Dark Jack

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just in case any of you think that the way Victor experiences being a Hunter is how your characters are supposed to experience it: don't worry, I expect a lot of these things to differ from person to person. Not every Hunter is as paranoid, bloodthirsty, sadistic or inconsistent as Victor, nor would other Hunters necessarily end up using their powers unintentionally, like starting to perform a visceral attack just because someone within arm's reach is in a vulnerable state. Others also might have an even more difficult time than Victor.

Who is next in the clinic scene?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, outside the Hunter's clinic

It was Hunter doctrine to be active rather than passive, to always act rather than react and take the initiative rather than wait, which was one of the main reasons that the old Hunters frowned upon the use of shields. Even now this philosophy remained so ingrained in Victor that he could feel his entire body vibrating, his limbs twitching nervously as his instincts called him to action... yet for all that his body wanted to move, his mind had no idea where or how to do so. The faint haze he had seen for a moment had faded almost immediately, leaving him nothing but assumptions as to where this entity was. He could catch his breath and then move in again, attacking everywhere at random in the hopes that he happened to eventually cut the thing that had taken Raine... but then what? With how big, powerful, and quite frankly alien this being seemed, the thought of killing it by just swinging his sword randomly was nothing short of absurd. The most likely outcome would be that he was taken as well, leaving Adelicia all alone.
What had happened to Raine? What was the thing that had grabbed him? What had it done to him? Was he still alive? Had it eaten him? Was he right there in front of them, only now as imperceptible as the one that had taken him? Had it sent him somewhere else? What was this thing? A beast?
No, that last thought was pointless; even Victor knew enough to recognize that this specific act was not the work of beasts. This was arcane. Otherworldly.
Something from another world, he thought, gritting his teeth as he held himself in place, trying desperately to think of somewhere to aim the aggression building inside of him. You hear about things like this, but... to actually witness it...

Victor had been aware of the saint swaying next to him, his paranoia prompting him to visually confirm that the movement he was sensing was indeed her about once a second, but it still came as a surprise when he abruptly registered a bigger movement as she started to actually fall. His body fully primed for action the Hunter reacted instantly, dropping his sword and quickstepping to cover the distance between them in a heartbeat as he slipped his left arm behind her from her right, gripping her left shoulder, all to stop her from falling...
and then he immediately recoiled, letting her fall the rest of the way to the ground as he staggered away from her, desperately grabbing his right wrist with his left hand, hunched over and grimacing in fear, rage and hunger all at once. That had been way too close! He had only realized that his right hand had grown bigger, each finger had sprouted a claw, and was moving to plunge into the woman's deliciously soft, warm insides at the very last moment before it would have been too late. Even now he had to struggle to stop himself from rushing over to maim her; her state of total vulnerability was just too inviting.
She's not even conscious! She wouldn't resist at all! he thought, disgusted with himself for feeling such things in the presence of a person he was responsible for, and who arguably did not deserve his hostility. The so-called visceral attack was a dangerous power indeed, especially given how hard it could be to resist doing it.
Hunters were supposed to hunt, after all, not protect; they were killers, not babysitters. He could not imagine how Hunters with children of their own managed to avoid killing their own spawn, defenseless little bundles of meat that they were.

Only by keeping his distance, breathing deeply and forcing himself to calm down did Victor succeed at returning his right hand to its human appearance, though this accomplishment did earn a sigh of relief. Not that the situation was resolved, only salvaged for the time being; he was still faced with the conundrum of having to ensure Adelicia's well-being without brutally murdering her by accident.
“Saint?” he called nervously, staying a couple of meters away. “Adelicia?”

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Is Adelicia falling forwards or backwards?

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Eastern Yharnam, outside the Hunter's clinic

Raine did not seem too fond of the idea of deciding which one of them performed which necessary task with a coin-flip, but ultimately he simply told Victor to just do it. He flicked the coin hard with his thumb, sending it spinning rapidly several meters into the air, both of them in unspoken agreement that this was probably the most efficient way to go about. They could discuss it, or one could just go and consequently force the other to stay, but Victor remained deeply conscious of the sounds coming from inside the clinic and the urge inside himself to move, kill and hunt. Flipping the coin, he reasoned, was the quickest, fairest way for them to decide, wasting as little time as possible while also creating as little hostility between the two as they could manage.
“Tails, I go,” he announced, looking up at the coin – visible at this point only as a rapidly blinking light as the shiny piece of silver continued spinning at least several times a second, seeming to hang still for a moment at the peak of its flight – before he took a step backward and threw his hands to the sides, keeping himself as clear of where the coin would drop as possible. It was customary among Hunters to do coin-flips this way, letting the coin hit the ground rather than catching it as “normal” people usually did. Humans occasionally made the mistake of trying to flip a coin with a Hunter, which almost always resulted in the Hunter winning, since they could use the power of their blood to boost their senses and reflexes enough to count the revolutions of even the fastest spinning coin and thus reliably catch it at the exact moment when they would win. With two Hunters, who were both presumably aware of the inherent unfairness of a Hunter's ability to decide the outcome, they both knew that the only way to make it fair was to allow the coin to hit the ground.

The flickering light of the coin plummeted, hit the ground on its edge with a strangely satisfying noise, and bounced off the cobbled street, launching away from Victor and toward the edge of the plateau. For one incredulous, infuriating moment Victor actually thought the coin was going to bounce again, go through the guard rail and disappear into the wasteland of Old Yharnam below, but mercifully it settled before then, still a little over a meter (3' 4”) from the edge. Raine, being the one out of the two closest to where the coin had ended up, went to check the result of the coin flip.
Victor blinked and furrowed his brow, suddenly and irrationally bothered by something as he watched Raine head over and crouch by the coin. He felt the hairs standing on the back of his neck and his arms, and his heartbeat quickened for no particular reason as he was gripped by an urgent sense of danger. His eyes started shifting rapidly, his gaze going everywhere to check every conceivable angle of approach and hiding place, but aside from the signs that someone had entered the clinic, there was nothing to worry about. Yet the instant he looked back at Raine, the feeling of impending disaster returned tenfold, making his eyes widen in panic as he sensed something.

He was about to call out to Raine – probably around the same moment when Raine would have announced the upward-facing side of the coin – when the something happened. Raine's crouching form suddenly and unnaturally stood back up perfectly straight, arms down his sides and legs together... and then he floated off some four meters into the air, struggling, growling and swearing at whatever force was manhandling him like that.
Victor quickstepped forward, propelled by the desperate feeling that had been building inside him this entire time – accelerating to high speeds in an instant, covering the distance between himself and where Raine had just been in a blur and then stopping as instantaneously as he had started – and slashed at the air below Raine, hoping against hope that his blade would find whatever was holding his companion and ideally making it release him. His sword met no resistance, however, so he slashed again to the right, then to the left, before taking another step closer to the edge and swinging his weapon wide at the guard rail, before finally quickstepping backward, retreating to Adelicia's side.
Victor watched, confused and desperate, as he panted heavily from the exertion; not only the quicksteps, but the final swing of his sword had all been done with the aid of the Hunter's blood, which in turn inflicted quite a bit of fatigue on him. He needed at least a few seconds to recover; if he tried using the blood again it would only get worse, until he would be actually incapable of activating the blood for a while. He thought he saw a faint trace of the something that was attacking Raine, little more than a faint haze and a hint of movement, but just from that he could tell that whatever it was, it was huge. Whatever this invisible monstrosity was, it was bigger than any living being Victor had ever seen before. If he had to guess at why he had been unable to reach it with his sword, he figured it must be sitting past the edge of the plateau, possibly sitting on the side sheer wall itself.
Raine, still suspended in mid-air by whatever extremity of the phantom assailing him, was enveloped by a misty, pale-bluish light, subtle at first but growing quickly in intensity, until the Hunter was completely hidden by this eldritch phenomenon... and when the light faded, Raine was gone without a trace, leaving Victor staring incredulously at where he had just been.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Though Arcturus unintentionally triggered the power of his new blood and quickstepped away at the last moment, the Mad One still completed its attack. Raking the air with the claws of its left hand and smashing at nothing with the staff in its right hand, both hands converged in front of it, meeting no resistance and finding no target, meaning that there was nothing to receive the force it had put into the attack. Lacking its right leg from the knee down it had no way to compensate for its forward momentum, and momentarily it stumbled forward onto its hands and knees. Had any of the Hunters been close enough, this moment of vulnerability could have been the ideal moment for a visceral attack, but alas, as it was the Mad One recovered quickly and none of the Hunters were within arm's reach of the creature.

Seemingly unbothered by its missing leg or the bleeding stump left of it, the Mad One finally made a noise; a whimper, though far from one of fear or pain, but rather the whine of eagerness, like a dog begging for food or anticipating to play. Its head whipped back up just in time to watch Arcturus quickstep once again, closing the distance he had just created between himself and his adversary.
The monster had just enough time to part its terrible jaws and produced the first note of another inhuman shriek. Then Arcturus' sword found its mark, splitting the Mad One's head down the middle and instantly silencing its nightmarish cry. Arcturus would doubtlessly feel the strength spent on this move, quickstepping twice in such a short span of time, but perhaps it was all worth it as the creature's limbs went limp and its body slumped nervelessly to the ground.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

All right, looking forward to it.

Also got a response from Bartimaeus, and we're working something out.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Who's up next in the clinic? I would presume @DrabberRogue, since Arcturus is the one most urgently in danger...

I've been trying to get a hold of Bartimaeus in PM, but so far no dice. I'll give him a little longer, but then I'll have to intervene before it stalls the RP for too long.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Just since it seems pretty relevant right now, I figure this is probably a good time to specify how I imagine "quickstepping" (or "dashing", if you prefer; the locked-on Bloodborne dodge) working in the context of the RP. I wrote about it a little in the OP, but I figure more detail isn't a bad thing.

Quickstepping requires the Hunter to draw upon their beast-blood, making it very taxing for them to use and likely to fatigue them quickly if overused, though stronger Hunters can obviously handle more, just as superhuman strength or speed normally would. I imagine quickstepping to be a combination of two things, the first of which is an extremely fast horizontal lunge, hurdling oneself up to five meters (about sixteen and a half feet) in a direction without touching the ground before the end of the "step". During the half a second or so the quickstep lasts, Hunters will have massively boosted instincts and reflexes, allowing them to sense danger approaching and often weave past it by manipulating their body mid-step to evade danger.
This isn't to say that it's exactly like iframes from the game, though: not everything can be quickstepped through. Something approaching the Hunter from just inches away, for instance, is probably going to hit before they can move out of the way. Similarly, while legs, arms and head can be manipulated in mid air, the torso - center of mass - is a lot harder to move, and might require action to be taken when initiating the quickstep rather than during it, like crouching down or jumping just as one does it (or, alternatively, just not quickstepping into an attack). Likewise, things that can't logically be dodged, like fire, explosions or generally just very large objects of hurt coming the Hunter's way, which would require the Hunter not to dodge, but to actually phase through danger, will still hit (and might hit even harder than otherwise, depending on the Hunter's trajectory).
One final note: this obviously applies to everything capable of quickstepping, be they player Hunters, NPC Hunters or other beings capable of quickstepping, though the speed and distance moved might vary.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Bizarrely, Marcus' blow to the creature's knee proved quite devastating. As the stock of his rifle made contact, the entire middle section of the Mad One's leg seemed to shatter like brittle stone, unleashing a small shower of tiny fragments of bone and flesh, a puff of black dust and a splatter of blood, all while the now-severed calf and foot went its own way from the rest of the body.

But though it had suffered grievous damage, the Mad One was still mid-leap and mid-attack, meaning that the wounded leg did little to hinder its current actions. It was timing it so that its arms would converge on Arcturus about the instant it would hit the ground, putting its entire weight into the attack.

Night of the Hunt - a Bloodborne RP

Sure, we'll make it the knee, then.