Cybele was out hunting. Tonight, so far, there hadn't been much wandering involved. No, in the very first park she'd stopped at, she'd felt an aura and heard some skittering and before long she'd been chasing down some strange lizard monster that seemed to have at least a dozen legs. She couldn't be quite sure, she kept only catching glimpses of it, and after a few times loosing sight of it when she felt like she shouldn't have, she was fairly certain that it was actually going invisible. It led to a very frustrating half hour of luring and chasing before she finally managed to trap it in a bathroom. Luckily, its danger seemed to lie mostly in stealth, so she managed to finish it off quickly.
Then, she left the dust filled bathroom, crossed the path, and collapsed into a nearby bench. That had been more time consuming than difficult, but now she was free to take a small break, and maybe even go home if nothing else showed up.
Of course, that was the moment when another aura came into range. Something much stronger. That had to be coming from an officer. Cybele gave a deep sigh and stood up, brushing herself off. It looked like tonight was not over after all.
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Let me know if this works
Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 6:21 pm
"Don't." The captain's command was met with unthinking compliance — watery tendrils retreated from where they laid on his shoulders. Already damp with the otherworldly wetness, his uniform hugged his body in the overwhelmingly sweltering night. That, he supposed, was why his new youma thought to touch him. But the behavior was incorrigible for how much, and how often, he tried to stifle it.
So they left the heat of the city proper. Gone were the blaring street lights, the neon signs, the constant humid sweep of engines across warmed streets. Down into the parks he went with his youma following in brief but sweeping undulations. And once they passed the hothouse city, once he slipped into the darkened cool of the park, he wrenched at the buttons to his vest. He left it hanging in wait on a thin cherry tree where its new leaves pushed through the brass ringed arm hole. Branches overhead shaded him form the night's heavy ambience, and he was thankful for the short reprieve.
Short due to the auric blaze in the distance. The whole of the park was coated with an incessant, heady glow that enjoined him to dominate it or leave. The youma beside him stirred with thick bubbles jettisoning from its mouth. It lunged toward that brilliance — toward the star that stayed beneath the sky.
Faustite followed, then passed it. In a clearing where a bike trail wound through the area, a park bench sat near a curve. Behind it, a field. Atop it, a senshi. A senshi he recognized immediately as he spotted the branches jutting from her head, the silver and green wrapping her delicately into a gift. He remembered her contempt. Afterward, her magic.
"Look at you." Faustite strode to a stop before he reached conversational distance. "Still alive. Still yourself."
Barely contained, the squid burbled its bubbles at her contemptuously. Tentacles whipped at the air to stay afloat.
stari_maga
it works fine! hopefully this works too @_@
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Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2018 6:06 pm
Cybele caught the tang of coppery smoke moments after the aura. She inhaled sharply at first and tensed up, her hands going into white-knuckled fists at her sides. It was a forced, conscious decision to actually breathe as he came into view. She needed her oxygen while she could get it.
Then, there he was, the monster. Something about him looked different, felt different. Had he upgraded? The question sunk in her gut until she saw the little squid coming up behind him, and she looked at the both of them with narrowed eyes. It was just something with his outfit, then. While this was better than facing off against a General single handed, it still wasn't good.
It was good that he was here, she reminded herself. He was dangerous and needed to die. This was another chance for that, and this time she knew that he, too, would fight to kill. She'd just have to play things carefully.
Distance. That was the first thing, for as long as she could manage it. Of course no charging in. That was a beginner's mistake. She gave a polite nod as she settled into a subtly more active stance, knees lightly bent. "I am. I'm doing wonderfully," she said with only a little sickly sweetness thrown into the tone she tended to use talking to clients or young senshi. She took a step closer, careful not to get too close, and considered drowning him in a toilet. It would be a fitting end for him, but getting him in a small space like that would be a deathtrap with all the smoke.
What else was there? "I see that you're just brimming with life as well," she said, keeping her eyes firmly on him. The pipes caught a bit of light. They were metal. Would that count as a weapon, then? Was that how this worked?
She held her ground for the moment.
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Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2018 1:28 pm
He wondered, briefly, if all senshi were trained to react with the same saccharine sarcasm to their enemies. His lip twitched, his eyelids heavy with disappointment. Were all senshi cut from the same mediocrity? Why recruit impotence? 'Brimming with life'. Does that disappoint you, my dear senshi?
But there wasn't time to dwell. "Man sees in the world what he carries in his heart." Faustite melted, a heat ripple gone into the heavy night air. His voice sounded sharply behind her. "I know what you carry, Senshi." A gulf of a few feet lay between him and his target; Faustite was wary to stay out of his youma's range lest he, too, get caught. He beckoned quickly.
His youma, seizing on the signal, aimed for the senshi at Faustite's signal. It drew its tentacles up before splaying them out in a shot of clear, viscous ink. Arcing through the air, it caught the nailed slivers of moonlight as it cut through the trees.
An easy victory lay ahead, he assumed.
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Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:38 am
Cybele wasn't the type to indulge monsters in their mind games these days, but something about what he said hit her in that split second of calm. What she saw was what she carried? Life. That was what she saw as she whirled to face him, in every bit of terrible unnatural smoke and flickering in his eyes. That was what she fought for, too, for the lives of her friends and her neighbors.
"Hunter's Deadly Grace," she called out. This time she was using her resources from the start. Then maybe she would still carry life in her heart five minutes from now. She let the arrow go, felt the magic wash over her, and stepped forwards quickly and carefully to throw a kick at his stomach and then stepping back once the smoke hit.
The youma she had deemed less important, although she picked up the squishy sound of it squirming through the air quite clearly once her magic kicked in. Still, as she walked forwards, she got a direct splash of the sticky, itchy liquid straight across her back. She grit her teeth, squinted, and kept on her mark.
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Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:50 pm
The magic came, silvery quick, and landed a strike before he could reciprocate. Breath crushed out by his diaphragm, Faustite doubled over while swallowing impotently at the air.
Smoke rose about him in a blistering crack as she stepped away. She predicted it, but that mattered less than protecting himself while he gasped for air. Finally his paralyzed lungs refilled, desperate and delicate. He breathed as she moved. So we wait. Faustite gritted his teeth against the dull, blooming ache in his stomach. Leaning over only mitigated so much.
But his youma had no patience for the long game. It swept undulating tentacles through the air, grasping and pulling at the nothing currents until it arranged itself behind her. There was her back, clean and pristine against Faustite's backdrop of smoke. It could not see its master past her, but knew he was there, ready to give command. With limbs spread, it prepped another volley to dispense at its senshi target.
Opposite it, Faustite began his count of seconds.
stari_maga
Dispersion ;; Range: 3 foot radius with Faustite at the epicenter. Duration: 30 seconds Use Count: 3x Miss Chance: Circumventing magic, stepping out of range. Effect: Faustite draws his hands together, and a sound like an opening lighter may be heard. Smoke pours from Faustite in a deafening blast. Those caught in the initial blast endure a ringing in the ears and mild disorientation. Breathing smoke causes burning lungs, stinging eyes, and frequent coughing. Ringing ears and coughing symptoms linger after leaving the smoke for 5 seconds. Any lasting damage is defending player's choice.
Perkele ;; Appearance ;; Looks like an orange/red firefly squid. It's about 4' long in total, the head being about a foot long and the tentacles roughly 3 feet, which it can use to loosely manipulate objects or lightly restrain someone. The tentacles have brighter lights at the end. It has no beak. Its eyes are black. Water frequently drips off of it. The youma locomotes as if in water, though this magical air-swimming is limited by common sense factors. Ability ;; The youma squirts a clear 'ink' substance up to 6 feet away that clings to the target. It does not penetrate clothing unless the fabric is thin or the person gets thoroughly soaked. If the substance reaches the skin, it produces a mild itching and chemical burning sensation (like getting a diluted bleach mixture on one's skin). Lasting damage is defender's choice. If the ink comes in contact with Faustite's Dispersion attack, the ink will combust. This fire burns itself out after 20 seconds unless more ink is applied. Once started, only magic may ameliorate its effects. The youma can squirt ink twice per battle. Eating garbage resupplies the ink reserves.
if she dodges, it'll set him on fire
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 6:28 am
The smoke came up the moment that she jumped backwards. She wasn't breathing it. Good. That was good. It wasn't as big as it had felt when she had been inside of it. That was also good.
Still, it was a dull gray wall in front of her, and even as the urge to finish him was made louder by her magic because he was her prey, there was nothing for those senses to latch onto. She could just see swirling smoke. She couldn't hear him. Even out of the worst of it, the smoke got up in her sinuses and kept her from smelling much else.
That left the youma. That she could hear, and she was very aware of its fluids slowly eating their way through her skin. She whirled to face it while she still had magic left, keeping an ear open for footsteps behind her.
She turned just in time to see another round of youma spit flying towards her face.
She ducked.
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 9:08 am
Clear ink arced over her head in thin billows, disappearing into smoke. Faustite's expulsions whorled closed around its entry.
Inside, the ink lit to a fiery spray and spattered the captain in blaze. New breath caught, he stumbled backward, heart beating against his chest, arms burning, face streaked with fire. Flames curled about him, possessive, curling about to grasp his face and stroke his arm. He left the smoke at once to dig his unburned sleeve into his face, to wick away the fluid burning napalm hot against his skin. All the while his breath ground out in pressured groans, in mechanical complaint. Flame blazed and wicked and burned and peeled and scathed while Cybele was little more than a footnote to him, his youma nary a paranthesis.
With its fluid reserves empty and no orders on the winds, the squid barreled toward her with its tentacles whipping wildly behind it. Speed to keep up, speed to catch and suck the starseed straight out of her body. Speed to put that glimmer in the center of its form.
Faustite struggled to raise a hand and beckon. If his youma was so incompetent, then he would turn his fortunes himself.
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Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:18 pm
Cybele's magic faltered and the world turned back to its usual dullness, but she still could ignore the sudden heat blazing up behind her. She glanced back in time to see her enemy running out of his own cloud in flames.
For all that she did not like the monster boy, it was also not good to see him ignited like that, because in her experience with fire, it spread. Hopefully he'd just burn to death over there while she dealt with the youma.
When she looked back, the youma was too close. Ugh, her focus was everywhere now. She gritted her teeth. At least it was coming towards her, which was good. That meant she just had to wait. She clenched her fists white-knuckled and stood tense for a half breath.
When it got close enough, she swung towards that disgusting hollow of a squid face.
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Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2018 1:44 pm
Bubbles squirted from its mouth as the youma careened off course, sailing with Cybele's inertia. Tentacles and arms rippled as if petting the air. It rolled, its bitter disappointment sounded out as so many pitched whines. Turning, it tried to fire what it didn't have — faint flecks of ink sputtered out and fell impotently to the ground.
Catching the beckon, it darted as quickly as its squidly body could carry it through the air — it spared the senshi a wide berth for violence. She smarted, it found, and left its gelatinous body throbbing where her fist impacted it. Once it neared its commander, a hand shot through smoke and flame to seize it and the boneless youma was drawn inward.
The captain did not linger. Heat bubbled up his arms, clouded his face. The pain that came with it was torturous — worse still than the plasma burns sustained from another super senshi, for how it ate through cloth and into flesh with an insatiable greed. Faustite coughed and no oxygen came to him. He now knew why many ran from this heat, this pain, this suffocation. And as he grasped his youma, as he leveled a last hateful snarl through smoke and fire at their opponent, he flickered into nonexistence.
Gone was the source of the flames, but not the fire. A few sputtering, guttering smolders burned a few blades of grass and started their own venture. Hardly the size of quarters, they had dropped off the captain before his sudden departure.
Elsewhere in the city, a swimming pool was met with a stranger's weight.
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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 6:28 pm
Squid momentarily squelched, Cybele turned to face the flaming monster. She couldn't help a grimace, and she hesitated. Clean kills and even blood didn't bother her so much lately, but burning flesh was another category and she steeled herself before remembering that he could teleport and breaking into a desperate charge.
She was too slow. He vanished, and she punched at the air.
She growled instead, and for once she didn't hold it back but let it rumble through her chest and her teeth, deep and barely human. She curled her fists tighter, so tight that it hurt, and then she sighed. Even as monsters went, this one was especially grating her nerves. Although this time, she could really only blame herself. She's been scared to go too offensive, and he'd gotten away. She had to remember these things, fight smarter, do something right for once.
The small fires kept her from going too far down that road, and after a quick glance around, she powered down and pulled out a water bottle to try to put them out.
Maybe he'd still burn wherever she'd ended up. It was a stupid thought, of course, but it gave Fleur some level of comfort as she cleaned up the empty park.
