Divorarel

Battle Toyale — Christmas Rumble!

Count me in.

The Family Biz [Open To Apply]

Sammie eyed the gargantuan gargoyle behind the receptionist desk with the same naked antipathy with which cats regarded everything not themselves, that she was looking for help did not matter, that over ten feet and a thousand pounds separated their weight classes from one another did not change the lingering sentiment that could attack at any moment. Her tail slapped at the empty air. Her fingers pulled at the outline of what was very clearly a shotgun hidden inside of a duffel bag…

“God,” She reaffirmed without fail. “Samantha Ansegisel. I made a reservation—oh thank you.”

The conversation was short and to the point, doubly so due to her prickly personality, and when it was over Sammie had to remember to turn around and give the receptionist a little curtsy before scurrying into the sprawling courtyard that was—apparently—where they stored their elevators. Massive to the point of requiring a bar just to distract the unlucky masses who had missed their chance to board and would likely spend a small lifetime waiting for the next opportunity. Between the legs of giants she moved like an agile shadow while simultaneously avoiding contact with the many demons unfortunate enough to be even smaller than she was, mice and ants mostly, though nothing smaller than that for microbiological demons were heavily regulated since the Black Plague.

“Going up?”

A voice like gravel heralded her from above, auspiciously so, Sammie regarded her second gargoyle of the evening with a skeptical look from behind a mask that did not have eye slits wide enough to offer such complex facial expression (or eyes at all) before remembering something that a kindly fortune teller on the street had told her about fated meetings and deciding that she had no time to waste if she was to meet her future Prince Charming. Especially not on a demon. With the door rapidly closing she dashed through a space so narrow that for a moment it seemed to have sliced her in half before reality remembered that all cats were at least part liquid, reforming wholly on the other side mid-dash up the man’s arm and pulling herself boldly onto his shoulder in the same smooth motion as she kicked a squealing goblin back to unclean carpet below. “Thank you, kind sir.” She spoke before anyone else could. “If you could take me to the surface level, I have an important meeting with Mister Vilero, and I’ve nyarry a moment to waste.”

Purr-fect Betrayal

While the other three groups of would-be fugitives were busy plotting to stab each other in the back and overthrow the Asterian matriarchy, Anfield just wanted to find some feed, he hadn’t eaten anything substantial since the amazons had kidnapped him a few days ago and his growling stomach had become ferocious as to be heard from several yards . Anfield ran through the astral gardens with nose in the air, narrowly avoiding golden arrows flying at mach speeds a few too many times to be a coincidence and had left a trail of cucumber skinned warrior women in his wake nursing broken limbs and aching heads, some had tried to apprehend him while others were merely unfortunate enough to be caught flat-footed at the sight of a man running free through their city.

He didn’t want to fight, but he wasn’t taking chances.

Once, he’d snatched a tray from one of his fallen foes who looked like she was just finishing lunch and used it to deflect several arrows before one punched through its face like a spear through tinfoil. The only thing that spared him from being impaled was a flash of emerald ether. Hardening the crinkled golden wound around the arrow’s shaft and pinning it in place moments before it was reeled out of his grasp by an intense invisible force that he could only liken to a tractor beam.

‘These girls aren’t playing around,’

But Anfield could hardly put up a fight on an empty stomach, lucky for him the kitchen was close, one final sniff led him around a right-hand corner and into what had to be the most obnoxiously overdesigned banquet halls in this galactic quadrants. Rows upon rows of exotic alien food ranging from barely edible insects still squirming in misery to more recognizably terran entrees so rich they would probably kill you in entirely different ways. With only a few slaves and the confused guards stationed to watch them there was nothing to stop him from accosting the buffet with greedy fingers, shoving anything even vaguely edible in his mouth as he made his way down line, getting all of a single mouthful in there before…

KRASH

The whole world shook as Captain Metallo’s menagerie plowed through the roof of the building down into the banquet below, dragging plenty of debris along with it, colliding with an extravagant ice sculpture of some long-dead Asterian myth that sat at the center of the room before colliding with the ground floor with enough force to knock everyone in the area on their ass. And flip every table. For a hot minute Anfield remained buried beneath the rubble before his senses came back to him. With his ears still ringing, Anfield dislodged himself from the messy pile of wasted food he was under, Metallo’s voice scratching at the periphery of his senses with a distant; ‘AVAST! I…’ And had circumstances been just a bit different perhaps the old rust buckets speech would have reached a receptive audience, after all, Anfield was both keenly aware of where the prisoners were being kept and had the keys to their cells on his person but that was in a universe where he was not covered in slop feeling his stomach rumble even worse than before. Starving was bad enough. Having just enough food in his stomach to remind him of what a good meal was like and its lingering aroma on the air beneath the stink of oil was enough to drive a man insane.

Anfield ignored the Asterian soldiers pouring into the banquet hall, weapons drawn, engaging the machine men in a protracted firefight while terrified slaves dove for cover. He only paused long enough to hurl a nine-foot-tall woman who had dared to grab him across the room before scooping up a handful of kitchen utensils between his fingers, six in all, forks and knives and even a single golden spoon thrown in there for good measure as he crested a small barrier of broken tables and shouted his rage into the world.

“YOU RUINED MY LUNCH.”

It was the only warning Metallo’s crew would receive before Anfield flung two handfuls of utensils at them with frightening precision, but there was more to this gaudy silverware than a coat of gold paint, a brief spark of emerald ether filled the space around his hand before the toss and was the only warning Andro would receive before the forks and the knives and the spoon curved in on his position. Andro whose chest and mouth were still covered in drying oily black vomit chosen for no other reason than his androgynous face seemed the most immediately hateable. Andro who would find himself chased down by cutlery regardless of where he chose to run and closing in on him from either side. Anfield’s ether hardened each utensil until it was stronger than an Asterian spear, strong enough to punch through the hull of Metallo’s ship if his target managed to dodge and still embed themselves six inches deep in the durasteel, in other words staying there and just letting them hit him…?

Wasn’t a very smart idea.

“YOU BETTER HAVE A GOOD EXCUSE, METALLO, OR I’M GOING TO KICK YOUR ASS.”

Distantly, in the back of his mind Anfield was aware of the battle raging around him, who was strong. Who was dangerous. And who was planning to use that to their advantage. Distantly he could feel the hair rise on the back of his neck as someone used the chaos to slink through the shadows unseen but he didn’t care, not right now, he’d officially had enough and Metallo had the misfortune of being the first person he’d seen all day who looked like they could survive a punch or two from the angry roughneck.

Neo Babylon

Group two is go.

Neo Babylon

For a phenomenon that scientists routinely describe as falling through a crack between universes, the process of surprisingly gentle, one moment you are:

Courting a beautiful woman…

Beating a man within an inch of his life…

Disposing the garbage…

Cradled in the hands of a new god…

Relaxing in your swamp…

And the next you’re gone, the world goes black, and you’re dreaming.

***

You awaken to the sound of a hundred different mouths chewing their food at the same time…

The ground is hard and sticky, rocks jut out uncomfortably into the body you recklessly laid over it. The air is moist, wherever you are this must be the worst season, and you are surrounded by trees. You’re in the forest, you’re in the forest and you’re sprawled out on moist soil, listening to a hundred somethings enjoy the last ravenous meal of their lives. Clarity seems to take forever—but not really. Soon you realize that that steadily moving mound on the edge of your vision isn’t actually blurry it’s just a dozen different massive fuzzy lumps having their way with the body of someone just like you who wasn’t lucky enough to wake in time…

They are the Perfect Food.

They resemble pill bugs with their round armored shells and dull brown bodies but with white fur. They flow across the ground on a thousand tiny unseen legs with just as many mouths beneath them to devour whatever they crawl over. They resemble pill bugs except for the fact that they are the size of a great dane. Their fat bodies must weight in excess of two-hundred pounds and if you were to strike one you would find that unlike most insects, they do not squish, they are thick and meaty. When they bleed it is a juicy tantalizing red. You don’t know this—you’ll never know this unless you ask the right people the wrong questions, but once upon a time, Reverence Institutional thought these things were the solution to world hunger until it became clear that their idea of perfect food also made for an eerily durable predator.

There is no one else around you, the forest is quiet in their presence, and as you stir the first of those things turns towards you in quiet eyeless realization. Detecting you in some unknowable way. Maybe it was the vibrations in the ground or maybe it was the stilling of your breath, then it folds its body up, exposes its horrible gore smattered underbelly to you and hisses with too many mouths. If you haven’t moved by now it decides to lunge on the closest body it can find, flinging into the air, somewhere deep down inside of its primal mind it has decided the green-haired human is probably the closest thing to an actual predator among its list of potential victims. Mentally. They have all decided to gloss over the oversized reptile. Crocodiles in Empyrea have long since learned to give them a wide berth and vice versa, why should things be any different this time around?

@Liaison @54v @Drifting Pollen @Spider Pickle @Alucroas

The Land of Skara: and the Songtale of the Breaking

Interesting.

Neo Babylon

“I thought it was funny,” The girl says, offering Hafadac an apologetic smile.

Just like that, the Rats were forgotten, their grand scheme to swarm the travelers handwaved away. Bitter resentment and quiet relief hung in the air in equal measure. Each of the three eyeballing the gift they had been given with their own unique form of distrust before the silent man in the middle finally took the leap of faith, uncorking the bottle and tossing his head back, downing it all in one go so that the poison might take him quick if that is indeed what it turned out to be. Smacked his lips. Then commented in his clipped accent, “It is good.”

“I’m Peggy,” the mousy blonde girl introduced herself. “This is Batu, and that’s Conrad.”

Only one bastion of distrust remained among them, staring through a veil of matted hair, glaring at his friends as they fell to the strangers and their unerring hospitality. As they became comfortable. The City whispered into his ear then, ‘remember what happened last time’, and his grip tightened around the rusty pocketknife he’d been angling towards since the start of this little interaction. Conrad, his full name was Conrad Alderson but he’d not had need to use his full name for months, could not deny that they meant no harm but in a city like Neo Babylon even amiable ignorance could spell disaster and if they followed these fools surely they would die a horrible death.

The big one was never going to let them go, his focus too intense, his empathy too unyielding.

Before he knew it was the knife was drawn, adrenaline drove him to ignore the pain in his ankle, standing on it even as pain shot up his calf like hot magma injected directly into his veins and drove him towards Gregor’s back for one last heroic thrust. He would surely be crushed in the response. But in his death he would at least provide the other two the opportunity to run, yes, so resigned was he to his fate that he did not notice the iron hand closing in around his wrist and squeezing until the bone snapped.

Until the knife dropped.

“No, that is enough.” The culprit, his very own friend, shaking a head at him in silence. “Rest now.”

***

Inside the warehouse was wide and cramped, the roof high overhead, the windows cracked and dim. Row after row of crates greeted the travelers but none of the terrifying guards they’d been warned of. On the floor cigarette butts and empty beer cans could be found, and things worse than both too, but in general it seemed like at least some energy had gone into keeping the whole thing legitimate. Without cracking open the crates there was no way of knowing what hid inside them. Hafadac would surely recognize the discarded corpse of worn-out spray bottle but there was no graffiti to be found…

At least until one looked overhead and saw the great swollen belly of an eight-legged jade spider, spread out ominously across the roof with its legs draping down across the walls as if to engulf it all. And in the nearest corner, to the right of 017 upon entering, a cage that looked to be filled with gravel. Gravel that rose and fell in a too timely manner, and sometimes breathed dust into the air.

“This place isn’t safe…” Peggy panted as she caught up to the group, one hand reaching for the bird. “I know you think it is, but all of this belongs to someone and trust me when I say, they won’t be happy to find out you broke in here. Please just listen to reason.”

***

It didn’t take long for the members of CNTRL ALT ELITE to rally together after getting their bearings. Haia had trained them well, even without her they were a deadly unit, and they knew that she would chastise them for not having any spine if they were to back down from this dungeon just because they were down one member. They divided into teams of five and with a mighty cheer there were off.

Who knows, maybe haia was waiting for them down there, in the city on the dark side of the moon.

@Shinny @Circ @THE ADORATION @odium

Celestial Duel — Shinny Vs Anshin

I’d Offer You Some Reading Recommendations

Beramode did not need to understand Kru’s unusual biology to feel the smug aura oozing off of him. Gods were like exaggerated reflections of the people who worshipped them in his experience and those who liked to think of themselves as beyond that simple principle were oft most enslaved by it. And so Beramode listened in silence as the wretched souls serving as Kru’s minions this evening tore into the space-faring metalloids who’d only wanted to play an innocent game…

Until it was his time to speak.

“I find that people are more interested in talking about themselves than you give them credit for, Pepe the Prawn, all you have to do is make them comfortable.” Was that what had happened here? Had Beramode feigned frustration in order to appeal to Kru’s ego or had the weaver of fate merely allowed himself to become tangled in his own web, whichever made him angrier was surely truer, and being unable to tell difference would surely eat away at his opponent for the duration of their match. “You needn’t resist the compulsion, it’s standard fare for rivals to engage in banter during a climatic battle. Speaking of…” Post-mauling the space between them had filled with liquid metal giblets but rather than be swept off the board by the next stellar breeze peeling off from the dying star beside them they remained, burbling en masse until all at once twenty-five of the largest clumps exploded into new bodies that very much resembled their old ones. “I activate Quantum Kindergarten, whenever a monster with the keyword Dog dies on my side of the field they are immediately replaced by five quantum clones of themselves to continue the fight. Then I activate Scorched Earth which immediately dispels all field effects and replaces them with a field of smoldering fire.”

Just like that a wave of heat swept across the space between them until it filled with a distorted haze.

“After that, I sacrifice one Pack of Dogs to upgrade my Black Dog Justicar to a Black Dog Archon.” Heat so hot that the bubbling form of the Justicar lit on fire with a brilliant black-purple plasma before it lurched into the mass of deformed spirits that had taken the shape of Kru’s Zombie Horde with a mighty sweep of its blade, then another, then another, then another. Shearing off another damned soul each time until it became difficult to ignore that real lives were being sacrificed for a petty game. “With four different instances of Suppressing Fire lowering their attack points and Scorched Earth boosting my Archon’s attack power the difference between the two is staggering and the remainder will be removed directly from your life points. After that I play one more card face down in the Spell Zone and I end my turn, you ought to be careful Kru, keep playing at this pace and you’ll run out of cards before we get to the fun stuff.”

Beramode had only one card in his hand, the Archon seemingly drawn from his deck—or his sleeve, but four Pack of Dogs and one Archon supported by the ongoing effects of his Quantum Kindergarten and Scorched Earth.

But I’m Not Convinced Your Shrimp Brain

“We’re surrounded.” “We’re being overwhelmed.” “Requesting evacuation.”

All around him, him being Rodrigo in this case, the favela exploded with activity. Zombies that had once no doubt been the occupants of this dumpy little shanty town burst from every available door, window, chimney, grate and other assorted opening they could find and when there were none available they made their own. The Black Dogs were immediately overwhelmed. There was no universe were any of their number would fall to a single zombie but the sheer weight of that tidal wave dragged them to the ground, and yet, when the first one fell a strange thing happened as if the universe itself were having a seizure before five more appeared in his or her place drawn from extant quantum possibilities where the trooper in question had not died.

This did not save the original trooper, who still died and still turned into a zombie, but rather replaced them and allowed their numbers to grow exponentially until the favela was an overflowing melee of living and dead made all the more chaotic by Rodrigo’s next order.

[Burn them all.]

FWOOSH!!!

Napalm swept across the whole favela from above as the dropships overhead dropped their camouflage and payloads in the same breath, uncaring of whether there were any survivors left or not and expecting the beleaguered Black Dog Clones to weather the storm with their power armor or be replaced by yet more copies wrenched from the cosmic cutting floor.

“Your friend has some interesting tricks, Hector, but I see what you’re trying to do.” Rodrigo marched forward through the sweeping flames seemingly ignorant of the headless gaunt that had once been David galloping a sharp semi-circle through the perimeter, crushing zombie and human underfoot, howling through the flames that every crevice of its twisted grey body on a mission to collide with the Black Dog Commander from behind. ‘The fool,’ Before becoming a techno savant Rodrigo had trained his body into a weapon such that he could physically feel any threat upon his person regardless of where he might perceive it, in other words, he knew the gaunt was coming at him from behind and just when it seemed ready to tackle him from behind he hopped into the air. Not much. Just enough that he was able to vault off the thing’s face before it passed under him with a pair of kicks so powerful they sent a shockwave rippling through the favela. Of David’s corpse there was naught but a messy splatter of blood spread out across a twenty-foot runway, steaming from contact with the jets at Rodrigo’s heels, carrying him past the fleeing Hector. Carving a burning trench through the muddy streets as he wheeled in the man’s direction and extended a single burly forearm to collide with his opponent mid-retreat and potentially decapitate that overgrown thaumatic bong the Narco Lich called a body. “I’ll figure out what he’s up to after I’m done with you!”

Is Capable of Processing High-Literature Just Yet

The Yarniverse: Circ & Anshin

Alice made her way down the alley one shaky wobble at a time, as it turns out, bipedal locomotion was a tad more difficult than she was used to without any bones to keep you upright against gravity. So imagine her surprise when, just as the though passed through her head, the entirety of her lower body fused into a single amorphous mass of glitter that oozed out from the bottom of her dress and left a slinky pink trail behind her as she moved—or rather oozed—across the woolen floor.

“That’s not quite as subtle as I was hoping, I don’t suppose glitter monsters are commonplace?”

“Not in the Youknitted Kingdom they ain’t, ma’am.”

It would just have to do, so on Alice roved, diving into the waiting sea of partygoers with her guards, leaving behind a pair of half-melted plastic heels bubbling and hissing in the alley where she’d come. Ten thousand years of navigating political parties just like this one had taught her a great deal about the art of ducking, dodging, diving, and weaving around unwanted conversation. that no matter how diligent you were someone was always going to get the drop on you and drag you into at least one.

==========

“Goodness, I don’t remember any monsters being on the guest list.” The little man gasped.

“Well I never—” Alice was just about tired of all these comments and ready to snap back when one of the guardsmen she’d commandeered earlier spoke up to say something clever on her behalf. “Would watch your mouth if I was you, sir. That’s the Duchess of Gluesington you’re speaking too.” Traveled a long way to get here just for you to insult her, did she?”

“You’re lucky she’s so forgiving.” The other chimed in.

“Otherwise you might find yourself stuck to a wall somewhere.”

Flabbergasted beyond words the snooty little woolen man wandered away and the last of Alice’s anger dispersed like carbonated bubbles across the surface of her sticky pink flesh, then it was gone, she adjusted her skirts which were themselves made of a nice sturdy fabric that didn’t cling overmuch to her new body type. She was getting more and more used to this.

“Thank you for standing up for me gentlemen.”

“Think nothin’ of it, Miss Ansegisel.”

“You’re our boss now.”

“And I’ve wanted an excuse to threaten someone at one of these parties for a while now anyways.”

“That’s a very bad habit,” She chastised. “But I will forgive it for the time being. That said, I did not come here to mingle, I am here on a mission--”

“To spread your love to the whole Yarniverse.”

“To bind everyone together for eternity.”

“No.” She said sharply, decisively, and they seemed crestfallen at the finality of it. “I’m here at the request of a friend but he is—how do I say this in the politest way possible—very obtuse I’m afraid. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for. Nor am I familiar with your dimension. If you boys could spread out and begin scanning the crowd for anything out of place, then I would be most thankful.”

One raised his stubby doll arm.

“I found somethin’.”

“Is it me?”

“It’s you.”

“Something other than me.”

The other raised his arm.

“I also found something.”

“Is it also me?”

“No ma’am.”

“Well out with it then.”

“Would you consider a red panda on the roof of the palace to be strange?”

“I suppose it depends on where you are, Red Pandas are fairly common in some zoos, are they here?” Alice adjusted her glasses and recalling her time on Earth-T0R3 deduced that Cookieham Palace was a very unclever attempt at naming the life-sized recreation of Buckingham Palace which loomed over all of them. Sweeping past wafer walls and ice cream cone ballistae she spotted a very fuzzy little red man on the periphery of her vision peering down at them all from above, dressed in a manner almost as out of place as her own though tragically without the cozy comfort of a blanket to protect him from the cold breeze all around them.

“No ma’am, I do believe this is the first one I’ve ever seen in person.”

“Then I suppose that wouldn’t be a bad place to start…”

Neo Babylon

Despite of their best efforts, the Rats were unable to get the drop on the travelers.

The drug-addled vulture was the first to wake and the first to react, screeching at them in her horrible alien language that somehow only became more unbearable as the city’s barrier began to translate her screeching into something passably human, but it was 017 who demanded all of their attention. Although not much taller than a child she released a blinding white light that lit up the entire street as if it were day, and though the effect diminished the further one was from her, not a single soul in the retreating tide of flesh left that evening without spots blooming in the corner of their vision.

And run they did, all of their confidence evaporating like shadows in the daylight.

Some were fast, some were slow, but by the time 017 was railing against the warehouse door there was not a one left to tell her that these storage units were not only locked but well protected too. Nothing but the rattling chain as she pulled and the presence of a relatively new lock. Perhaps the large man in stone might be able to split it if he applied a bit of the herculean strength he must have but given the minimal presence of rust this close to the ocean it stood to reason that this place was not quite as abandoned as the howling wind and empty alleys seemed to imply.

Then there were the three.

“That’s fucked up,” The man snarled as he wrenched his way out of Hafadac’s grip with a visible limp. His disposition was not nearly so pleasant, losing the life he’d clearly left behind had embittered him, being beaten by a glorified flashlight before the first blow had landed only made things worse. If allowed to keep pulling away he’d half-fall and half-sit on the ground before the group with smoldering hatred in his eyes.

thunk

Not long after the largest of the Rats surrendered too, in spirit if not verbally. Dropping the piece of rebar stuck in concrete that he’d been preparing to use like a sledgehammer after one look at Gregor, fighting was hopeless, his black face littered with visible scars that only made the defeated stare towards their leader all the more profound. ‘Say something’ his eyes pleaded, less prepared to die than he’d first imagined.

“P-please don’t kill us.”

It was the girl who swallowed her pride first, hands in the air, face so smudged with dirt it had become a part of her complexion and knees shaking as she stepped to the fore. She’d seen Rats beaten to death just for showing their faces in other parts of Neo Babylon, but these were travelers, and perhaps on the off chance that they came from somewhere mercy was still a thing she pleaded again.

“We won’t do it again, we promise, so please don’t kill us.”

“Or at least get it over with,” The sour man spat. “Your little light show is bound to attract attention and I’d rather die quick than be turned into an example by syndicate scum.”

***

Somewhere on the distant moon forty-nine members of CNTRL ALT ELITE that had logged into the Mega Dungeon alongside Haia awoke to find themselves in space, standing upon the pock marked ridge of Luna’s bleeding crust with a distant blue marble staring at them in the background, oddly they’d no trouble breathing in space and their UI seemed largely absent in favor of a more…

Immersive experience.

It took a minute for them to wake up and chatter among themselves, discovering what powers they retained and which ones had been removed with the latest update to realize that they were not alone. For somewhere roughly approximate to the crater’s center there sat the makings of a lonely city formed entirely of crystal, barely visible if not for the stark contrast it cut with the landscape and which each gust of stellar wind it seemed to whistle for them to come closer.

@Shinny @Circ @THE ADORATION @odium