"Holy shit, what the hell was that?"

Teller awoke from the dream with a start, unsure of what meaning, if any, he should extrapolate from it. Was it just a dream brought by this place, with nothing more to take from it? Or was it part of this damn game, getting a little more invasive than he'd like? No...no his instincts told him otherwise. This was the real deal, but the question was what did the 'real deal' even mean? It was alright...it didn't matter, not right now, after all he was a trigger puller on the ground, not an egghead. A grunt, a Marine, not some intel guy, just a warrior. That was who he was, who he'd always been, but...maybe, if he won, not who he'd always be. That semi-reassuring thought processed, the Captain finally took a moment to get into his SQUADCOM messaging system, to take a look at whatever Yukiko had the time to write. Upon closer examination, she too had forwarded him a library of audio files with a short text message that read

Captain,
Not much time to dictate this. I do not know why you trust that woman, but our trust goes with you. Take these, may they inspire you as they do me.

Teller couldn't help but chuckle as he looked through the library, thinking "Heh, I'm lucky the armor comes with a translator for languages from back home, half of this is in Japanese after all. 'Shiawase no Iro', 'Koibito Doushi', without my armor I wouldn't understand any of this shit." A fond memory of one of his squadmates brought a small smile to the old soldier's face for a moment before turning on one of the songs from Yukiko. It was a hopeful little tune, speaking of 'destined ones' and happiness, not usually James's speed but maybe he could use a bit of positivity. Better than his own drinking songs, combat songs and a mixture of the two. However, he had little choice but to pack up and get rolling, after all it didn't seem like anymore sleep was going to come his way.

Closing his armor's faceplate and ensuring his ruck was sealed, muttering a small thank you to supply for making sure the rucks were water-proofed, Teller stepped out into the pouring rain. The din of it slamming down onto the armor's face plate and pauldrons was loud and obnoxious before his armor auto-tuned it down to keep his hearing sharp. This...this was way worse than any mission Teller had been on, well, ever. Walking this empty street, looking around at the structures, any one of which could house a hostile, Teller came to realize why it was he felt so incredibly uneasy. He'd never been on mission alone before, not as a Marine, not in the Rangers as an infantryman, and certainly never in UASD. Walking around with nobody to watch his back made him realize how bad it felt to be alone, and that he'd never been alone before. A bittersweet feeling, to be sure, but he had little he could do about it other than keep watchful, look at his surroundings. A playground stretched to his left, a sad reminder that once upon a time children lived here, to his right yet another house, its inhabitants long dead. This place...it was like one of the pre-war cities that was still declared a red zone, devoid of life, just a sad graveyard. Teller continued his progress deeper into the city proper, trying to make his way out of the Neighborhood, and see what else waited in this city of Echoes.

It did not take long for the elevator doors to part before her, presenting the same empty yet illuminated interior it had shown her when she had summoned it on the rooftop. Haltingly, remembering how the doors had closed on their own the first time she had used it, Pithy leaned her body forward, trying to catch a glimpse of any controlling mechanisms before she locked herself inside.

It did not take long for her to discover the panel besides the elevator doors.

Ding.

Pithy started and began to pull back as she heard the noise. She heard the mechanism controlling the doors whir into activity, then quickly halt a moment later.

Pithy frowned, studying the open door. It seems these remain open for as long as one stands in the way. Good design. She wondered as to the trick behind it. The devices within the Justice Hub did not have the feel of sorcery to them, but she wondered how one would accomplish such things without the use of magic.

Gaining confidence, Pithy walked into the elevator, studying the buttons adorning the control panel, along with the accompanying sigils. She ignored the buttons at the very bottom of the panel, finding the markings unhelpful in elucidating their usage, but rapidly deduced that the buttons with numbers represented each of the building’s levels. The notation changed when the numbers reached the ground level, but it was simple enough for her to locate the button corresponding to the lowest level and press it.

The doors closed and the metallic cage shivered, making Pithy throw out a hand to the wall as though expecting the floor to crumble beneath her. A moment later, a low murmur and the rising feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that she was descending.

Pithy was forced to wait for the machine to deposit her where it would. The process only took a few seconds, but her hand never abandoned the wall she was using for support, and her eyes kept scanning the walls and ceilings for possible exits until the bell chimed and the doors opened.

Pithy stepped out into the dark hallway warily, holding her rapier at the ready.

As she did, the lights on the ceiling came to life, illuminating her path as they had done in the upper floors. Her stance relaxed when no threats made themselves known.

As promised by Oren, a plaque with words and arrows hanged on a wall, one labeled MAINTENANCE in clear, bold letters. A few other labels stood to attention right under it in smaller font. Pithy’s eyes immediately fixed on the one that read Generator Access.

Marveling (yet slightly perturbed) at the convenience of it all, Pithy began to walk down the corridors.

Barring the lack of windows, the first hallways she walked down reminded her of some of the upper levels. Like above, the few doorknobs she experimentally tugged on refused to budge, but the occasional glass pane revealed offices much like the one she had entered earlier, along with the occasional large table surrounded by chairs that made her think of meeting rooms.

It was only once she discovered and began descending a set of stairs that she began detecting a change in the clean, business-like environment.

Ever so slowly, her surroundings began to look more and more like she had expected a dilapidated ruin to look. Cracks on the walls, open doors, and lights that could no longer tap into whatever mysterious power source allowed the others to remain lit.

It was what she had expected at first, but while part of her mind urged her to feel relieved at the ever so slightly more familiar atmosphere of a ruin, she could not dispel an almost instinctual feeling of apprehension. Abandoned buildings were much like corpses. Rotting ones were not something most would call pleasant.

Still, she had to wonder. These lower floors are not connected to the elevator. Were they added later, or were they purposefully built such that one would not have easy access to this place from upper floors? And this damage… is this how this building looked while it was operational, or has it deteriorated since the place was abandoned? Is it somehow outside of the sphere of influence of whatever keeps the upper facility running smoothly?

Pithy caught herself. The last thought was predicated on the assumption that the place had been abandoned for a meaningful length of time. Her instincts suggested that was the case, but the evidence pointed at a recently abandoned facility.

The maintenance sector, which she knew she had arrived to courtesy of a large sign on the wall, proved to be much less orderly than the administrative sectors of the citadel. Rather than hallways and cleanly arrayed rooms at each side, Pithy was forced to navigate a confusing array of rooms filled to the brim with containers, jugs and bottles of liquids she largely failed to recognize from their labels, and the occasional broom or obvious cleaning instrument that made her suspect as to the purpose of the complex. That said, if probed as to the function of the large boxes with circular glass panes on their front, she could give no satisfactory answer.

She followed the signs through a few more strange rooms, corridors and stairs before she reached the room he sought.

She felt the reverberating drone of machinery before her eyes fell on the closed door. Pithy was deeply aware that, while she knew the word Oren had used to describe her objective, she had no idea as to what the clearly active machinery ahead was generating. There was no telling what she might find. At the very least, something that had managed to scare off the College’s investigators.

Pithy drew some magic into her rapier, shaping a spell. Six blades of ice coalesced behind her, hovering at her flanks like half-spread wings.

With her weapons readied, Pithy tried the door.

The handle turned easily enough, but when she applied force, the door refused to budge. She frowned and shoved her shoulder against it. The door parted ever so slightly at the blow, the latch slipping from its nook.

Not locked. Barred. And by something close to the ground. It immediately crossed her mind that one of the College’s researches may have died pressed against the door, but she was not sure a corpse would account for such a barrier.

She took a step back, considering the obstacle for a moment, before pointing at the door with her rapier.

One of the blades at her side hovered forward and pushed at the uppermost corner of the door until it lodged itself into the crack between it and its frame. At that point, the ice slid down towards the actual block, forcing the slight opening to enlarge as it approached. When it reached the bottom, Pithy made a gesture with her rapier. The crystal suddenly twisted, applying pressure to the center of the barrier as though she was prying the door open with a crowbar.

That anon was certainly not giving up.

Was this its territory? Was it simply going after her to avoid being called weak or cowardly? What ever it was, it wasn't averse to wasting its bullet, shooting at everything that looked suspicious. Her opponent had gone silent, no more was the incessant beeping and harsh noise of the laser firing rapidly. Juniper wasn't sure if that meant he was biding his time or that he was defeated. There was that announcer fellow, that robot that had suddenly announced their fight; she was sure it would announce his defeat if it was so.

Juniper took a deep breath and held it as the anon walked cautiously about one row over, apparently oblivious to her hiding place, but still very much aware of his surrounding. Having already used the backtracking trick on Westley, she had already bandaged up her bleeding arm with some cloth from her left sleeve.

She could simply unleash the full power of the God Hand, but considering how long she had been complacent when she had both God Hands, Juniper was likely able to unleash its full power but for a short time. As of now, she'd wager she'd have about ten seconds of full power. Of course there was the matter of using some of the excess energy from the God Hand that could not be suppressed, but those will likely last even shorter; it was likely she would be able to pull off just one technique using it.

As she worried about her situation, she caught a glance of Westley, hiding just one row away — or around ten metres awar from her — from the anon, opposite of her. He too had caught a glance of her, considering his smirk when she looked at him. It would seem both of them didn't take to well to the gun toting anon shooting at both of them. Still wearing that smirk, he pointed towards the unsuspecting anon, before making a circular gesture with his index finger. Without even waiting for her to acknowledge the gesture he jumped out.

"Face me, creature! Face the Crimson Cavalier!"

The anon whipped its head around, turning the gun towards the half elf.

Without thinking, Juniper sent the staff she picked up spinning towards the back of its head. There was an audible crack as it smashed into the back of the anon's head, sending it reeling over unconscious. It wasn't until a moment later before she realized the elf was clapping slowly.

"HAH! I didn't think you would carry through." He stepped forwards from behind the shelf. "Perhaps not all humans are the base creatures I thought they were. Or perhaps you are willing to do so because you think you have an advantage over me, seeing as you stole one of my staves."

"I was simply getting rid of the bigger threat." Juniper followed suit, walking over to the unconscious anon and picking up the staff. "I can deal with a gun alone, but not with a warrior such as you hounding my back."

WIth that, she threw the staff back at the Cavalier, who caught it with a wry grin on his face. Shrugging as he saw her going into a battle stance, he simply hung it back on its strap and picked out another staff.

"Interesting. Again, I am the Crimson Cavalier! There will be no one to save you from death now, human."

"Juniper." She focused on the elf, relaxing her muscles as she controlled her breathing. "The God Hand. Let us have a proper duel this time."

None of them moved, Juniper's focusing on the elf, and the elf simply smirking back as he stood confidently before her. The silence hung heavily around them, with only the occasional sound from the unconscious anon breaking the silence. As if by some signal only the duelists can see, both of them acted simultaneusly, with the elf whipping up his staff, as Juniper simply dashed head on towards him.

"SUMM-"

"TOO SLOW!"

The elf tried to summon a minion, counting on the distance between them to allow him time. However, even before she gained the God Hands, she was capable of performing extraordinary feats through her martial arts training and strength of mind. With even one of the God Hands, a simple distance like that could be closed in the breadth of a second, leaving him without time to cast anything. Her hand smashed straight at his abdomen, before ripping off the straps that held his staves together. Almost immediately she launched a series of kicks and jabs at the elf, trying knock him out quickly. Without experience in hand to hand combat, he could only try to escape or buy enough time from her blows to cast something.

With all his efforts to create distance in vain, he pulled out his swords instead, swinging them violently around with wide swathes, forcing her to retreat. Unable to cast without retaliation, he turned to simple weapons, relying on the fact that she was unarmored, unarmed and one-armed. With a wide thankfully shallow gash on her stomach, she once again took up a stance, as both she and the elf stared at each other, trying to find the one chink in each other's defenses.

Cyril spotted the traps only a couple seconds before he would have fallen for them. Directly in front of the living room's fireplace, a rug lay upon the carpet, and his acknowledgment of how strange it would be to put one on top the other kept his foot off of it. He reached out a tentative finger and prodded the rug to find it slack; there was nothing beneath it. A quick examination of the rug's corners turned up one nail per edge, keeping the mat taut and the deception intact. Having an idea of Jokaero's mindset, however, Cyril suspected it wasn't some simply pitfall. He scanned the room further, walking around as he did with all the lightness he could muster in armor and sporting a wounded foot. An odd bump existed in the middle of one of the couch cushions, and beneath the coffee table, something glinted where no glint should be. Next to a thin vertical window, there was a long yellow strip marked with tiny black lines of varying sizes, dangling from the ceiling vent to the floor. While looking for traps, the knight also scoped out potential improvised weapons. A number of fired clay vases were scattered throughout the room atop various surfaces, which might be good for a nonlethal takedown if smashed across the devious midget's head.

A plot of Cyril's own began to sprout in his mind. Without a doubt, Jokaero was waiting within the house for one of his traps to spring. When he vanguard found himself wondering why the inventor would put such faith in one of his makeshift contraptions to take him out when his concerted efforts had failed so far, he began to believe that the inventor would surely appear to deal the finishing blow personally once a trap immobilized or wounded him. The trickster's unique brand of crazy, Cyril felt, indicated that he loved the attention his kooky attitude and even kookier machines brought upon him. All of that meant one thing. After crouching in a position he felt secure, he grabbed one of the vases by the snout and lobbed it into the center of the erroneous fireplace rug.

The object sank into the cloth, a metal clang issued from beneath, and in a flash the rug was ripped into pieces as nothing less than a bear trap sprang shut, crunching halfway into the vase from both sides. A The next instant, an alarm clock attached to the bear trap went off and from beneath the coffee table a plastic bottle filled with dry ice hurtled out into the commotion. Cyril scrambled back as the bottle burst with a deafening bang, but his attention turned to the compartment opening in the ceiling. From it, Jokaero himself dangled down, holding what looked like a miniature turbine engine with knives taped to it. “You fought well, but I'm afraid...huh?!” He froze in surprise to find a dilapidated urn in his trap rather than a stunned soldier.

His opponent was faster to recover from the confusing turn of events. Cyril's slung his shield, already abuzz, at ceiling-bound tinkerer. Panicked, Jokaero activated the turbine, and it shot like a rocket for about two feet before veering off to the side to lodge itself in the television. The shining shield, meanwhile, hit his torso dead-on. Its momentum came to a full stop only a moment later, but by that time, the damage was done. Jokaero plummeted downward, the front of his futuristic cuirass caved-in and turn by the spinning blade, and he hit the floor spread-eagled with the shield right beside him.

Cyril took a step forward, worrying that the fall had outright killed him, but as if granted a second wind the inventor rolled over and scuttled backward, pressing himself up against the TV set. With his glaive's point extended, Cyril approached. “Guess you are the stereotypical mad genius,” he drawled. “So scatterbrained and eager to have some fun that you couldn't fathom your trap failing some goon like me, huh?”

Behind his helmet, Jokaero narrowed his eyes, though he wore a toothy grin. “Don't get cocky just yet, Sir Knight. I happened to prepare a little contingency plan beforehand.” He lifted his left hand to reveal a little remote, relying on Cyril not knowing what it was.

“Enough hidden weapons!” The vanguard lunged forward with startling speed. Before Jokaero could so much as blink, the blade of his adversary's glaive came down upon his elbow joint, and his forearm parted ways with his upper arm in a spray of sparks and with the sound of rending metal. Instead of crying out, however, the inventor only snickered. The deadened finger released the remote's trigger, and the dead man's switch sent its invisible signal out in all directions.

Every vase in the room instantly burst in a swath of flame. Burning liquid splashed across the floor and furniture. The wave of heat and threat of incineration forced Cyril to turn away in order to grab his shield and protect himself, but Jokaero started to run. He dashed to the dangling yellow strip, grabbed it, and yanked. Though drowned by the fiery uproar, a click came from the vent, and the strip began to retract with the inventor holding on to it. “Hah! And they said I couldn't find a use for a souped-up measuring tape! Take that, they!” On the way up, he swung closer to the television and delivered the stuck knife-turbine a hefty kick. It freed itself from its prison of glass and started zooming around the room, a fiery blur of violence made impossible to see or hear by the quickly-spreading flame. “One final present for ya! Enjoy the barbecue, nimrod!” He reached the vent, but instead of dislodging up to disappear in the ceiling once again, he started swinging back and forth to kick at the top of the window. He was, Cyril realized, attempting to escape the inferno he'd started while leaving the vanguard trapped inside. Well, the inventor had underestimated one thing...Cyril's ingenuity!

He sprinted toward the front door through which he came. Flame licked his boosts and gnawed uncomfortably at his armor, but nothing he couldn't manage. With a wry smile, he reached for the knob, but the door did not open. His grin turned into a grimace as he tried again with more strength, but a cackle from the living room made him pause. “Hee hee hee! What kind of deathtrap would this be if I didn't lock all the doors? No getting outta this oven, blockhead!” Cyril grit his teeth as the words sank in. Had this been Jokaero's plan all along? How far ahead did this fiend plan!? Surely he couldn't have installed a lock in every door? Behind him, the flames began to roar. He turned around, instinctively putting up his shield, though he knew full well it wouldn't save him. The all-consuming light reflected in his eyes, and his breath became ragged with smoke. Immolation, suffocation...he wondered which might take him first.



“Hee hee! I just love show and tell.”

Jokaero's metal shoes made a light clink as he landed on the patio. He would have rubbed his hands together in satisfaction had he still possessed both, so he settled for stretching. The gesture didn't do much good for his mechanical limbs, but what remained of his body welcomed it. A few drops of rain spattered onto the top of his helmet as he stepped away from the burning house. Idly he wondered if it would rain hard enough to put out the inferno, or if he should spend a few moments to fix his visor. Instead, his gaze landed on a little shed in the backyard, which he hadn't opened up in his initial exploration of the house. “Bet there's all sorts of things to make a new arm with!” He turned his face down as he started over to avoid getting wet, and a moment later ran smack-dab into a garden statue he hadn't seen.

“Oof!” he bounced backward a few inches and cast an annoyed glance up at the obstruction. Instead of a marble carving, he found the distinctive metallic shell of a familiar knight. “What!?” This time, he stumbled backward, and tripped on the edge of the patio to fall right on his posterior. “How're you not a pile of ashes? I trapped you with my remote latch...?”

Cyril shook his head and held up his shield. “Sawed through the door. 'Remarkable piece of engineering', right?” He watched Jokaero scramble to his feet and warily back toward the house. “Little lunatic. I wouldn't feel bad about killing you at all.”

With furtive, panicked speed, Jokaero reached for his belt with his good hand. Before he could do anything, Cyril lifted his leg and plant his foot directly in Jokaero's chest, kicking him into the house's wall. He hit with a resounding smack, ever-so-slightly stuck in. The inventor's phylactery slipped from his fingers and bounced once on the patio. “H-here! Take it, but don't kill me!”

Stooping to pick up the phylactery, Cyril muttered, “As delightful as you are, I'd rather not, but just beating you isn't enough to get your soul. I'm gonna carry you with me until I figure out how to get it.” The heart-shaped device disappeared into his hand, and the diminutive innovator gave a dark smile.

Jokaero innovator raised his hand to the side of his head, popped open a little hatch, and pressed the button. I've won, he gloated, so sure of his own victory that he didn't notice the false phylactery rolling back toward him. The plastic explosive detonated with a sudden and shocking violence, annihilating the Insufferable Genius in an instant.

A few seconds passed before the ringing died down, and Cyril emerged from behind his shield. “Paranoia: 1. Mad genius: 0,” he said aloud in as ironic a tone as he could muster. When he lifted his faceplate, regret was etched on his face. More words came to mind, about predictability in unpredictability and nothing ever being the way it seemed, but he did not feel like saying them. There was no joy in this victory—or in any death. The deed was done, no matter who was to blame, and he needed to leave before burning debris started collapsing on him.



The leverage achieved by magic-propelled ice, applied with continuous force, began to push back the blockage. It was unyielding and absolute, completely obstructing the bottom of the door, but Pithy had only to wedge it open a few centimeters for the culprit to become apparent. Rather, a portion of it did, sliding down through the crack to spill across the floor. Even someone to whom deserts were completely foreign could recognize the tiny particles as sand. A drift of sand, not some object, barred the way of the Lady in White. This revelation did not come alone, however, for she could discern the sand thanks to the presence of an odd light within the chamber. A violent assortment of oranges, reds, and purples, it moved and undulated constantly like sunlight filtering through water.

She did not relent, and kept up the pressure. When her ice began to splinter and fail, her will grew it anew, and in less than two minutes she'd gotten the door open just wide enough for her to slip through. The sand shifted underfoot, but far more attention-grabbing was the source of the vivid, spasmodic aurora. In the center of the room, across a narrow chasm that writhed snakelike throughout the floor, amid a tangle of machinery, was a lustrous beacon. It resembled a bulbous orb with a black, holey outer skin constantly in flux, with a equally perforated veil of rich violet beneath, and additional layers of red, orange, and yellow between that and some kind of brilliant core. The naked eye could not ascribe to these energetic raiment a state of matter or energy; perhaps they were some sort of liquid film suspended around a floating core. Either way, the gadgetry surrounding it held it in place with plugs that siphoned its power, and cables stretched from the generator into the ceiling to branch off to every section of the Justice Hub. Could it really be that the power source of a mundane citadel so rooted in reality was really this arcane thing, so utterly unreal?

The generator itself wasn't the only point of interest. From the main room, holes torn in its walls led into dark tunnels, also floored with a bedding of sand. Through them no sound could be heard over the roar of the bizarre machine, but a smell wafted out of those gaping maws: the stench of rotting flesh.



When the skeleton's blade sank into the dead clown's chest, it encountered resistance, but did not stop until it was buried to the hilt. Its withdrawal caused bright red blood to gush from the new wound, soaking the entertainer's outfit and dripping down into the teacup. Not thinking twice about it, even to clean his weapon, Bonesword departed. He went on to a carnival stall, leaving the now-grisly cadaver behind.

The rain thickened, but it didn't just increase in volume. While playing around in the stall, Bonesword hadn't noticed any kind of change except, perhaps, for a slight increase in noise. After a few moments spent fiddling with his new treasure, however, a droplet snuck through the stall's awning to splatter on his forearm—not clear, but red as a rose in bloom.

A splashing sound came to him through the rain, drawing his attention to the teacup ride he'd left behind. The limbs of the clown alone could be seen, for the rest of him had been immersed in a liquid that had filled and was now overflowing the cup. Had Bonesword a nose to smell with, the sickly-sweet stench in the air would have hinted at its contents, but the eerie change was not hard to discern. Blood cascaded from the sky to run in rivulets between the boards of the pier, and to fill any open container. It dripped across the faces of the park's many active lights, bathing the entire place in deep red light. Before long, the noise of machines creaking into motion joined the rain, creating a horrific cacophony. The teacups began to spin, sloshing their contents to soak into the wood; so too did the Ferris wheel begin its steady revolution.

But shapes more ominous still began to move in the landscape of blacks and reds. The squeaks of giant rubber shoes, the bob of poofy hair, the sway of enormous pants and collars—clowns. Lots of clowns. Though at a lackadaisical pace, they seemed to move around in the confusing scene without any kind of trouble, and their odd-shaped heads moved this way and that as if searching. It didn't take a genius to realize what they might be looking for.

At that moment, Bonesword's new gadget emitted an upbeat bip. Its 'dial' lit up, projecting light that constructed some kind of three-dimensional image as a ring around its face filled up. A few second passed before it formed the distinctive shape of a clown, and the progress ring filled completely before blinking to signify the device was ready, though what for the skeleton couldn't possibly know.



The SMG of one of the scouts rattled out a burst of bullets, reducing the cranium of one of the zombies to chunky salsa. With the other a few feet too far away to warrant toward it, the gray woman released the trigger and lowered her weapon. Not a second later, another scout replicated the move, and the second husk dropped to the ground. In only a short moment, the potential threat had been pacified with military efficiency, and the squad thought nothing of it as it started to move ahead once again.

Then came the panic.

Every soldier froze when the sudden voice belted out from a place where no voice should be. Having passed by the very car now ostentatiously blaring its alarm to echo through the parking garage on the way in and not noticed someone hiding there was a definite problem, but it was small potatoes compared to a certain detail dropped with utmost certainty during the squad's briefing: there are no civilians in the City of Echoes. There were only two possibilities. Either the voice belonged to an operator from another organization, or it was a siren song of an unknown entity meant to lure them into a trap. After all, in a city with actual, real-life zombies, anything was possible. Fortunately, both possibilities shared the same solution.

Two of the heavier soldiers, specifically those closest to the front, produced grenades. With practiced hands they removed the pins and hurled them at the noisy car. They exploded less than a second apart, and together the detonations ripped the vehicle to shreds. When the ringing stopped, all was quiet once again.

The squad started to move once again. Two of the scouts veered toward the wreckage of the car, scanning for the one who'd screamed. Both had their sub-machine guns at the ready, and neither intended to stay for long. They, as well as their comrades, were on alert for anything out of the ordinary as they exited the parking garage into the light rain.



Exactly as though he'd been impaled with an oversized syringe, the assassin known as the Bashibozuk began a fit of spasms the instant Runch inserted his phylactery's spike. Though unconscious, he kept up a pitiable moan as he flailed around, similar to one might upon being electrocuted. A few moments of the torture passed, but no longer. All of a sudden Hajji's body grew limp, every muscle slack, and a sigh escaped from his lips. In a rather alarming manner, steam rose from his skin, but more pertinent to the victor's long-term goal were the lights appearing on his own phylactery. A soft, unceremonious beep sounded out as one cyan light appeared at the very base of the container's side, closest to the prong. A second later, another appeared just above it in navy blue. The two remained for a moment, then dimmed.

Never far from the action, Oren's drone appeared from its high vantage point. With a flicker of light its projected screen came to life, and displayed upon it, the bespectacled young man wore a predictably jovial expression. “Nicely done! And 'arr'-en'tcha the clever one? Figured it out all on your own, without even asking me for help. You're the first to do so, in fact! Pat yourself on the back, if your wounds will let you. Here, maybe I have just the trick. As promised: booty for kicking booty.” One after another, the crisp note of clasps coming undone -surely euphoria to the ears of a pilferer of chests- heralded the downfall of the drone's item box. It hit the church floor, completely intact, a few feet away from Captain Bartholomew K. Runch.



Oren's face turned into one of powerful longing. “Ooh! I've been wondering if that would turn up. Before the College made me an announcer, I was on a team with Kiriagi and Manfred tasked with exploring the city to try and catalog all the different beasties. I'm sure the eggheads removed all the filled pages, but you'll have plenty of time to 'creature' own record now that you've beaten round 1. Speaking of, your next opponent isn't all that far away from here—a nice place called Oldtown, chatting it up with someone a little like me. Find him if ya like, but you'd be better off finding a place to bunker down for the night. Gonna be a rainy one. Anything else before I buzz off, me hearty?”



Convinced that any more sleep was beyond him by the puzzling dream, Captain Teller trekked through the pouring rain, walking in the center of the Village's large, circular street. The entire island upon which this region was constructed, judging by the slight but steady rise in the street's elevation, was somewhat dome-shaped. The incline caused water to pour downhill, lapping against the soldier's armored feet as it passed, but not strong enough to challenge his footing. Random pieces of garbage weren't quite so fortunate, and it stood to reason that garbage cans and parked cars might share their fate and be swept back down toward the bridge as well, but so long as Teller's tired eyes remained alert there would be no problem.

The Village, compared to the rest of urban Downtown, did not shine so brightly in the dead of night. It remained moody, tinged by darkness, though the golden glow of streetlights remained. In one of them, around three hundred feet ahead, two figures could be seen. Their general shape and posture marked them as women, and while one was hooded, the other held an umbrella, and beneath it in the lamp's light her splendid waist-length red hair stood out prominently. The insignia of the College lay open both their coats, of which Teller had seen the like during his own induction. Of his presence the college personnel were not ignorant; both turned to face him as he approached. Guðrún regarded him with a rather standoffish glare, but within the hood of her companion, the pretty face Amelia Rosenvalt stayed neutral. Guðrún spoke first, shouting through the downpour.

“Blackjack! Shouldn't you be inside resting after your fight?”

Amerlia threw her a look, then turned back to Teller. “She doesn't mean anything by that. Good evening, Captain. We've been assigned with an investigation in the Village. As you might have noticed with Slow Dancers', this place is a hotspot for spirits. We were told that we could allow you to help if you're willing.” She crossed her arms, waiting for a reply.



The ascent, despite Tyrant's doggedness, did not come easy. Never meant to be used as a ladder by a being as enormous and heavy as he, it presented him with new challenges at every turn. Sometimes he found himself confronted by sheer surfaces; other times, dubious handholds forced him to think twice about where he laid his mitts. From up above, the music became spliced with intermittent booming noises reminiscent of cannon-fire, though too small and too frequent, and as the ogre grew closer, the air became thicker. Dust choked the skylight, which hadn't been powerful to begin with, and before long Tyrant was climbing almost blind. All he could do, however, was to go up or down, and there was nothing for him in the echoed cavern below.

Little by little, another light approached him from above. Through the murk of dust, it shone with the familiar glow of captured flame—a lantern of the Inquisitional College. In the midst of examining this new development, however, a handhold grasped by the ogre suddenly, and with a simple but heart-stopping crack, broke off. Gravity did not hesitate to take its toll, and Tyrant began to fall.

He plummeted all of two feet before, impossibly, his back hit the ground. No matter how quickly he put two and two together, the transition remained terribly jarring, but once a couple moments slid by the wind began to sweep away dust and ambiguity both. When the haze faded, Tyrant's surroundings became apparent: a great, classical-style amphitheater, with enough space to seat thousands of spectators but only three individuals present.

The first, and closest to Tyrant, was Dr. Linas Richards, half of the two-person team who'd fetched the ogre from his own world to participate in the Crucible. For the second time that night, the good doctor had brought Tyrant somewhere new. Compared to the second onlooker, however, Richards warranted barely attention at all. Across from the warlord who stood upon the amphitheater's main stage, an imposing individual sat halfway up the rows, garbed in holy robes of red and white, sporting an intricate mask, and wreathed in light. A crimson greatsword lay across his knees, too heavy for an ordinary man to use in any more capacity than lifting it up and dropping it, but this seven-foot cleric was no ordinary man. Dante, veteran of the battlefield, warrior of light, and hero of the Empire, stood taller than any foe he'd ever faced—but would he measure up to the Gaintbreaker Wallcrusher Mountaineater Drakedestroyer Gatecrasher Hoardmaster All-Maw, the Large and Strong?

“Well, well, well!”

A flying machine, unknown to Tyrant as of yet, descended into the airspace between the two dangerous combatants. It hovered far enough from either that its controller didn't bother projecting his holoscreen, but instead amped up the microphone. “'Halo' again, Dante! Hey now, Sah-grog-brah-ogg. I don't believe we've had the pleasure! I'm Oren, announcer for the Crucible. Welcome to the party! For a little while there, I thought we lost you. Neheheh!”

His tone turned melancholy for a moment. “Actually, the whole warping process was interfered with by an outsider. Ole Richards here messed up the transport because of 'Garbage', leaving ya stuck beneath No-man's Land. Anything cool down there? Ah, ya have to tell me later. Anywho, what a match we have here!” Excitement coursed through his vocal cords once again, and the drone's view shifted between Tyrant and Dante. “Two super-strong competitors, ready to duke it out. With fighters like you two, this could all be 'ogre' in a second, or last until the tournament's end. Who knows? Well, know that whoever wings gets a special prize, courtesy of moi. Ready, gentlemen? ...Go!” Oren's cry resounded through the amphitheater, the harbinger of a much-anticipated bout.



The smith kept his eye on Motley as the vampire mulled over the information, then having found it satisfactory, nodded. While Souta might have hoped for the two men to part ways so that he might continue his self-therapy unbothered, his new acquaintance seemed less eager to part, and made sure to set straight his stance on taking lives. Glad to hear it as he was, Souta did not trust the man, and so kept his wits about him. He did not, however, expect Motley to turn around and question the use of souls is weapon-making. With a rather close to patronizing expression, the smith took his turn to clear up a little misunderstanding in a drawling tone.

“Well sir, this blade isn't soulforged, though it does have a little magic in it. If you wanna count killing demons and monsters against me or the company's collectors, go right ahead, but we don't kill humans. Not even bad ones.” He turned to the axehead he'd been tempering before switching his attention to the sword. After grabbing a pre-prepared metal rod from where it leaned against the wall of his little workshop, he lined it up next to the axehead on the cooling rack to get a feel for where they should be welded together, and what adjustments would need to be made to both pieces first. “Ain't our job,” he added matter-of-factly. With a delicate touch, he maneuvered the two pieces around. “Regalia, my company, is an arms manufacturer for Gilgamesh Co., a bunch of determined idealists who want humanity to have equal authority with Heaven and Hell. We make 'em weapons, they go out and kill demons, then bring back their souls to get better weapons. That's all there is to it.”

He glanced back at Motley. “Since I got to...this place, uh, business hasn't been booming of course. No clue where I am, or how I got here, or anything. Just installed myself in this medieval-looking town and got to work. Helps me think. If you want something made, I can trade for whatever, but there ain't any special materials around here.”

Keen senses might detect the approach of soft footfalls, coming from the direction by which Motley himself arrived.

As the skeleton ducked down to avoid being seen as the watch he had on made the "bip" noise. What was on the watch looked like one of the clowns that he saw roaming around the mile, and it looked like a lot of them were roaming around in pursuit of something... or someone. The only idea that Bonesword had at that moment was to hide, but even if he did, it wouldn't be long before someone found him. He felt like he was living in someone's hell (not his, although clowns were creepy to him), and if he was found... well... let's say it would end in a large amount of misfortune for him.

With a puzzled expression, Bonesword's eyes went back to looking at the watch. It turned into more of a button, and in any case, it gave the skeleton the idea that pressing it would lead to something... something cool. After a moment of hesitation, Bonesword took his finger and pressed the watch down, wondering what would happen.

A bit of a green flash occurred as a clown, decked out in royal purple and lime green, appeared where Bonesword was previously hiding. All three of Bonesword's swords were on the ground beside him, and the clown stood up from behind the booth. "This... this is not what I had in mind..." thought the clown as he stood, but he decided that the best way to continue with the plan was to simply act as one of the carnies. The once-skeleton grabbed his swords off of the ground, cradling them each in his arms, and he dopily walked around outside of the booth, trying to go to a nearby building. He felt like he would be blending in pretty effectively, all things considered.

Runch's eyes lit up when his phylactery did. He observed in amazement, but that sense of wonder lessened somewhat when it appeared that his defeated foe was suffering from some sort of seizure. He had to remind himself that he was taking this man's soul while sparing his life, so the process was likely to be... Painful. When the entire thing was over with, Runch felt a wave of relief. The man may have been an irredeemable murderer, but the cap'n just couldn't shake off that sense of empathy. That's when Oren flew in with his screen-thing again, giving many compliments to Runch. He couldn't help but scratch the back of his head, uncomfortably embarrassed.

"First one? Omnomnom, I'm sure there'll be others that'll jump on it. Took awhile, mostly guess work I admit. A thousand monkeys on a thousand typerwriters and all that, right? Omnomnom!" That's when Oren dropped the lockbox from his little flying screen. The cap'n stood beneath the box so he could catch it in his arms, then set it down and swiped the lock with his saber, followed up by kicking the lid open. Inside sat what appeared to be a well-worn book. The cover was illustrated by a golden hand with six fingers, and the number '3' boldly emblazoned within the hand's palm. Cocking his head, Runch felt a kneejerk reaction of disappointment but his curiosity slowly welled up. Who knows what could be contained inside this book?! Well apparently Oren knew. So they had cataloged different creatures from the city in this journal, eh? Ok, so that wasn't terribly exciting.

Runch grabbed the book and opened it up just in time for Oren to comment that the used pages were probably removed. Sadly that was confirmed as the pirate thumbed through a number a blank pages. So he got a blank book to make his own records? He had one of those back on his ship! Just as he opened his mouth to ask for a different prize, the open page changed before his very eyes. Like some sort of wipe effect words cascaded onto the page, and on the opposite page a full illustration. An illustration of himself. "Singin' strawberries, what is this?" It was all there. Captain Bartholomew K. Runch. Pirate captain, swordsman, current host for the bori bori no mi. It went into incredible detail about his powers, not just his skills and the general use of his devil fruit, but even his tactics and a list of the different cereal recipes he had concocted for battle! "Well blow my blueberries, this is amazing!" He turned the page, and once again the blank white changed before his very eyes. Hajji Serhan Güzelemöglu, the Bashibozuk. Turkish human, career assassin. Skilled in stealth, engineering, and various forms of killing. Well, he found all that out the hard way. Still, it was nice to know his opponent's name.

"So many strange enemies from so many strange worlds. This is perhaps the greatest resource I could have gotten... OMNOMNOMNOM! I LOVE IT!" Rolling his shoulders to stretch himself out a bit, Runch then placed the journal inside his coat jacket. So his next opponent was nearby, in a place called Oldtown, eh? Well this pirate captain didn't feel like charging into battle all injured and whatnot, and this great cathedral was as good a place as any to get a little shuteye.

"Yes. So now that I won and he's still alive, what's going to happen with... Uh... Excuse me." He quickly produced the journal once more, flipping to the relevant pages. "Hajji Serhan G... Goo... This guy." He snapped hte spin shut. "What's going to happen to him?"

"Oh what the fuck now? Can't I get just a couple hours without anything happening? That'd be nice."

Shaking his armored head, Teller held his rifle in a low ready with his left hand and with his right formed a knife hand and pointed it at the pair. His voice projected out in a low, gravelly tone "Long time no see Miss Amelia. As for you, ma'am, I got enough sleep, thanks for the concern. Now regardin your investigation,
why in Sam Hill would I want to help out, let alone ask and be 'allowed'? I ain't exactly drowning in good-will here, and no offense to either of you but we sure as hell ain't friends, least not right now. What's in it for me?"

Now, the Captain would usually be more than willing to stop some dumb-ass civvie from getting themselves killed by poking their head where it didn't belong, but here he had limited resources and, indeed, limited vitality. He didn't feel like expressing weakness to one of those college brats, but he was indeed very tired, and he'd need to find somewhere else to set camp up eventually. He had one edge over his fellow competitors, or at least he probably did, as most of them seemed to be civilians. This meant they probably weren't quite as used to the way modern warriors dealt with fatigue, which was to say stubbornly ignoring it, and also they were likely to maintain a more normal sleep schedule, which made night travel safer from his fellow competitors. Shaking his head slightly to clear this off-topic string of thought, he cranked the volume on Yukiko's playlist to help keep him awake.

ID: Ryan Harper
Location: Great Lake
Time: Error
Opponent ID: Riff

She mumbled a curse as the man disappeared over the edge, and as the machine quickly regained its stability she immediately stepped towards the delicate mist of the waterfall. It turned out to not be the smartest move. Riff had emerged just below, his rifle pointed directly where he expected her to appear. A small smirk passed his lips behind the visor when she did just that.

The bullet hit her before she had the time to even spot him. It was the work of a virtuoso. This time, coming from below, it had managed to bypass most of her layers of armour and shot a hole straight through to the cabin, grazing her underarm and causing something behind her to emit a shower of sparks over her bare shoulders. The usual scent of motor oil, metal and sweat was quickly overpowered by the sharp stench of burning rubber and melted wires. The air around her was starting to get heavy with smoke. She reeled back in her seat, heart suddenly racing, taking the controls with her. The Sentinel made a few frantic steps back before a second shot could follow and once again remained still.

Its pilot was attempting to regain her composure, hands still clutching the controls with the grip of a drowning man to a stray branch. An alert she knew she had to immediately address beeped incessantly somewhere to her side and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. Ryan sat there, paralysed, for a few seconds. The sudden sharp sting in her right arm snapped her out of her stupor. She swung back to assess the damage. Smoke billowed from the panel containing the wiring to the right-hand gun. Her eyes darted around the place for a rag that wasn‘t soaked in something flammable. She eventually pulled off her tank top and smacked at the smoldering rubber insulation a couple of times until it stopped smoking. Most of the wires were either severed or melted together. Ryan grabbed the entire bunch at the base and ripped it out. There was no time to fix the gun now, no point in risking any more short circuits.

She returned in position and breathed in for the first time in a while. Then coughed immediately after. That didn‘t matter now, she had to make her brain cooperate. He had the upper hand at this angle. If she went back to the edge she was a sitting duck. He was too quick for that. If she just sat here and waited for him he‘d have the advantage of planning his attack. Her thoughts ran so frantically she could barely form them before they got dismissed. It became clear to her that there was only one way to get to him without becoming an easy target.

The Sentinel hurled itself off the cliff, a single gatling gun ripping holes into the mirror-like surface of the lake. It was a magnificent view, in a way. There was something terrifying about the way the moonlight glinted off its hull as the massive machine plunged into the depths, a tidal wave spreading all around it. It engulfed Riff, sending him tumbling under the water. He‘d expected anything but this. Several bullets had hit their mark and he could feel water trickling into his suit faster and faster. It took him a moment to determine up and down and another to find the mass of bubbles indicating the mech‘s position. He swam up, intending to get to the shore and shoot from there. Ryan flicked a switch. A jolt of electricity ran through every single circuit in the android‘s body. For a while his own perception of self seemed to disappear into the current. Then it stopped. His body twitched strangely as he focused all of his being in trying to get to shore.
N.oTH.ing-i S rI..gh-t
-en.tir-e bRA i n..
s cR-a Mb.l e
He flopped onto the shore and stood up with some effort. Every move felt jerky, strange and imprecise. He couldn‘t shoot but he clutched the rifle in his shaky hands despite it. He couldn‘t think.

The Sentinel wasn‘t waterproof. It was insulated enough to give her some time but the cabin would flood in a matter of minutes. She had to get out of the water. All that surrounded her was the inky blackness at the bottom of the lake. She stepped forward, hoping her stunt had served its purpose.

His sword glinted as it passed mere inches away from her stomach, as another barely missed her throat.

He certainly wasn't about to give up, of that she was sure. But what was strange was the way he fought; it was as if he had nothing to lose, nothing to fear. As if he was throwing himself into battle without regards to his own life, like one who believed himself immortal, or had a deathwish. It made attacking him that much more harder, for she was loathe to kill anyone, and it didn't seem like he'd stop swinging if he had a broken jaw. Trying to materialize something one armed didn't seem like a good idea with a mad spinning dervish was hellbent on slicing her to ribbons.

However, she was not simply dodging his blows idly; Juniper's eyes was constantly observing him, the way he moved, how he swung the swords.

Without warning, her back hit a shelf as she dodged away, leaving her still within range of Westley's next attack.

"I've got you now, human!"

"Tch!"

Juniper did not manage to quite dodge his swings; one of his sword entered her stomach, but the one heading for her face was deflected neatly, by flicking the top of her wrist on the flat to drive the blade away, before she continued the motion and brought her palm straight down into his solar plexus. Taking advantage of the brief flash of surprise, she burst some of the God Hand's excess energy, and slammed her head as hard as she could on his face, knocking the Crimson Cavalier out cold.

"It seems... that I got ahead of you, Cavalier." She laughed dryly at her own joke as she pulled out the sword in her stomach.

Pathetic.

It was all she could think of as she collapsed from the pain, dry heaving on the ground. It was pathetic how low she had fallen. To be so complacent that she failed to take in her surrounding, that she had even for a moment underestimated the elf. For a brief moment, a thought flashed in her head, reminding her that she had only one arm, and many of her techniques required her to have two.

But was that really true, or was it just some weak excuse to justify her falling behind on her training?

In any case, she needed to stop the bleeding. Appropriating the shirt the elf wore, she tore it to strips, and started bandaging herself. Juniper needed more than just that, but it would do for now.

Sophia ran through the corridors as she fled from the monstrosity, her gait hobbled from the wounds she had received from bludgeoning damage, the howls of the beast following after her as she reached the hatchery she had punched into. She traveled past the corpses of its workers and threw herself out of the gap, drawing both her bolt pistols. She smiled, as she turned and fell backwards from the hole, firing both the bolt pistols, losing the final round in each, one slamming into the chamber, the other reaching the base of the tree a few moments later. Both thumped into the wet wood and then detonated, igniting the promethium she had spread before entering, a flame pistol tank worth in the chamber and an entire tank worth of jetpack fuel at the base.

The burning fuel ignited the vast old tree, spreading upwards from its promethium fueled birth to consume the living wood of the forest king as Sophia used the last of her jetpack fuel to land some what safely and begin leaving the dungeon behind her. She would resupply as the swarm was busy with the fire and if it did not take Clotho with it then she would go back up there and finish the job.

There were a few problems with this plan. First the bugs who had survived her attack on the surface entrance had seen where she had gone to resupply. As a result there were a mass of the bugs who were currently unaware of their masters mutation standing guard over the supplies she needed to finish the job. They became aware of said fate when half way up the tree, where the inferno in the spawning room had spread, the bark buckle, cracked and then splintered outwards in a hail of burning wood into the woods below as a giant scorpion-esque beast that had once been Clotho plowed through the walls of the throne room. The colossal scorpion creature began to descend the burning tree, its many eyes hunting for Sophia as it seemed to ignore the flames attempting to consume its flesh. The fire was spreading outwards now into the surrounding wood, the fire at the base and the burning wreckage setting the foliage and surrounding trees ablaze, the beginnings of a truly colossal wildfire in the making.

“It’s so beautiful!” the sister is almost in tears as she gazes at the inferno
_{Is pyromania requirement to join the Ecclesiarchy? Actually don't answer that. Just start running}

No matter how wonderful the flames where, she needed to get away, try and find a different supply cache or better terrain because for the moment all she had on her where her two chain knifes, these twin blades paled in comparison to the task she needed to undertake. She fled, her step unsteady as she attempted to get away from the encroaching flames and hunting xenos monstrosities, her flight joined by the meany as of yet unseen animal denizens of the forest, who took to the air or fled their burrows as the flames threatened to consume them all.

---

She wasn’t sure how far or long she had been running, but she was losing ground, the heat and smoke were threatening to overwhelm her, the sound of the raging inferno and worse, the screeches of Clotho, were drawing nearer. Most of the creatures had either escaped or fallen behind so it was to her surprise when a majestic stage, huge and with a coat of white as pure as her now sullied armor had been, appeared from the woods before her and lowered itself before her, as if offering to carry her.
_{I was going to get you a pony, but you're much too heavy for that. Mount up, I’ll guide it somewhere safe}

She cautiously approached the seemingly docile creature, sitting herself on its back and grasping its antlers for support as it got back up and fled with her onboard. Sophia for the first time in her flight looked back and saw just how close to death she had come. Behind her was a massive advancing wall of red and orange, the flames consuming the woods, to anyone outside the massive plume of smoke would probably be noticeable throughout the city if the fire itself was not visible. Even more concerning was the crashing and splintering of trees as Clotho's new form smashed its way through the woods barely a hundred meters from her both were still gaining on them, even with her new mounts speed she did not expect to outpace either of them for long. Despair began to set in, though she was not doomed quite yet. While she rode she acquired a long, sturdy, straight branch, too this she bound her two knives at the end using the chain that held the holy symbol around her waist, forming a sort of improvised lance. Two whirring blades and a symbol of the Imperium against a colossal beast.

Before the flames were about to catch up and consume them her mount broke into a clearing centered around a shallow lake that barely came up to the knees of the stag, yet took up a considerably large area, one large enough to easily hold the burning colossal scorpion that was Clotho, who breached the surrounding trees moments afterwards. This was it, as the flames surrounded the small wet area of safety, there was no more running.

If it weren't for how covered in soot and gore the warrior woman’s armor was and the improvised nature of her lance she might have looked like a shining knight on her noble steed facing down a dragon. As it was the mounted battered and bloody Seraphim goaded her stag to charge head first at the colossal scorpion monstrosity, screaming her lungs out in a wordless, furious, battle cry while opposite her the scorpion creature charged, its 3 months roaring. The two met in the center of the shallow pool, Sophia steering her mount to the side at the last second, racing alongside the beast and stabbing the eyes on its left head with the improvised chain lance as she raced past the surprised Chotho, gouging out the eyes, slashing one of the spindly legs that supported the colossal beast but failed to penetrate the beast's hide. Their momentum carried both combatants to the opposite sides of the pool and the two turned again to face each other like jousters at a medieval tourney.

They charged again, Sophia noting that the wounds she had inflicted were already healing she dodged to the other side this time, slashing off another of the beast's legs but still bouncing harmlessly off its cartilage. But this time Chotho reacted faster, the head on the scorpion tail chasing down after her steed, biting its hips and hauling the struggling beast with her atop it into the air. Sophia fell towards the central eye as the deer was cast aside, its body infected by the mutagens that the bite had inflicted upon it.

The eyeless mouth caught her by her left arm, its teeth just managing to pierce through her armor, the sharp points poisoning her as they found flesh and the corruption toxing began to be pumped into her slowly, the taint slowly claiming her arm. She was as good as dead, trapped there, the second mouth approaching to bite at something more vital as the first held her there. She screamed in agony but found strength, she had to finish this now or she would died. If she died she would fail her divine mission, and such a prospect was inconceivable. She knew with the certainty that others would call delusional that as the emperor's servant in this holy task she would succeed in killing this beast. She drove the improvised spear towards the central eye of the monstrosity, logic and reason dictated that she would cause only a superficial wound that would quickly heal, that the blade would never get deep enough to strike anything important and then she would be devoured. But she had faith, faith that the Emperor would give her the strength to succeed, faith so strong that in the maddening realm of the warp, the Sea of Souls, the immaterium and home to that tiny shard of the Emperor's soul that had been watching her, that faith shone like a beacon, it dominated and changed the warp and in so doing, changed reality for the two are reflections of one another. Next to her heart the phylactery reacted to her emotions, her desperation, fury and faith and she entered her frenzy, the stick with knives tied to it shining as it became a power spear, her fule-less jetpack becoming the pair of angelic wings it mimicked and a halo erupting behind her head in a divine golden glow.

The shimmering blade, a marvel of a lost age of technology, passed through the chitin and flesh of the monster as if it were made of paper and jelly, the blade and shaft sinking into the beast, finding what little remained of Chotho’s original body and stabbing her, the blade slid between the wire that held her phylactery. She withdrew the spear, with the phylactery dangling from a cross like section just below the blade, as the monster screamed and flailed, dropping the angel from its grip even as the mutagen regrew the damage it had suffered. Rising on her pristine wings the angel flys away, out of her foes reach as she removed her helmet. Her eyes were a shining bright white, her face expressionless as the dropped the lance and pulled her own phylactery out. When she opened her mouth it was not Sophia’s voice that emerged.

"ok. so now I just..."

The angel fumbled about to retrieve the two phylacteries while also holding onto a spear and a helmet, all the while afflicted by mutagen in her left arm, and tried to plug the two together. With the power from the frenzied phylactery lost the immense scorpion became unable to sustain its own body and collapses, its corrupted form beginning to rot almost instantly, it’s blood and flesh tainting the water it has fallen in. Around them the fire has passed, leaving nothing but burnt husks of trees and ash in it’s wake.

"That golem gave me such a fright, I couldn't see it behind me and I thought all these spectators had finally turned on us! I just dived for you like I dived for the pillar, I thought you'd protect me. I'm sorry Mr. Conductor."

"LAOWAI! NOT ONLY WERE YOU EXPLOITING MY TRUST BUT YOU ALSO HAVE THE NERVE TO MAKE UP SOME 马粪 ABOUT PROTECTING YOU! DO YOU HONESTLY THINK I WILL TRUST YOU AGAIN THIS SOON, NONG?!"

Who does she think she is, anyway? Thought he'd protect her! Pah! She was clearly trying to reach for his Phylactery! He silently wondered what to do from this point on, making sure to shut out her voice out while he was plotting his next turn. Every time the main melody of the techno piece repeated, the ground rumbled for a second.

Meanwhile, Garbage was once again slowly inching towards the Dragon, who was now hiding behind a wall. She was practically back to square one at this point, she had to do this all over again, and she was, admittedly, a little bit annoyed by his stubbornness after she heard him yell out that untranslatable insult..."Nong"...What did it mean anyway? What does..."law-why" mean?
...
Her mind snapped into action! Of course! Just spark up a conversation by asking him what those words mean! That way he'll forget about what I did, let that wall down, and once I'm close enough I could just snatch it off of him and book it out of here!
A few seconds passed as she scripted out her lines before she sighed in preparation. Here goes nothing.

"You know, I've always been very fond of learning new things. Especially the small, insignificant facts that I'll probably never really use for anything relevant...Did you know that people actually really really hated the Eiffel Tower when it was built? You know Guy de Maupassant? He hated it so much he ate lunch at its restaurant every day because it was the only place the Tower wasn't visible.", she began, taking a silent step forward with each pause. "Did you know that high heels were originally worn by-"

"Get ON with it! What do you WANT this time?! Either state your point or FIGHT!", Jiang interrupted. As he shouted the last word, he summoned a single burst of flame from the ground in front of her with the next beat drop of the music he was currently playing. Garbage shut her eyes and braced for any possible shockwave that could blow her backwards. Tiny chunks of concrete flew past her and some bounced off her. She waved off the dust that was left by the blast.

"SPEAK UP!"

"I'd like to ask - what do those words mean?"

"What words?"

"I think it was...L-la...Lawai?"

"Laowai."

"Lao-wai.", she slowly repeated.

"It means foreigner. Someone like you. 傻子.

"Really? You're really making it sound like an insult. Do you hate foreigners that much?"

Zhao remained silent, continuing to plan out his strategy.

A few moments of silence between the two. All that could be heard was the loud electronic music blasting away, keeping the walls up, and the rumble it caused every time the main melody began. Garbage kept closing in, step by step. She was around 1.5 meters away from the steel wall by that time.

"Mr. Conductor, don't you think it'd be more polite if you put the wall down when we speak?"

1 meter away.

"Mr. Conductor?"

80 centimeters away. Zhao was silent.

She coughed in an attempt to get his attention back. "I really was trying to get your protection. You wouldn't want to besmirch your good name by hurting a young woman such as me, now, would you? Please, I beg of you..." 50 centimeters. "We're both humans, okay? You did take a good look at the other people on the podiums, right? Look around you now. It's a wasteland out here. Do you think you can easily find good food and water in this place?" 30 centimeters. "I'm warning you, you'll start wishing that blob with teeth ate you whole." She decided to stop at a 10 centimeter distance. "I'm offering a genuine, peaceful truce here, Mr. Conductor...Come on, man! For the sake of our survival! Think about it!"

By the time she had finished her monologue, the loud music reached its end. The steel barricade began to lower itself back into whatever dark abyss below the earth it had appeared from with a very heavy rumble, revealing the Conductor with both of his arms raised and ready to direct another piece from his repertoire. His piercing glare was fixated onto the pleading face of the girl. He was, admittedly, affected by whatever power she had, and once again actually considered accepting the offer for a moment. She had a good point.

Not good enough for me. She's trying to steal the necklace again!"

"You are NOT stealing my SOUL!", he said, then his arms sprung into action.

A short cascade of guitar strings began playing, and then a trumpet stung the air, which caused an explosion of fire at Garbage's feet and about three meters around Jiang. Once again, she was blown backwards to the starting square - this time with singes and burns all over her body. A bit of her hair was burning.

'Demons, hm?' Motley muttered to himself, pondering the smith's insistence that they didn't use human souls, his own lack of knowledge about this "Gilgamesh Co.", and feeling a mite stung by the patronising tone, even if he'd brought it upon himself. 'That would make sense, I suppose, if the average demon is more powerful than the average human, though those humans worth turning into weapons would themselves be more powerful than average... and with the lack of buyers, I can't imagine work has been great for you.' He gestured around himself, just in time to pick up the sound of movement behind him, with his vampiric senses of course.

'That, I think, is my cue to leave you to your task, smith. If I find something worth smelting, I shall bring it to your doorstep post-haste.' Declaration made, Motley Crue turned to face whoever the approaching target was, walking away from the smithy just in case some aspect of what could be an ensuing fight turned sour, and forced the vampire back toward that area. As resistant to death as he was, he still tended to try and avoid sensations like being badly burned by the tools of a blacksmith. They weren't usually pleasant either way.

Out of everything that Lily would have expected to be the prize for her victory, she had expected something that was a little more exciting than a bottle. Upon inspection it was obvious that it was craftsman with no small degree of skill, who had crafted it, but at the end of the day it was still a bottle, made from a sort of semi-transparent, crystalline stone rather than glass, as one might have otherwise expected. It wasn't giving an obviously magical item. It was just... A bottle? And not only that but it was also empty. She had received empty stone flask as a reward for surviving a fight against a mecha-shark? To say that she was not impressed would have been an understatement. After a life or death fight she expected something... More. Armour, a weapon, a one-time-use spell convert form of the scroll, or something.

But she had won a bottle.

"Ya don't look very satisfied," Brucie pointed out. Simple minded him might be, but stupid he was not.

"No, I'm not," Lily said, standing up. She held the bottle up against the distant, yellow light that lit up this area in the hopes of finding out more about it by looking at it, in a new light. "I only just managed to defeat you, and all I get for the trouble if this empty flask." Upon finding nothing of interest she lowered her arm and reached behind her, where one of her tails wrapped around the flask and held it secure. She then turned her attention to Brucie, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. "So what are you going to do?"

The shark shrugged with his mechanical limbs. "Dunno. Figure I might as well stick with you for the time being. Ain't got nothin' better to do." He stood up, spending a brief moment to look down upon his destroyed water cannon. "So where to?" He asked. "You're the boss, fluffbutt, as far as I'm concerned."

The glare that Lily aimed at Brucie could have curdled milk, but to him it did little more than make him laugh; a guttural sound that still grated on Lily's nerves. Not because it annoyed her, but because it was unpleasant - especially to one with ears as sensitive as hers. If he noticed her wince he did not show it.

When finally his laughter died down, and he had enough self control to not break his composure, he fixed Lily with a stare caught somewhere between mocking and pitying. "I take it you don't like puns?" He hazarded.

"You're right, I don't. Especially not poor ones mocking my tails."

"Protective of them, are we?"

Lily bristled, visibly annoyed at this point. "I would appreciated if you ceased your jokes. I do not find them entertaining." She turned and left, looking for the nearest door out of this room. Based on her estimations what they were on now must be the ground floor, and so where she would likely find the offices that Oren had mentioned earlier, before flying off. If she were lucky she would be able to find some wood and papers, with which she could build a small fire and dry herself. To others it may have just been a matter of convenience, but to Lily beam dry was imperative. Were she not, her ability to produce lightning and fire would be incredibly diminished at best or - more realistically - completely gone at worst.

"Want me to come along?" She heard Brucie ask behind her.

She saw no reason to deny him. It seemed to her that, whatever it meant to take someone's soul, it came with a dose of docility. Not that he was docile per se, just that any hostility that had been there before, was now utterly gone. "If you want," she said, looking down along one wall for a door. There. She headed for it, calling over her shoulder to Brucie, "So long as you don't try to attack me, I suppose it won't hurt to let you tag along." She needn't mention that there was a door near her, as the sound of metallic feet upon concrete accompanied the far more muffled sound of her own.

The door led to a mostly empty hallway, a single door at the far end for which Lily immediately headed, Brucie dutifully following. The door was unadorned; constructed of featureless metal and, much to Lily's annoyance, locked. "Just a moment," she said quietly placing the palm of her hand a few scant centimetres from where the lock would be. The sound of bending metal echoed down the hallway a second later, the lock having been blown apart by a single powerful blow of raw kinetic energy. Lily need not do anymore than push it open after this, revealing what looked like a changing room of sorts. It was filled with rows of working boots, boxes with gloves, and the like, as well as small lockers and racks for clothing.

This must be where they changed from everyday clothes to whatever uniforms they used before working the machines? She walked over to the nearest locker and pried it open. Inside was not much. A spiderweb bereft of any spider and a small piece of plastic - wrapping from a piece of candy, probably. "Brucie, go look through the lockers," Lily instructed, opening the next. Behind her, Brucie went about looking through the ones on the opposite side of the room. "Tell me if you find anything more interesting than empty candy wrappers or spiderwebs," she continued. "This place has looked abandoned from the very get-go, but there's no sense in not looking."

The next few minutes were spent in silence, aside from the opening and closing of various lockers, and the occasional tearing sound as Brucie tore a locked one off of its hinges. Mostly Lily found herself disappointed, finding nothing but spiderwebs and useless pieces of plastic - though she did come across one identification badge of a raven-haired woman called Salem - and an assortment of other useless pieces of junk. Brucie, however, was more lucky.

"Found something!" He announced jubilantly.

"What is it?" Lily inquired, turning around to face him. Her anticipatory expression fell the instant she laid eyes upon him, along with her ears pressing flat against her skull. "Really?"

"What? It's good!" Brucie, with all of the glee a shark face could show, took another bite from the candy bar he had procured.

A wave of disbelief washed over her face, transforming her annoyed to expression into that of someone who couldn't quite believe what they were witnessing. It fell away moments later, however, replaced by a far more controlled look upon her face. "I had... expected something a bit more useful than a decade-old candy bar. Did you find anything else? Something that might have been useful?"

Brucie shook his head. "Nah. Just this," he announced, then shoved the rest of the candy in his maw.

"Right... Well, we're done here. Nothing to just for this except broken lockers." She started towards the exit, giving Brucie a single look over her shoulder. "Coming?" Then she was gone, through the other door and out into whatever lay beyond.

They arrived in what looked like a sort of reception area, with a set of large doors to the left, presumably leading outside, and what could have looked like an automated check-in service for the workers here. Whether on not it was, however, was difficult to see and of little consequence. Lily continued the head, crossing the foyer - if that was what it was - and down the opposite hall. Finally it seemed like luck was on their side, as doors flanked them on either side. And to make matters even better, they which made of thick and sturdy wood. Those some showed obvious signs of disrepair, there were yet many that seemed whole and dry.

"So... what're we doin' here, exactly?" Brucie asked at length, breaking the silence that had formed between them.

Lily, deciding that it was not worth the effort of getting annoyed, informed him of her need to stay dry, or she wouldn't able to do much of anything. She had figured that, for whatever reason, taking Brucie's soul had made him friendly towards her, I am so telling him how her powers worked wouldn't be a risk. "Furthermore," she added as she stepped up to a locked door and placed both palms against it, "I'm looking for a pen and a piece of paper." The door buckled and shattered from twin lancers of force. Lily steps through the resulting hole, already picking up the larger pieces of wood and instructed Brucie to do the same, as well as construct what would essentially amount to a bonfire.

As he did so - and after she had discarded her pieces of wood where she wanted the bonfire to be - she began looking for a paper and pen. As she had hoped and expected, the door she had blasted through led to an office, complete with a computer desk and a bookcase full of binders. Paper was easy enough to find, having to just tear out a page from the binders, but a pen eluded her. Who ever had worked in this office must have been particularly fun of their pens. The cup where there are usually was a dozen or so in any given office, was strangely absent from this one. She had little luck with the drawers, too, finding naught but old paper clips.

"Bonfire's done," Brucie announced just as Lily open the last drawer and, thankfully, finally came upon an old, short pencil.

"Good. Just a moment." She looked the pencil over. The tip was broken, but it was serviceable. She then took the piece of paper and wrote down a short message, finishing it's by signing her full name.

To Whom it May Concern

The holder of this missive was defeated in the tournament, but left alive, and later divulged his wish to me. I write this as a request,
and ask that you help bring the holder of this missive to my World, giving him the means to return as well. I know you have the means to do so. Once there you are to bring him to one of the facilities known simply as Academies, and hand this missive to whomsoever you meet upon entering.

The Holder of this missive wishes to become human, and doing as described above will accomplish that. Your announcer, Oren, mentions that the College is not a wish-granding service, but something that can be accomplished through science is not a wish, but a goal.

Help this individual accomplish his goal.

Signed
Lily Strider - One of the Nine Tails.

Once finished she folded the paper and walked over to where Brucie sat, a stack of wood in front of him.

"Ya done?" He asked, sounding impatient.

She sat down, her right side to what would become the bonfire. "I'm done," she said, letting her tails grind against each other behind her, creating some friction despite how wet they were. It was just enough to create a small ball of fire in her hand, which should gently sets down to the fire where it caught on quickly. She lets her tails fall around the bonfire, encircling it so that each and every one of them had the chance to dry up.

"I was writing this," she said after a few moments of making sure that the fire would continue to burn, and not catch on to her tails, and handed the piece of paper to Brucie. "I destroyed your weapon, and you don't have any more rockets, so I don't think you will be of much help to me in future battles. You might even be a detriment, if I were to be honest. What it says is basically that I want them to take you to visit my world, and have the people there help you get what you want, and then take your back so you can get home. I want you to go back to the college, and find someone important to give it to. Try to look for some of the people that were in the announcement room with us."

Brucie the paper in his metallic fingers, looking down at it. His eyes flicked to the fire, then back to the paper, them to the fire again, and finally back at Lily whose expression told him that she knew exactly what he had been thinking.

He sighed stuffed the paper into the compartments on his left leg. "'Kay, I'll keep it. If only to make sure you don't get wrinkles early from frowning like that." Lily's frown only deepened, causing Brucie ot let out a brief peal of laughter. "But no. I appreciate the offer, but t'aint for me. A Freakshow's who I am, and I'd much rather be a freakshow that tags along with you, an' gets into all sorts of interesting stuff." He chuckled again, seeming pleased with himself. "If ya'll have me. You say I'll be a detriment or whatever, but ere's the other side of the coin: I'm big, I'm strong, and even without my supersoaker and shoulder-mounted nerfgun, I can still beat the everliving snot outta most anyone. You might be a quick thing, but you're fragile and not very strong - oh, don't gimme that look, it's true! 'Sides, I owe ya one as I mentioned. I'll keep the paper, maybe think about it later, but for now I wanna stick around unless you really want me gone." Having said his piece, Brucie crossed his arms, awaiting Lily's judgement.

He wouldn't have to wait long. Lily sighed, bangs covering her eyes as she hung her head. If he feels like he owes it to me, what right do I have to stop him? And he is right. A front-line bruiser would be useful - someone similar to Alice. She straightened up, ears erect atop her head. "Alright," she said, offering him a wry smile, "if you insist, I'll let you stick around. Just don't soak me through like this again. It takes away at least half of my strength."

Brucie laughed. Again. "Can't promise I won't make ya wet."

Lily groaned, pulling her knees up against her chest and hiding her face. Even muffled as it was, Brucie could have sworn he heard her mention something about sushi.

@Lugubrious(please excuse the messiness. I had to quick and dirty edit this due to my pick up arriving suddenly)

Crack

The distinctive noise, albeit muffled, sounded out from beneath Pithy's heel. A bit of rummaging in the sand, or enough experience with such objects, led to the simple but chilling conclusion that she'd stepped on and broken a bone. Its brittleness came not from some sickness of its former owner, but rather because the bone had been thoroughly gnawed before its abandonment. Furthermore, it wasn't alone. A chance footstep here or there throughout the sand-strewn generator room could easily turn up more of its, kind, including skulls, each of which sported large, fang-toothed bites.

Dedicated observation of the generator itself, meanwhile, might lead to the piecing-together of what exactly lay at its core. In the center of the violent, colorful concentric spheres of energy span a box etched with various symbols, all aglow in white and purple. The power crackling from the anomaly gave off an odor like ozone, though the reek of carcasses emanating from the tunnels outclassed it in foulness. The only machine in its vicinity that didn't appear to be a part of the siphoning apparatus resembled a table with a tablet on top at an angle, harboring a slew of buttons set within. Pithy might recognize a keyboard from her earlier exploration of the military base, but even had she puzzled out its functionality there it looked quite alien here. Putting the generator aside, however, the tunnels could not be ignored. Though the holes in the walls looked forced, the pathway beyond resembled the manmade corridors of an ancient tomb, completely at odds with the uninteresting general aesthetic of the Justice Hub. The ripped-up edges of the yawning black apertures, lit sometimes by the sporadic glow of the generator, cast jagged, monstrous shadows, and the feeling that she'd stepped into another beast's domain began to take root.



Furious but brief, the fight ended. Even the added wild card of the gun-wielding anon didn't possess the power to prolong a conflict between two bruisers. Juniper's forwardness and fortitude won her the match, and Wesley crumpled to the ground she sealed the deal with a witty-one liner. Oren, listening in with a drone only a few meters away, ate it up. “Aww, snap! What a tight way to wrap it up! A tough fight, but you showed him the power of a real 'cavalier' attitude. Neheh..heh.” His merry voice trailed off as he noticed Juniper lying on the ground, clutching her stomach as she writhed in pain. Worry crept into his voice, not at all abated by her attempts at bandaging. “Yeesh...stomach wound, huh? ...That's not good. In my experience, that's a slow and painful way to go. Hmm...” The drone's light blinked out for a second, leaving the maiden alone with the silence and agony.

A moment later Oren returned, and in a more strident tone he told her, “The College folks don't want someone to 'waist' away between rounds. I can get a doctor to come by and treatcha if ya get out in front of the School. There's two ways from your current position: ya can either break the library window and go all the way around the perimeter, which'll take a long time and might attract anons, or head back through, across the central pavilion, and out the front door, which'll definitely getcha anons. Yikes, what a pickle...a raw 'dill', if you will. Er, sorry.” The drone made as if to leave, but it stopped just before floating away. “Oh,” Oren added, “This is yours. Maybe it's an amazing healing item?” The flying machine's clasps came loose and dropped its wooden box. It bounced off the edge of a bookcase with a hefty whack and rolled a few feet across the carpet before coming to a halt.





When Bonesword abandoned his cover, three different clowns turned to look at him instantly. Their beady, multicolored eyes, more like predators' than people's, fixated upon him. The staredown broke only a moment later, though, as the clowns -convinced that Bonesword was one of them- went back to their 'business'. For the moment, the skeleton in disguise had free reign to wander around the carnival and try to figure out what had happened.

Ludicrous as they looked, with their powder-white skin, pudgy four-digit hands, and larger-than-normal mouths, the clowns did not appear to be bumbling idiots. As Bonesword made his way to a nearby miniature circus tent, he spotted a few holding what looked like oversized plastic ray-guns, and one even led a balloon animal on a leash, which padded and sniffed around as though alive. At one point, the circus tent disgorged a tiny car fast enough to run Bonesword over if he did not evade it. A moment later is came to a stop so that its doors could open and no fewer than five clowns could get out, though none should have been able to fit in the first place. Before entering the tent, it became obvious that the clowns were not just ambling around eerily, but actively grouping up in preparation for some unknown undertaking.

Inside, an even more bizarre scene awaited him. In the very center of the tent stood a brightly-colored circular console, with various plastic tubes stretching off of it to snake across the floor and through the walls. The ceiling supports held several guided rails, and dangling from hooks held in them were two garish pink cocoon-like bags, each as big as a hay bale, that appeared soft to the touch. Spatters of a reddish-pink liquid lay on the floor around each bag, and the surface of the console featured several straws strewn about among the comically large buttons and levers. Bonesword did not have the pleasure of being the only clown inside, however. A tall, gangly one with three tufts of yellow and purple hair and bulging cheeks stood with his back turned toward the entrance, a toy pistol on the console in arm's reach but otherwise undefended.



The otherworldly howl of the demon not only startled the two scouts, but recovered the attention of the rest of the squad, though at the moment the others were too far away to act. With their military-grade sternness broken, even for a fraction of a moment, the scouts were slow on the draw while staring at the oil-black monster's freakish dance. Before they could fire, Smiley's slung tire hit one in the chest at full force, tearing a guttural “ugh!” from her lungs as she fell backward. By that time, however, the second opened fire, and while her initial barrage missed the demon's whiplike shape, he had to enlarge in order to swallow her. In the scant seconds he'd grown, she riddled him with bullets, but his inexorable hunger cannoned him forward. All at once the woman, her weapon, and her attached pod drones were devoured. Smiley's jaws closed around her armored chins, crushing but not quite cutting through.

At the same moment, the other soldiers came into view. Several raised their machine guns to open fire, but one held up his fist in a decisive manner, and his fellows held their fire. Inside Smiley's maw, the dying woman had activated her drones' self-destruct, and was a split second away from detonating.



Though a human might hesitate, inclement weather did not. Before Mountain Dew made up his mind about what to do about the sudden deluge, the rain had so thoroughly drenched the lower portion of the street through which he now flew that the nose of his hoverboard hit the water's surface. Instantly the board flipped, throwing the major league gamer end over end toward a basin that had formed in the avenue's center, deep as an inflatable backyard swimming pool. His hoverboard, meanwhile, merely tipped over to float face-down on the water's surface.

Around six hundred feet ahead, medieval stone tower reached into the sky. Its solid-looking construction made it the most distinct thing Mountain could see through the immense downpour, and at this distance he could even spot a great wooden door at its base where masonry met sidewalk. The abruptness with which it arose from the streetside, including the cracked and turned-up concrete, made it appear as if it had risen from the earth like a beanstalk from a fairy tale.

Behind him, however, there came the sound of a harrowed cry above the heavy rain. ”Don't go into the tower! Please! You have to help me!” It was garbled, and not just by the storm, but rather as though it had been distorted through a throat never meant to speak. A choice lay before Mountain, neither especially appealing, but he couldn't afford to remain where he was any longer.



As critical as they were for humans -and those like humans-, light and heat did not interest a great many members of the animal kingdom. Cold-blooded reptiles, of course, needed their time in the sun to fill with energy so that they might go about their business, but insects did not care so much, and even warm-blooded creatures like birds and animals typically sported a coat of feathers, fur, or fat as insulation, depending on their habitats. Only humans treasured the warm, comforting glow of the fire, for aside from providing heat it, at the very core, perhaps reminded them of their dominance over nature. Then again, some creatures were heatseekers not because they needed heat, but because they needed love.

Secure as the lobby area of the fuel plant was, it was not impervious, and a beast with a nose full of a strange smell found its way inside. Ordinary people might not have noticed the intrusion for a while, but even in a semi-relaxed state, a fox determined to win the Crucible always retained some alertness. After a while, convinced that despite the alarming appearance of a shark there was no preeminent threat, a standard-sized dog with white and black fur, soaking wet from the rain, trotted toward the bonfire. She stopped a respectful distance away, wariness in her eyes as the dog looked between Brucie and Lily, her little mustache flapped with each turn of her neck.



Before Runch slammed shut the journal he'd received, one more page writ itself into existence before him. Titled 'surveillance drone', it gave the capabilities and behavior of the machine Oren used to communicate, which did not amount to much. No combat ability. Set to autopilot unless its action algorithm detects something interesting afoot, at which point an automatic alert is sent to the operator. Can hold 10 lbs of cargo, project a holographic screen without the use of a surface, and communicate via microphone. A more valuable lesson, perhaps, was that the journal seemed to operate on proximity alone. If Runch wanted the scoop on the tournament's mysterious, pun-loving announcer, he'd have to visit the man in person. For now, though, Oren himself did not prevaricate when asked about the Bashibozuk's fate.

“If you let him go, he's free to his own devices. He can wander around the city, kill if he wants to, whatever. I don't think the College really made plans for nonwinning survivors. Maybe they'll be returned to their own worlds after the whole thing's over with?” He shrugged, still smiling.

Outside the cathedral, rain began to fall. More buildings, wreathed in nighttime, stretched in every direction, but something altogether different lay on the horizon. In the far, far distance, a brilliant orange glow split the sky, a fiery blaze that rose above any building.



Beneath the airborne angel, a raging inferno gripped the forest. The giant tree that harbored Clotho's lair, in particular, had transformed from a massive but quiet bastion of solemn fortitude into a cataclysmic bonfire that cast such a gargantuan, ferocious glow as to make it seem like night's darkness had given birth to a new sun. Virtually anyone in the entire Uptown area could cast a glance at the horizon and see the brilliant beacon alight. As the wildfire threatened to engulf the forest, the clouds burst, and a torrent of rain drowned the flames in a matter of moments—except for those that consumed the vast pillar of tinder formerly known as the Forest King, which for all intents and purposes appeared inextinguishable.

As for Sophia: her phylactery's surface gave forth two lights in sequence, one salmon and one maroon, before going dark once again. Dark still was the phylactery of Clotho, which after relinquishing its 'soul' went completely inert. It couldn't rot, being an object of metal and mesh rather than blood and tissue, but the brown blackness of its shriveled surface made it pathetic enough. With the achievement of victory, however, her adrenaline ebbed, and in its wake came the rising pain within her left arm. The skin's tingling sensation became a crawl, and in only a few moments, her flesh began to move. Beneath her black armor and red raiment what was happening couldn't be seen, but she could feel the sudden surge. Very quickly she became unable to figure out what was happening in the limb based on feeling alone, but its gear was shifting around worryingly, and in an even more disturbing tone none of it hurt at all. It was actually quite pleasant up until her armor could contain the mutation no longer.

The black plate burst from her right arm as some thing long and dark exploded outward from where her left arm had been. At first glance, it resembled a centipede, long and bendy but with a chitinous shell. In a row across its tops and bottom were little protrusions that resembled legs, but on its end were three jointed digits that ended in sharp talons. The mutation was not pretty, but it could have been worse. As the neurons and nerves settled down, feeling returned to the limb, and in addition to being completely flexible, its claws worked much like fingers. In the very center of the 'palm', a little barb could extend to inject a liquid that shone as bright as a holy elixir. Although, this functionality more than likely presented little solace to an individual whose hatred of vile otherness was absolute.

Oren, courtesy of a newly-arrived drone, caught it all—everything as soon as the battle had left the Forest King up until this point. He even captured Clotho, lying among the discarded, defeated flesh of her mutation along the ground. The fact that the overwhelming, hideous transformation somehow preserved most of her original body was miracle in itself, but even more incredible, she appeared to retain a tiny shred of the spark of life. After all, her soul would have instantly gone to the victor had she been killed. Perhaps the fact that she generated the mutagen within her own glands gave her some sort of greater control over it. Though the last of the mutagen had somewhat closed up her stab wound, Clotho did not appear in any condition to fight, or even to move. Her wings were completely destroyed, and her forearms as well as her legs below the knees were essentially gone. She lay motionless amidst the juices, staring upward into the rain that washed her shame away, and whispered, ”Stupid...stupid. Ugh. How could I be so...disappointing. Carreau...you fool...you were right after all. I thought I...thought I could do it alone, and now...I'll die alone. Stupid...stupid...IO, I'm sorry, really.” Blood trickled down from the side of her mouth, and her eyes grew dark.



When Teller addressed them, wielding stern words and a hand in the shade of a blade, the women fell silent. That said, it didn't take a genius to tell that Guðrún took his curt response less than cordially. Her impetuousness propelled her into speaking first while Amelia, confronted by an attitude she hadn;t expected, was still mulling over her options. Respect for the military, it seemed, was something the headstrong redhead lacked. “Well, you're not exactly swimming in a lot of help either, Captain Boozer. You might be a force to be reckoned with where you come from, but if you think you're a top seed in this competition, think again. Woulda thought any of you wanted to win so badly you'd take whatever help you can get, 'specially from the College itself. We were gonna offer you some intelligence about your next opponent, and whatever spoils we get from the hunt, but maybe you'd better return to your nap instead? Ghosts can smell cantankerousness.”

A keen mind could intuit the source of her impertinence—outside of her own nature, at least. Though better than nothing, the light given off by the streetlamp nearby wasn't perfect, but Guðrún herself was brightly illuminated. A closer look at her umbrella revealed a lantern stashed in its top, integrated with the rest of the device so as to shed light in a shrouded manner. If by now Teller had put two and two together about how those artifacts worked, it'd be obvious that she could whisk herself away in the heavy, obscuring rain now falling in sheets throughout the City of Echoes. Of course, safety net aside, Amelia proved far less eager to get on the nerves of a hardened soldier, and less patient than Guðrún's previous handler.

“Would you shut up? Being in a position of power in this tournament doesn't mean we should lord it over the competitors, especially if they're in a position to take it out on us.” Her face bore her nervousness plainly as she turned her attention back to Teller. “Again, I'm sorry. I mistakenly assumed that cooperation would be a given. If you're not interested, we'll just be in our way.” Amelia took a preemptive step back, giving a slight bow of her head to enunciate her apology.



The smith shrugged. “Well, I'm sorta just doing it for me at this point.” He fell silent as Motley's attention slipped elsewhere, wondering what the stranger might have heard that he himself didn't. Evidently it demanded his focus, for Motley bid the smith adieu, promising to return if he found anything that might make for a passable weapon. With a forlorn sigh, he returned to his work.

Motley couldn't quite get a handle on the newcomer, not because he couldn't sense her, but because of several qualities he'd never encountered before. For the most part this took the form of a unique smell lingered around her, faint and aromatic, on the opposite end of the scale from a beastly musk but still on that scale. There was something else about her, though, that set her apart. Of course, Motley could tell that the approaching figure belonged to a woman despite the poor light and her modest traveling garb in the first place due to the scent of estrogen, far too faint for a normal human to pick up on but present nonetheless. All in all, she seemed unremarkable, but the confidence with which she entered Oldtown Plaza told the vampire all he needed to know about why she was here.

From the sidelines, the purple optic of Oren's drone gave it away, where the night would have otherwise enveloped it. “If only a storm wasn't brewing; there would be some badass moonlight to shine down upon the classic battle of darkness versus light. Who will come out on top? I'm anxious to see. You're live in three...two...one...now.” A loud, metallic clap punctuated the announcer's last word, and the last duel of the evening began.

This does not belong.

Pithy frowned as sand poured from the steadily enlarging opening, strange, shifting lights dancing from within the generator room. Not a corpse, as she had initially guessed, but something even more out of place.

Soon enough, the door had been opened enough for her to squeeze through. She sent three of her hovering blades first, waiting for movement from the other side of the room, but when none came, she pushed forward, the rest of her blades floating in behind her like a gaggle of bodyguards.

Pithy blinked a few times as she looked at the contents of the room, the kaleidoscopic illumination threatening to make her vision swim.

Sand was not something that happened to be piled at the entrance, but rather covered the entirety of the room’s floor, shifting underfoot as she walked in. She felt sure that the builders of this place had not left this mess, if only because she could not imagine workers needing to use an iron crow on the door whenever they needed to enter the room. Openings on the walls, out of place yet large enough for someone to walk into them, gave her a clue as to where the sand had come from.

Far more attention-grabbing, however, was the source of the dizzying lights. Pithy narrowed her eyes, trying to make heads or tails of what she was seeing, but she could see little beyond the beacon’s porous, outer layer from where she stood.

She took a step forward, approaching the small chasm across which the strange machinery was gathered.

Pithy almost stumbled as something gave under her weight. Stepping back, she looked at the sand at her feet and knelt. A moment of digging turned up a yellowed splinter. She turned it in her hand, finding the shape oddly familiar, yet unable to quite place its origin. She brought a hand to her mouth, biting on her glove’s finger to remove it, and held the shard on her bare hand.

Bone. Worn and brittle. But it could not be because of time, could it? This space is closed and dry… and these markings…

Seeing a mound in the sand nearby, Pithy began digging, quickly finding what she had hoped. The upper half of a human skull greeted her, easily recognizable even with most of the teeth gone and the bite marks on its surface, as though a large dog had been chewing at it.

She let the skull fall on the sand with a muffled thump, barely audible above the machinery’s clatter. She shook her hand, put her glove back on, then spat some of the sand that had fallen on her mouth.

Then again, with worn bones strewn all about, perhaps this was not sand at all. And if so, she might have been right in her initial assessment of what was blocking the door. Just not in a way she expected.

She spat on the ground again for good measure.

For the moment, the state of the room itself was a secondary concern, so she returned to her inspection of the machinery. From there, she could barely see the shape of something vaguely cube-shaped in the center of the beacon.

Her eyes went to the cables that held the apparatus in place snaking up into the ceiling, and she found herself recalling the cables that had connected the box-like apparatuses in the Lieutenant’s office several floors above her. If she recalled correctly, all of those had been connected to the walls as well. So had been the lights, and, she now suspected, the elevators themselves.

In her mind she saw an image of cables spreading throughout the whole Justice Hub, almost like a sewage system. Except that instead of water and waste, it carried what the machines needed to function.

She had been confused when Oren had mentioned a generator room, but as a practitioner of sorcerous arts , the concept of syphoning energy from a source to be used as fuel for a spell, or even a network of enchantments was not a foreign one. The term she was familiar with, for facilities designed to gather this energy from a magic core, was extractor.

In that regard, the object that was at its core seemed much like what she would expect from such an energy source, but the surrounding machinery seemed as alien to it as it seemed to her. While the core seemed completely arcane to her, the devices shackling it still felt bizarrely mundane in comparison.

Was this something the builders found, or is it yet another strange device from the same people, only different in how it appears?

Pithy could not truly give an answer to that. Instead, she marked this location in her mental map as a point of interest, and turned away from it. Perhaps later she could examine the core in greater detail, perhaps even bring it with her for study, but if her hypothesis was correct and the device fueled the Justice Hub’s machinery, removing it could leave her without a way to operate the elevators. She would need to find an alternate route to the surface first.

With that in mind, she made her way to the opening in the wall. As she approached the gaping maw, the stench of rot struck her nose.

She grimaced, recalling the announcer’s words. She was to find a vault after the generator room, but ‘creepy crawlies’ had prevented the College’s staff to go any further.

A magelight formed in her palm and she threw it forward, the will-o-wisp illuminating the tunnel where the core’s colorful light began to fade. The light paused a few feet in front of her, silently hovering in the air.

Unlike the entrance to the tunnel itself, which seemed to have been created by something forcefully tearing the wall open, the way forward was surrounded by stone walls, too shapely to have been created naturally, or even by some huge, burrowing creature. The hand of man was clearly visible here.

But was it the same ‘man’ that built the Justice Hub?

She wondered at that. The generator room seemed to her like a place where the echoes of several worlds had collided at once.

Her lips twitched.

Two of her escorts sunk into the sand in front of her, sinking in the powder until the blades touched the floor. When Pithy began to walk forward, the ice and the magelight followed her pace, the former combing the sand for traps or critters hidden beneath, the latter illuminating the path in front of her.

The Blood Devil vs Rose Cythla Round 2

Rose crossed her arms in front of her, cocking her head to the side and flashing Saria a complacent smile. Infuriated, Saria swung her sword at the girl in a violent motion, aiming to bisect her with a single blow.

Her hit connected, slicing through the purple-garbed girl. For a moment, Saria thought that she had won, that she had already succeeded over this sorcerer, but it wasn’t to be. Like lightning, one of the girl’s tendrils batted her aside, sending her tumbling to the ground. Saria rolled out of the way of another tendril that aimed to skewer her, and she stepped back, out of the tendrils’ reach.

I cut her! How did she--

It was then Saria had realized that the warlock was no ordinary girl. She was… something else. Something hidden under that young facade that seemed to waver and shimmer around the edges.

No matter. I’ve yet to find an opponent immune to death.

Saria charged in again, slicing away and dodging the tendrils that came too close, and she realized that the girl seemed to be only slightly amused by what was transpiring. Rose had a bored look on her face, letting her weaponized hair do all of the attacking. Saria saw little movement from the girl anywhere else.

However, the girl’s headpiece began to glow again. Knowing what came next, Saria ducked out of the way, and just in time as well, as the eldritch bolt narrowly missed Saria’s frame. However, in avoiding the beam, she collided with a multitude of tendrils, which smacked her across the ground. She quickly recovered, springing back to her feet and batting back the hair with her sword, with little effect on the girl herself.

Get close, and kill.

Saria rushed towards Rose, deftly dodging and weaving between tendrils, cutting the ones she couldn’t dodge, and once she got close enough, swinging a flurry of strikes and blows, each one of them connecting to the girl.

Got her!

Rose seemed to freeze for a moment, all of her tendrils frozen in place as well. A multitude of cuts and wounds, all of them deep, littered the warlock’s body, but still the girl stood there, as if nothing had happened. Strange-colored blood dripped from her wounds.

Suddenly, Saria felt as if her mind had been mashed by a rock. She felt… something. Something which absolutely unnerved her, if not terrified her. There was a certain presence around her, like a madman’s mind whispering directly to her consciousness.

The girl seemed to suddenly spring to life, her hair flailing around unpredictably. A strange, purple hued aura circled around her. The girl seemed to be changing. Changing into something big.

“Okay, Blood Devil. You ever fight a star spawn?”

Bo-Bonesword - Carnival of Crazies

"What have I gotten into now..." whispered the clown swordsman, nicknaming whatever he was into Bo-Bonesword. He saw the various bags of pink and red strewn about, and he really didn't want to know what was inside those bags, rather he kind of just wanted to get out. He didn't know what he was truly supposed to do right now, but he felt like it involved killing these clowns and... saving the day?

Bo-Bonesword didn't really do that, but he guessed he had to now.

He waddled around comically, trying to form a plan in his head, taking everything in with each step. There was the stupid idea of simply burning down the damn tent, and honestly it probably would work. These clowns seemed just as prone to fire as any other clown, maybe even more so. However, the rain would be a bit problematic for that situation.

Maybe he could try just being himself? That seemed like a good idea at first, but then the realization that these clowns wield toy ray-guns that are probably actual ray-guns just made it a lot worse. Plus, he's pretty sure his swords would be kind of useless considering the situation and the physics.

In any case, he had to try and figure out what he was doing right now. This may very well blow his cover, but it was a risk he had to take. Bo-Bonesword walked towards the lanky clown in front of him and spoke up, his voice sounding quite sillier than normal. "Excuse me friend, why exactly are you clowning about in here? I hope it's not any funny business!"

It was unclear just how long the Seraphim lay in the pool, how long it took for her to awaken from her possession/madness, to leave the blissful escape of unconsciousness.

The first thing she experienced as she regained control of her body was pain. So much pain. Except, oddly, her arm. She did not really have long to ink about this before she realizes there was a hideous thing right in front of her. A long centipede like monstrosity which twitched and groped around blindly with 3 massive pincers. Her knives, where where her knives!

“Emperor give me strength” She groans as she begins to tries to get away spotting the knives lying under the water, but the thing is to fast, it reaches out and grabs the knife! Its coming for her it’s going to!

Sophia hands herself the knife. And then releases where the thing came from. From the ruins of her armor pad it emerges from the warped remains of her shoulder. It is part of her, it is her monsters arm, a parting gift from the now dead Chotho.

“no” almost a whisper, she stares at it. This corruption.
“please no” she can’t look away, the vile thing consumes her vision. This mutation.
”AHHH!” she screams, raising the knife aiming to slice it off. This HERESY!

_{Stops stop stop you stupid girl. Put the knife down}

Louder, it’s louder now why is it louder. The voice, The whisper. She could almost hear it. Where. Where was it! The arm forgotten, knife dropped back into the water, for a moment she looked around desperately for guidance, for the source of that holy murmur and saw.

Saw!

Geromory. How it had survived the fire was anyone's guess but it for some reason had with it all of the medical supplies from the supply catch.

”wh.. waht?”

She tried to stop them,”get away from me you hideous mutant”, yet with her weakened state it seems to slip easily past her, hardly trying as she missed every awarded flail at it. It got in close and jabbed something in her exposed wriggling arm. Her body and mind began to go numb as the painkillers made her feel slightly less awful. She was helped out of the pool to a rocky outcrop clear of ash where she removed her armor, a task made difficult by the malformed arm, and began to deal with the bruising and bleeding she was suffering as best she could. It was a long and clumsy process, but as she worked the whisper told her not to despair and more importantly not to try and cut her arm off again, the blood loss would kill her. She wondered what she should do now. Find more ammo and fuel probably. She may be tainted, but she was still fervent in her purpose. She would complete her duty and then die for her sin. Actually what she really needed was an Eviscerator