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 Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2024 1:00 am
Heat Sick (9) : The temperature is unbearable. Heatwaves have made it impossible to enjoy some of these otherwise perfect days–and they seem to be having as much of an effect on the City as they are on the people. Strange tears are appearing throughout the city, as though something has clawed right through reality. Sometimes you can’t see them, but you can feel them–and the sweet relief of a cold gust of air billowing through the crack. The rifts mostly appear transparent but if you peek in at just the right angle you might see a terrifyingly dark realm. Sometimes items vanish near these weird tears, and sometimes people do as well. Items might be found thrown across the room or across town, or not at all. Thankfully, nobody seems to disappear for long; they always wake up unconscious somewhere else. Sometimes, they don’t remember anything except for a cold breeze. Sometimes they say they were stuck in a strange, dark realm where they heard monstrous wails and saw strange little imp-like creatures scurrying around them. Thankfully, they are ejected before harm can come to them, but the realm is frigid and frightening. Doctors are saying it’s heat exhaustion and that delusions and wandering are common, so they advise staying indoors and staying hydrated.
It was probably incredibly unwise for one to be treating these randomly appearing rifts similar to how one would treat a freezer on an unbearable summer day, but it was too hot for Ekstrom to really care. She was alone anyway, and given her outfit was designed to withstand colder temperatures, it stood to reason that in the middle of a heatwave in Destiny City, she was likely well on her way to a heat stroke all dressed up in her knight uniform. She had already removed her gloves and her jacket, actually, but that did diddly to cool her down.
“Remind me why I’m out here,” she said to the floating wisp that appeared beside her, tone one of simple exhaustion. As usual, when she was in one of her moods this cute ball of energy–that’s what she assumed it was, anyway–would always come out to try and comfort her. Its appearance and attempt to cuddle into her cheek resulted in a half smile, and she sighed and let the irritation about the current temperatures go. At least for a moment.
“Cutie.”
She turned her attention back to the rift when the wisp disappeared again, possibly because she had cheered up even just a little bit, and looked at it curiously. Even if she was treating it like an open freezer because it was the only source of any kind of cold air outside in the middle of a hot summer night, she wasn’t completely unaware of it, either. It was an anomaly, after all, and she had initially approached it to inspect it. The cold air just distracted her from her original goal.
Of course, now that she was on track again, the rift decided that it was time to disappear before she could really get a proper look through it. As though stepping in as a replacement, she spotted one of those charms on the ground just beneath where the rift had been, now visible likely because the rift was gone.
She sighed as she picked it up, thinking it was a least a pretty little consolation prize before she glanced around. Hopefully the rift somehow just had a mind to relocate to somewhere nearby.
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2024 1:01 am
Out of everyone in existence, there were only two people, outside of the Sovereign’s of course, that could get Zaidyn to power up on a last-minute notice. First one being his General, Rakovanite, to whom there likely be swift punishment for disobedience. The other, well… should be no surprise that it was his sister, Jenna. Since his identity had ‘been compromised’, protocol demanded his identity be changed, which meant the man he was no longer existed. A clean slate, a fresh start, except he could not expect how diligent his sister would have been to prove that the staged accident was not actually him. Try as he might to dodge her, an easy enough feat to do since she could no longer recognize his face, when it became evident that she would not give up Zaidyn had to make the difficult choice to tell her the truth. As expected, Rakovanite did not approve and it took months to earn his trust back. But giving her peace and knowledge that he was alive and well had allowed both her and their mother to move on and accept things as they now were. However, Jenna was much like him. Entwined in this war but with a different faction. Rather than being conscripted as a Corrupt, she had been brought into what she called the Dark Mirror Court. Not enemies but not exactly best friends either with the Negaverse, but it offered some advantages. His task for this evening was easy, serve as her powered bodyguard while she set up her telescope to view the meteor shower. Apparently, she’d been through a few of them due to White Moon senshi happening upon her and damaging her equipment. Would have been more convenient if she had pulled him through a mirror with her instead of meeting her here but it seemed that her caution was not without merit. Seemed that a Mercury knight had a similar idea. However, her attention was not on the sky as he’d expected and was instead inspecting something in front of her. No matter, he’d clear the area before Markeb arrived otherwise she’d make him come along and find a new location figuring this was no longer safe. With little more than a thought, Vauxite summoned his weapons and dashed towards the Page with the full intent of striking her down if she did not flee immediately.
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2024 1:02 am
The prickle of chaos immediately stole her attention from the rift and, if she was sensing it correctly, it was coming at her fast. She pulled her frying pan out as she glanced around, then soon made a quick decision to dash toward an area with less open space. She could only hope her training would work in her favor if whoever it was eventually caught up to her once she made it to that more enclosed area.
Ekstrom had some confidence in her fighting abilities these days. Where before she trained in kickboxing to make cardio more fun and dynamic, over the past year her view on it shifted and it became legitimate fight training.
As soon as she got past the tree line, the page turned around to see how close her pursuer was, so she didn’t see a rift beginning to open directly ahead of her.
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2024 1:03 am
If Vauxite were any other officer, he might have mocked the Page as she turned to run away. Taunted her for being a coward and not at least attempting to fight him. After all, he was only a Lieutenant with a piece of s**t weapon, much like her own, and he had yet to earn the promotion needed to teleport freely. As it was, he found little reason to even smirk at his success in clearing her from the area. For the time he had spent as part of Rakovanite’s team, Vauxite had always acted first and ask questions later; that is assuming he caught them and they didn’t get away. He had no desire to connect with the enemy or see them as human; not when they were the reason he had to take on a new identity, causing him to lose everything and everyone he loved in the process. Like an owl descending upon its prey, he felt no empathy for the woman as she dashed the treeline. He felt no joy or thrill when she looked over her shoulder with a look of panic in her eyes. All Vauxite felt was focused as he used his skills in parkour to close the distance between them. Once he felt he was within range, Vauxite threw one of his icicles in her direction.
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2024 1:04 am
To say he was fast felt like a disservice, as much as she hated to admit to anything that was in any way a compliment to a Negaverse agent. It was true, though, and she struggled to keep the panic off of her face as she processed what happened next.
He threw his weapon. At her.
From where she was, all she could really tell was that it was long and thin. An arrow, maybe? Or something similar.
She would have kept guessing had she not felt a sudden gust of cold air. It was only then that she turned her attention back to the path in front of her, but it was already too late. A giant rift had torn open just one step ahead. She was too slow to react to this, and to her horror, her next step was actually a step inside of the rift.
It was hard to tell exactly what happened next. All she could feel was being suddenly being surrounded by the cold. It was a brief relief, unfortunately, as darkness followed soon after. Where one moment she was looking at the rift and glimpsing the darkness beyond, the next all she could see was the same rift but glimpsing Destiny City instead.
The agent’s weapon came into view next, and Ekstrom couldn’t help the slew of swear words that tumbled out of her mouth.
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Posted: Thu Jun 27, 2024 1:05 am
Vauxite was about fifteen, maybe twenty, feet away when the Mercury Page’s aura suddenly disappeared. He’d thought for a moment that she’d teleported away but after coming to a sudden spot he realized that the weapon he threw was nowhere to be seen. The dinky thing was made of a plastic or resin material, non-lethal and definitely not sharp, so in theory it should be somewhere on the ground. But it wasn’t. Not that it mattered since it was easy enough for him to summon it back to his hand. Nonetheless, as Vauxite continue to search through a cluster of ferns when he felt a sudden cold gust of air hit him in the face unexpectedly. Startled by the sudden sensation of what felt like walking past a freezer door that had been left open, he backpedaled away several steps. In the low light, he could not see the tear that had opened up in front of him and realized that this was probably what the Page had run through. He’d reached a hand out as if to tentatively touch it when he heard the sound of his sister’s voice calling out to him from the clearing behind him. Best not tamper with magic beyond my understanding he didn’t know if this was her doing or some anomaly, but he’d report on it later to Rakovanite. For now, the area was safe and clear for his sister to set up her telescope so she could watch the meteor shower as intended. What became of the Mercury Page was none of his concern or worry. The weapon, however, was summoned back to his hand before he made his way back towards here his sister was calling.
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