Snowy Showdown (16) : There’s something magical about fresh fallen snow–completely undisturbed and untouched by the rest of the world. It should be relaxing and peaceful–a sign that no one has been around and you’re perfectly safe. Except, the best predators lie in wait, completely invisible to their prey. What do you do when a patch of snow starts clumping together and taking shape right before your eyes? When it all comes together, it looks like a person, only there are no features, just a snowy white form. Maybe there wouldn’t have been an issue if you hadn’t seen it, but it’s too late. In frantic, panicked movements, it lunges at you with icy fists. It feels like being pelted with snowballs, but each hit lowers your core body temperature–rapidly. The creature is highly susceptible to heat and will melt if exposed to it; if you hit it, snow splatters everywhere. It may attempt to reform, but eventually it loses strength. You might not want to stick around to see if it just needs a little more time. If the creature manages to knock you unconscious, you may wake up covered in snow and with a bad cold. You may be more aware of strange, snowy figures that seem to be standing around in odd places; who knows where these things are hiding?
Note: This strange snow monster is not a youma but can be used as a battle requirement for a character. It can only be used as a battle if there are two powered characters involved; you cannot write a solo and count this as a battle, and your character must be powered to meet battle requirements. You can use the prompt for as many characters as you like and it will count as a battle requirement, however if you repeat the prompt with the same character, only the first time will be usable as a battle.
Waru was out with Aelius. The other boys were scattered to the winds — either busy with their own business, or miles upon miles away, in much the same way that Eion was, not months ago. It was by simple chance, then, that he was alone and bereft of duties to keep him occupied and out of trouble. Bereft of Negaverse work to keep his thoughts focused on the present. Thus did he decide to wander.
Destiny City didn't have much for him anymore; certainly it spurned him further whenever it snowed. Winter cut to the bone with him, despite the infinite layers in which he bundled. It was all he could do to chase away the cold after purchasing himself a hot chocolate.
Eion wandered until he was far enough from the bustle of winter pop-up shops, which invariably led him to one of the city's several parks. The recent snowfall made quick work of the trees, reducing them to albino spires pointed at the steel grey sky like weapons. Slopes of snow blanketed the ground, looking utterly pristine. Only a handful of human tracks dotted a solid six inches of the silent precipitation. Eion found it quiet enough for his thoughts, so he found a frozen wrought-iron bench and squatted down upon it as if ready to spring up in an instant. It was here that he watched his hot chocolate, cupped in gloved hands, vent its steam into the air where it warmed his face and defrosted his eyelashes. It soothed, if only a margin.
If only until he detected movement in his periphery. Looking up, black eyes watched an indescribable scene — the snow doubled up on itself, weaving and clumping until it had a significant lump formed. Another, smaller one began to coalesce on top of it. His brows furrowed; was he watching a youma, or an optical illusion?
eldritch stardust
A start heart
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 8:41 am
When Clem had gotten up this morning, she really hadn’t expected to be powering up before the sun went down. Much less having to contend with wearing booty shorts and heeled gladiator sandals in the snow. Not that she really felt the full cold, for which she was extremely grateful. But here she was, wandering the park because she’d heard a whisper of a rumor of snow monsters and had thought, Hey! Let’s go look into ******** idiot.
Well, it wasn’t that onerous right now. The snow was white and sparkling and it was just a nice little bit of exercise. Sighing, she’d considered powering down and heading home since there were a million things she could be doing that didn’t involve the snow. As she stood considering her options, her attention was caught by a flicker of movement. Turning her head and focusing, she watched, mouth falling open, as the snow bucked and writhed before taking a vaguely people-ish shape. What in the Frosty the Snowman bullshit was this? Adding to the sheer weird was the fact that she’d been told by the cat that monsters like this felt wrong. They always had an aura of sheer yuck around them.
This thing didn’t feel like anything…
Before she could think too much more about it, the snowman seemed to feel her watching and was taking exception to it. It surged towards her, icy fists flailing. The first blow that landed felt like getting popped upside the head by a snowball. Mostly painless, maybe a little stingy. No big deal. Then, not even a second later, she hissed as a wave of cold hit her.
Scowling, she did her best to dodge and weave from the snowman, trying to figure out how to fight the damn thing.
”Strickenized”
eldritch stardust
Kawaii Prophet
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Offline
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 9:20 am
Eion continued watching out of mild curiosity. He'd known a few youma to pull some weird antics, as if they wanted to make an entrance for themselves or thought it somehow beneficial, so he guessed that was what this particular youma was doing once it finally became a curmudgeonly snowman. Now, it would likely go about draining energy from stupid kids and their stupid parents who thought that such a thing was a great gag for the holiday season. Better for it, too, since a youma won't see too much bother that way.
It was most likely a youma, anyway. Didn't seem much like an optical illusion due to snow blindness.
Though, it was mere seconds before some b***h in sailor slut-clothes came up on it, ready to interrupt its forays into Destiny City. Eion's benign expression soon curled into a snarl, and a quick glance around the park to find hardly anyone else around. Setting his hot chocolate to the side, Eion dashed for the cover of a copse. There wasn't much time for propriety to bail out a youma, and if anyone saw, he could just kill them.
Stepping out from the copse as a burning General, all Faustite felt was the lone aura of a White Moon senshi. Normally not worth bothering about, but that was the only auric hit in the area. Which meant —
Whatever the ******** she was fighting wasn't actually a youma — it was an impostor.
And Faustite loathed to let some discount ******** imitate a youma and sully their reputation. He also didn't have any faith that Booty Shorts b***h wouldn't utterly fail to eliminate the threat and get herself knocked out.
Pulling his hood up, Faustite trotted toward the burgeoning scene. The veins in his right forearm glowed a bright orange as a fresh wave of steaming heat collected in his fingers. As he closed the distance, he watched the thing try to execute a flurry of jerking strikes on the White Moon brat. Good, let her freeze out here in that ridiculous getup.
As he approached from behind, Faustite reeled his fist back and aimed a burning punch at the back of the youma-impostor's head.
eldritch stardust
Lava veins glow from Faustite's affected fist and climb up his arm, growing fainter the farther up they go. Faustite's fist looks superheated to a bright orange. Once he punches something, the punch gains extra force and sears the target at the affected location (any lingering burns are up to the player). When the punch connects with something, a small fiery burst can be seen, indicating that the magic went off. Afterward, Faustite's hand and arm look their normal coal black color.
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 10:42 am
Iapetus would have liked to think that she was holding her own for the most part. However, she also knew that was a filthy ******** lie since every time the snowman hit her, she could feel herself getting colder. Still, that hadn’t stopped her from striking her own blows and watching as snowdust poofed around.
It was just… well, it wasn’t really effective was it? How could you hurt snow? Well, short of a flamethrower. Even as the irreverent thought hit, Iapetus felt a nearly overwhelming surge of Ick bloom up and stumbled, doubling over with nausea. Out of her periphery, she saw a bright orange fist slam through the snowman’s head, felt the heat and steam as the snowman stumbled and splattered. Was this Irony? Had Alanis been on the right track all along? Working hard to control her churning gut, the senshi realized that this is what the cat had tried (and failed) to describe when it came to Chaos auras.
Also realized was how fortuitous that aura’s effect on her had been because she was fairly certain that she could not have survived a fiery hole in her face. Shivering, and not just with cold, Iapetus stood straight and took a careful step backwards, wanting to keep Heatmiser in view.
“Shouldn’t you have little singing clones with you? Why’d you punch your own monster?”
Sure, the snowman hadn’t had any aura, but who else would have conjured it up if not this guy? And speaking of conjuring, the watched the snow slowly buckling behind the One Punch Man as the snowman rose up again, swinging now for the more obvious threat.
“Watch it!,” she yelled, unable to help herself. Sure, dude’s very presence made her literally ill, but that didn’t mean that she wanted to watch a snow monster get him either.
”Strickenized”
eldritch stardust
Kawaii Prophet
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Offline
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 12:00 pm
Of course she tried to talk to him. Like Faustite was over here to have a ******** conversation. Did he look like the friendly type?
Not my ******** monster, he signed back to her, his attention scathing. Shitty impostor deserves its comeuppance. He had little expectation that she could read sign language, however; better for it if it got her to stop trying to chat with him. In the middle of a ******** —
Faustite stumbled forward a bit with a brief pap in the back of the shoulder. Wasn't what he wanted people thinking a youma attack felt like.
Then came a sudden — remarkably refreshing — chill. Faustite nearly felt thankful for it, were it not a touch uncomfortable.
Whirling around to face the creature, Faustite motioned emphatically for this White Moon senshi to back the ******** up. The blaze in his core grew brighter, more virulent as it swirled tighter and tighter. Twinned in his eyes was its ominous glow.
If she couldn't listen, if she wanted a front row seat to a cremation, then she deserved to be burned to a crisp.
eldritch stardust
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2024 4:21 pm
Eyes narrowing, Iapetus watched as the whatever-he-was Ick Factory signed furiously at her. So… hearing but mute? Fair, she wasn’t about to judge how he chose to communicate. And even if she couldn’t understand the signs, she could read enough of his disgusted expression to glean that whatever Frosty was, it wasn’t anything this man had created.
And he didn’t like her very much either. Well, his loss. She was a peach.
Nodding sharply, she moved out of his way. Whatever was going on with his arms and now glowing eyes was not something that she wanted to be in the way of. Despite his dislike, he’d been decent enough to provide a warning of sorts, so she’d give him credit for not being completely ******** awful. Crouching down where she hopefully couldn't become a target of ‘friendly fire’ (Ha!), Iapetus watched intently, wanting to try and learn as much from this as she could.
So far, she was learning that weird, magical snowmen did not like people with fiery bodies. And Chaos creepers with glowing eyes were kinda assholes. Really, she was learning so much today.
”Strickenized”
eldritch stardust
Kawaii Prophet
Offline
Strickenized
Garbage Cat
Offline
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 1:36 pm
Flame burst around him just as the snowman youma-lookalike closed in on him. While the creature threw its snowy arms up in a meager attempt to block the heat, the creature had begun to steam and lose form. More and more of its body and head sloughed away until it was reduced to a meager slope of snow beneath the blaze.
Soon, those flames petered out, and the excess heat followed shortly thereafter. While his fires were less vibrant for having expended themselves, Faustite still had energy enough to curse the snow pile with a slew of silent invective, punctuated by spitting on the mound and flipping it off. As far as Faustite was concerned, it was no more than what the creature deserved for trying to impersonate a youma. He hoped he burnt whatever bullshit roused it for such an occasion.
But that left the White Moon b***h. She wasn't fighting a youma like he first thought, so he felt no strong need to crush her starseed or corrupt her into a Negaverse recruit. He expected he sent enough of a message about why it's bad to ******** with youma, too. Killing or corrupting wasn't an instantaneous process, either; someone could very well walk in on him partway
Fine. Whatever. He didn't much feel like fighting her anyway, so he would pretend that he simply didn't see her. Turning his back to her, he stepped over the steaming snow pile and made his way back toward the trees where he initially shed his guise as Eion.
If the damned thing rose up again, then White Moon girl was dealing with it on her own.
eldritch stardust
By expending some of his core, Faustite can whip up a firestorm on a local area, prefaced by dancing cinders seconds before the burst. Inferno gusts orbit clockwise, burning anyone caught in their whorl. Friendly fire possible.
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 2:15 pm
From where she crouched, Iapetus watched with wide eyes as flame simply erupted from the creepy man. Alas, poor Frosty, she thought somewhat flippantly, he never stood a ******** chance against the summoned inferno. The heat blowing back was incredible and all she could think was that she was grateful that he’d decided, for whatever reason, to not include her in the fun.
As the fire died down, she stayed put, her only movement a single twitch of her eyebrow as Fire Dude flipped off and spat on the puddling mound of snow. Maybe it was some instinct warning her to keep still, worried that if she moved too much, she’d be burned next. Honestly, with the way he’d made it super ******** clear that he didn’t like her, she half expected him to try to roast her anyway. She wasn’t even sure why he was so angry about the snowman either. Unless it was a case of one predator disliking sharing territory with another?
She kept her face expressionless as he glanced her way and then turned away and walked off. Only once he was gone, or at least out of her sight, did she stand up and stretch out carefully. Moving close to the melting snow, she prodded at it with a toe and grimaced. There was no coming back for Frosty this time, she thought.
“What a weird, angry dude,” she muttered into the stillness. With a glance towards the patch of trees he’d headed for, she decided that she was going to go the other way. And she wasn’t powering down until she was sure it was safe.
After a few minutes, all that was left was a slowly freezing puddle of icy slush.
