- unfolding itself in front of them.

Sailor Nerissa dropped the Baby Ruth wrapper, contributing to global warming. Sailor Thuban did her one better, and hit the thing as hard as he damn well could with what she had juvenilely termed his "wood."

"Holy s**t," she said, dazed, "I didn't actually expect that to work. I mean to be honest it looked pretty retarded."

The youma swung itself back, swaying, and then skittered underneath a car again -- and skittered underneath the car in front, deceptively fast. Thuban broke into his beautiful, long-legged track star run; Nerissa broke into her "I move enough only to prevent discoloration" trot, having to quicken when Charlie started hunting the thing like they were running down a hardcore deer in the hardcore forest. They did some beautiful gymnastics lifting themselves up and halfway flipping themselves over a car, trying to corner it, trying --

But it slid into the scrubby, weedy lawn ahead of them, and in the twilight skittered all the way forward into the burned out shell of what appeared to be a commercial-residential hotel -- a multi-storeyed building, flipping its way through the old, faded, flaking revolving doors and making them spin around going whee!, and Sailor Nerissa stood there disconsolately plucking at the split wound of her right earlobe.

The walls were marked with graffiti, and a chain pretended to bar entrants in front of DO NOT ENTER! CONDEMNED BUILDING! DO NOT PASS PAST THIS POINT! The sunset fell on it in streaky orange torrents.

"Dude, I watch horror movies," she said. "Do we have to?"  

[Shazari]

"Yes, we totally have to," Thuban answered chidingly, though he didn't seem any more thrilled by the prospect than Nerissa did. "Only you can prevent forest fires, Sailor Nerissa. Somehow, some way, chasing giant demon fingerspiders through old building wrecks is Our Civic Duty. Like, some people get 'voting' as their civic duty. You and me, we get 'Silence Hill.' "

He ducked beneath the chain and moved slowly over to a broken window, like moving slowly was somehow safe compared to showing a little hustle. Charlie stuck his head through the window, looking around both ways, then leaned back away and hissed over to Charys. "Psssssssssst," he nodded towards the window, in an obvious and overstated 'all-clear.' This sort of ruined the prior attempt at stealth.

Then, still not fully accustomed to clambering around in a skirt, he awkwardly boosted one leg up over the windowsill and then the other, and disappeared inside.

He leaned his face back out the window and gave an enthusiastic 'come on!' gesture, grabbed his wood shop frankenstein construction and pulled it in after.  

[Getsurei]

Emmeline had overheard about this building a few days previous from her father. As soon as the words condemned and death trap came out of his mouth, she knew she had to see it. Her parents didn't approve of her meandering in dangerous places, but by now they knew they couldn't stop her.

She had already been there for a couple hours, scouring every inch of the building. She wanted to see if there had been anything neat left behind, and if there was, she would definitely take it as a souvenir. Currently she was half way into a cupboard of some sort, when she heard the sound of rapid piter-pattering across the old wooden floor.

She turned her head a tad too quickly, hitting it on the side of the cupboard. Grasping her head, she backed out slowly, sat on the floor and looked around for the source of the noise. She paned over the area a couple times with her flashlight, and on the final time it locked onto a very strange sight. It clearly wasn't human, nor was it anything she'd seen before. A monster perhaps? as crazy as it sounded, it was what made the most sense to her.

Most people in this position would be terrified, but not Emmy. She just stared and smiled. She could be the first person in the whole world to see something like this. However, she wasn't quite sure what to do. Should she talk to it, or just let it pass. The answer was very clear to Emmy. She smiled and simple said "Hello."  

[candy lamb]

At this point, Nerissa was clambering through the window after Thuban. They hadn't been the first people in the condemned building. The graffiti on the inside showed her that; also the broken beer bottles, and what looked like the very old detritus of someone who'd probably been sleeping rough inside there -- if they encountered a hobo, she was going to take a picture, so help her God.

"Do you know who goes inside the abandoned buildings, T-bird?" she was saying conversationally, having pulled out her cellphone again and taken the time to hurriedly reply to a text message. (Thuban looked at her as though she were Judas with his thirty pieces of text messaging.) "The people who die in horror flicks. I'm not shitting you. This is retarded."

And then they heard the youma's far-off hiss.

(Nerissa sighed.)

Emmeline was faced with the monster, a spidery, unnatural thing with a central mouth that was a ring -- a ring with some kind of tongue that kept on lapping outside it, mindless of the teeth. It did not seem to respond to her 'hello'. In fact, it kept on moving forward, skittering inch by inch on the dirty floor, a little cautious as though it expected her to do something -- and when she held her ground, finally pounced.

"Jesus!"

Sailor Nerissa and Sailor Thuban were in the doorway. Jesus! wasn't exactly a brilliant challenge. The youma knocked Emmy to the ground and stood over her, rounding immediately on its wooden-sticked oppressors.  

[Shazari]

"Hold it right there!" Thuban hollered, going into what was obviously supposed to be a threatening stance, or pose, or something. "You -- I'll -- " He floundered, turning redder than it was easy to make out in the unlit building. "Well -- s**t, why am I talking to a spider -- "

He dove in and swung the big mess of wooden planks at the creature, more-than-recklessly, and apparently not knowing any way of swinging anything other than "like a baseball bat" of unusual size and ungainliness.

On the positive side, this sudden attack managed to crack! one of the thing's huge limbs like a crab leg at a seafood restaurant, and draw the thing's attention away from the laid-out young bystander. On the negative side, it used another of its appendages to smash the weapon out of Thuban's hands and into two oblong pieces, each much less useful than the original whole and each equally out of reach.  

[Getsurei]

Emmeline had to take a moment to process what was going on. There were two others now in the room, and they were dressed rather strangely. And this thing clearly couldn't fully understand what she was saying. Maybe she would try again later...

However, it did sink in that if she didn't move she might get hurt. Getting hurt could hinder her exploring time. That was unacceptable. Emmy squirmed out from under the monster and tried to run over by the other girl in the room. She didn't quite make it all the way, as she tripped over her own shoe lace. Atleast she hoped it was from her shoelace, and not something from the monster. She crawled over as fast as she could to the girl, and looked back at the creature. "What...what is that? Who are you?"  

[candy lamb]

"We're the A-Team," said the girl. "This is my pal B.A. Baracus, and I'm Hannibal Smith."

There wasn't a lot of time for a more cogent introduction, or even an introduction that wasn't an out-and-out lie. "You broke your wood, man," Sailor Nerissa said in either disgust, delight, or a mix of both, nobody could tell, and it was truly littered in its sad component parts on the ground. That left them both weaponless: well.

And now the spider was lashing out wildly at them both.

Sailor Nerissa took a running leap to the center of the beast, and immediately dropped to her knees to hook her arms around two of the carapaced bases of the legs. Buckin' bronco, she was not. The thing immediately swung drunkenly from side to side trying to knock her off. They weren't exactly Batman and Robin. They weren't even Benson and Stabler. Or Donald Duck and Goofy.

"Emmeline!" called out a cross voice from the doorway. "Emmeline, come here -- oh, I just hope you two DIE, you know."

The spider was now trying to get Nerissa off. In the process, it was hitting itself.  

[Shazari]

Thuban spared a few precious seconds to look over at the source of the voice. He pulled a face which seemed to indicate that this voice was expected to be no help whatsoever, and made a move to assess their options.

One of the creature's hands reached out for him, fingers flexing inhumanly. It grabbed onto his skirt: with an affronted cry of "hey now, watch it, buddy!" Sailor Thuban kicked the hand away.

Then he did what he clearly thought was the best possible thing for the situation. He ducked under the spider's bristly belly and over to the other side, where he grabbed two of its legs, pulled them together, and latched all his weight onto them just as Charys had, in a counterweight.

It was questionable whether this had any more effect than a child around its mother's leg when trying not to leave a candy store: that is, the effect of being tiresomely annoying.  

[Getsurei]

This was a very strange situation to be in. She had no information, and though this normally wouldn't bother her, Emmy felt like there was real danger. Not the thrilling kind either. The kind that if she didn't hustle she could quite possibly not make it home. She launched herself forward, making herself run towards the voice. The other two seemed to be keeping the monster at bay, and Emmeline was extremely glad for this. Though she did begin to wonder who they were more and more, as they clearly had experience with this.

Emmy tried to find the source of the voice, but her eyes couldn't see anyone else. Could they have found a hidden space that she didn't? Impossible! She was far too thorough. She scanned again, and her eyes locked on a cat. At first it seemed normal enough, but then she started notice details. Most notably the star on its forehead. There was no way the cat was the source of the voice...was there?  

[candy lamb]

Thuban and Nerissa were busy riding the ride: the youma was now fearsomely annoyed, and was rocking itself in-between the two senshi with guttural, clacking spider-sounds. It kept on hitting itself. It was not, apparently, the cleverest youma ever to have been brought out by the Negaverse, even if it got stylistic points for creepy.

"Emmeline!" said the cat again, proving that scientists were wrong and that cats were perfectly able of vocalising when they wanted to. She leapt backwards in the air in a beautiful arc, and then she had a pen in two different blue hues in her mouth -- she spat this out a bit preemptorily. "Come here -- you must believe what I say when I tell you this. You are a Sailor Senshi of Destiny City, even if you look behind you and think that this isn't really the best job offer considering your colleagues."

Sailor Nerissa was busy saying, "This is how I rode your mom last night," and the youma was squeaking.  

[Shazari]

"Maybe if you want to pick up the pace a bit, the both of you," was all Sailor Thuban had to add, at first. The youma began stamping its feet (its hands???) on the floor, hoping to shake them off that way. When this didn't seem to work much better, it began pivoting in circles, trying to squish one or the other of them against the wall.

This seemed to make the boy senshi a little more demanding. "And maybe if you'd given me some magical powers to go along with this magical outfit, that might've helped too, just maybe. Be warned, kid, the cat's been known to slap a skirt on you and then bolt."  

[candy lamb]

"You do have a magical power!" bawled the cat. "It's 'Rust and Dust Accumulation!'" ("I totally saw that infomercial," said Sailor Nerissa, who was now whacking the youma with the flat of her hand as though it was a bad puppy.) "It's not my fault you never asked! Use it already!" (This was patently unfair.)

But she was focused on the human girl again. "Emmeline," she said. "Take this pen and say Elektra Power, Make-Up!. And do it before these two become ex-senshi, please!"  

[Getsurei]

Emmeline was definitely shocked. This was so much and so fast. Just the way she liked it. She could only think of this as the beginning of a new and better adventure.

She reached down and picked up the pen. She felt a little embarrassed about having to yell something so silly sounding, but if it was true the possibilities would become endless. Without any more hesitation, she closed her eyes, thrust her hand holding the pen into the air, repeating "Elektra power, Make-up~!"



In just a moment she opened her eyes to see that she had indeed changed. She was wearing an outfit similar in slight ways to the other two, but had many components completely unique to her. "Whoa...this is wicked!"

She looked at herself in awe for only a slight bit longer, and then back to the monster. Elektra knew she had to help the others, but how? "What do I do now? There isn't a book or something on this is there?"  

[candy lamb]

Nerissa was now lying halfway on her back and kicking the youma a little idly. It all looked completely ridiculous. Thuban and Nerissa were treating the thing as though it were some kind of punching bag or rubber clown that kept on popping back up whenever you hit it, and the youma was responding in irritated, annoyed kind. It was no kind of Incredible Battle. The best part had been Thuban breaking his half-assed wooden club over the thing, and it had swiftly devolved from there.

"NO, THERE IS NOT A BOOK," said Astraea, who sounded as though she really needed a holiday. She actually sounded like a peeved gym teacher, the sort that taught you hockey and had a whistle. "JUST GET IN THERE, SAILOR ELEKTRA."  

[Shazari]

" 'Just get in there,' she says," Thuban mocked. "You can see how Nerissa and I became such stellar tacticians." He was now trying a different strategy, which was grabbing at the fingers of the hands attached to the legs of the spider, and bending them backwards until, crack! -- they broke. The spider was not thrilled. Its strategy was now to keep hitting Thuban in the back of the head repeatedly with one of its free hands.

"Ow! OW! This is going to kill so many brain cells, I'm going to be like a headbanging grunge rocker boy. Whose idea was this? Ow!" His head clunked into one of the legs he was hanging from.

"Nerissa," he called over, "while we're waiting for Elektra to bust a move, I will definitely pay you five dollars if you bite this spider thing."