Drifting Pollen

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

To the woman surrounded by darkness, it seemed appropriate that her opponent should arrive in a glorious blaze of light. The Shroud eagerly drank up every photon that reached it, instantly relaying the information to Lyra and saving her the trouble of having to cover her eyes against the flash. As the gleam disappeared, she and her cloud kept on watching, waiting to see if the cause of that strange illumination would show itself.

It came out of the barn a moment later. Hard and black and plated, wearing the skin of an insect but moving like a man. That carapace had to be armor, then, laden with silver and small lights, weapons at the hip ready to spit iron arrows at the twitch of a finger. Strange devices, crafted by smiths hundreds or thousands of years more advanced than Lyra's own people, to adorn this man- who, for all she knew, could be some ticking, sparking creation of an engineer himself. She'd find out soon enough.

Reaching out with her left hand, she brushed her fingers gently through the tips of the wheat next to her, sensing them by feel rather than sight. They froze at her touch, dying in a split second as their stalks locked in place, cold and hard as polar ice.

The insect man spoke. Quiet, and still some distance away, but the Shroud caught it. A challenge, perhaps? She could meet that.

As Caius finished his last syllable, the Shroud exploded outwards, swelling to monstrous proportions with terrifying speed. It didn't move any closer to him, but rather spread upwards and to either side, replacing the golden fields before him with a lightless, gaping maw. Where it had been a room-sized lump, it now loomed fifty feet tall, a hundred feet from one end to the other, dwarfing the tiny man before it.

Or at least, that was how it looked from his side.

In reality, the Shroud had not grown, only changed its shape. The rough clump that Lyra crouched inside still existed, just a foot shorter than it had been: she'd moved one-seventh of its mass forwards and spread it into a layer only a sixth of an inch thick. A slightly curved screen between her and the enemy, a facade that made her cloud appear far greater than it really was. Its concentration remained the same, however. The individual particles clustered together and devoured light and sound as effectively as before, and the thin layer remained as completely, crushingly black as ever.

At the same time as her Shroud flared up, Lyra began moving rightward, treading especially lightly so as to minimize disturbances in the wheat and vibrations in the earth around her.

That, however, she could do practically by instinct. The center of her focus was on the frozen stalks of wheat, six of which she plucked from their places and ushered into the air, moving them up about twenty feet and slightly to the left behind the cover of the Shroud.

Once in position, they shot out from behind it, flying like arrows straight towards the armored insect-man and his oily power. She'd reshaped them slightly, drawing out water from within the stems to create vicious spikes at the ends, so the comparison was especially apt- though a common bowman would be hard-pressed to match the speed and striking power of even one of these projectiles, let alone six at once.

If and when they struck, they would do so almost simultaneously, and the Shroud's expanded form let Lyra watch the action from a huge range of angles all at once. When the moment came she'd observe carefully, while also keeping her eyes (or rather, her towering cloud of shadows) peeled for any kind of response.

The Colosseum Re-Opens

Chewing on his fiery fig, Julius Caesar watched the two combatants thoughtfully, his ghostly eyes never blinking even once. After all, to close one's eyes for but a moment would be to risk missing a key movement, perhaps the one that would bring an end to the fight! So far only a modicum of blood had been spilled, but that crimson streak was merely an omen of the carnage that would eventually come.

He swallowed, then idly commented on the proceedings, his voice booming out across the arena.

"Audentia meretur homo gloriam. Quod astuti facit hominem victoria."

With that, he settled down again, hardly caring whether the gladiators listened or not. The fight was theirs, and his part lay only in the enjoyment and contemplation of the duel.

Crash Course! - A Boku no Hero Academia RP

Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, Shuko found herself regretting them. Even if Boro had heard, she couldn't know for sure how he might react, and if things went badly the whole group would end up blaming her for it. It would've been easier to just stay in the background and let events run their natural course. At least that way, whatever happened wouldn't have been her fault.

Then she heard Boro speak her name.

Frightened, she looked up, only to see him walking away, disappearing amidst the thick clouds of smoke that faded away soon after. What? It... was over? He'd left them be, releasing everyone from the prison formed by his Quirk without kicking any of them out.

Perhaps it was just luck, but her gamble had paid off.

Before she got a chance collect herself, Tommy had his arms around her again. His compliment made her smile, along with the sudden realization that she'd actually been right and that she might have just saved everyone from being booted off the program. Part of her felt like pumping her fists in the air and shouting out with relief, but she kept herself restrained, not wanting to look smug about the whole affair.

"Thanks! To be honest, I wasn't quite sure if..." She trailed off, seeing that he'd moved on already. A free spirit, that one. People were tricky, impossible to fully understand though raw calculation, but at least now she'd started to get a sense of how this strange group worked, even if a few individuals remained a mystery to her.

Lagging behind the more adventurous students, she managed to get a quick look past them to the room ahead, where Tumble herself awaited. Her eyes widened, and she blushed a little at the sight.

Whatever she'd been expecting, this wasn't it. There really was no way to put it politely: the so-called hero looked like the kind of woman who'd hang around in dive bars and nightclubs, letting people pick her up and have their way with her. The messy hair and unkempt clothing Shuko could understand and sympathize with, but for their supposed mentor to be completely asleep, not making any effort to present herself well for them, with her blouse in a state like that in front of a group full of teenage boys? What the hell had Tumble been thinking?

The only thing that kept Shuko from freezing up in sheer mortification was the echo of Boro's parting words. Believe in Tumble. This could be a test, or a prank, a plan meant to keep the hero candidates on their toes and gauge their reactions. She couldn't back out just yet, not until she was sure.

Nor could she stand by and let the boys pile onto a sleeping woman like that.

"Wait!" She reached out with both arms, trying to grab Tommy before he went careening off towards the slumbering hero, but he'd already gotten a head start and she only ended up stumbling forwards, painfully banging one hip on the table's edge. "Aaaaah-!" It wasn't serious, but it made her lean over and wince, cutting short any further attempts at dealing with the rowdy boys. Not that she could have done much anyways. Helpless, she could only glance imploringly at the other girls, hoping one of them would be able to intervene before Tumble woke up and realized what was going on.

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

For three days, she walked. Three days before she either died or killed again. Given what awaited her, Lyra had felt a need to relax a little, to make her journey on foot and spend some time at large in this new landscape.

Soil shifted under each step, grinding between her naked toes as she pushed her way through the endless fields, moving slowly and carefully enough that the long yellow stalks were barely disturbed by her passage. Gentle winds blew down around her from time to time, and the wheat swayed in response, back and forth, with a kind of quiet harmony. She saw crickets, beetles, ants, but nothing so large as to trouble her. It was a strange kind of wilderness: flat, unassuming, serene.

The middle of nowhere. Nothing to do, nothing exceptional to attract anyone from abroad, yet at the same time that lack of distraction held its own allure. She strode across the land, drinking in the golden seas with her eyes and gently caressing the tips of passing stalks, her Shroud dancing around her like a tiny black snake. Amidst it all, she let her worries slip away, and lost herself in meditation.

Night fell, and she sprawled out on her back, squashing a small rectangle of wheat that scratched against her skin in protest. Nary a cloud had crossed the sky during the day, and once the myriad hues of the setting sun faded away past the horizon, the stars gleamed crisp and clear, tiny eyes watching from the heavens. Beneath their gaze, Lyra drifted away into stillness, dead as a stone embedded in the great wide plain.

On the second day, she pulled out some yarn from her light little pouch and wove herself a dress, with threads of gold and green. Vertical patterns, like the armies of swaying wheat, arranged such that each one flowed into the next, a living thing rather than a harshly divided mandala. Over the course of a morning it took shape: two wide strips coming down from her shoulders and crossing over her chest, stitched into a loose horizontal wrapping around her waist and hips, which continued down to a ragged end a few inches above her knees. Comfortable, as if the land had reached up and embraced her in its earthy arms. She stood, cast aside her former garment, and tied back her soft brown hair in a thin tail, then carried on her way, always staring out at her surroundings with the innocence and wonder of a child.

Then, sometime in the afternoon of the third day, she came to a sudden stop.

It would be close, now. No more time for experience and contemplation, not when the peace of this land was so soon to be shattered. She gripped her spear, and called the Shroud to her. It came eagerly, flooding outwards from its previous form and swallowing Lyra and her surroundings in the blink of an eye, plunging them into a cold, smooth darkness. Her eyes and ears shut off, and she let the cloud take over her senses, the world opening up around her. It had been surreal, the first few times, seeing up and down and left and right and every other side all at once through what seemed like a thousand eyes, but really it was not so different- just more, forcing her to push her mind a little harder to keep up. Time to be sharp, now.

From there on, she crept forwards with a dreadful purpose, the Shroud flowing across the field before her like a wave. For now it held a rough, rounded shape, seven feet tall and seven feet wide and ten feet deep, more or less. Not merely dark, but sucking up all the light that touched it, like a black hole come to life.

It drew itself to a halt near an earthen road, resting in place, its outer edges slowly churning and shifting. Lyra waited within, crouching low and holding her spear diagonally in her right hand so that no part of it protruded beyond her Shroud. She breathed in, her heart pumping in a steady beat, but the sounds were masked by the black cloud, and its borders gave no clue as to what might be occurring within. No sign of her presence on the electromagnetic spectrum, nor in any vibrations of the air. Other clues, Lyra could erase personally, through stillness, focus, and careful control of her own thoughts.

On the far side of the road, near a dilapidated farmhouse, something else had come. Another oddity, another wanderer far from home, and now one whose life lay on the balance opposite hers.

This journey, at last, had reached its hard and bitter end.

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

Lyra

Name: Lyra Gwynn
Age: Around 50 years
Height: 5'7''
Weight: 125 lbs
Race: Undead, formerly human

Appearance:
Lyra looks much younger than she actually is: she was twenty-two years old when she died, and her body has stayed that way ever since she came back. She has a willowy build, with brown hair tied back in a ponytail, light brown eyes, and gentle, almost childlike features.

For clothing, she tends to favor primitive dresses, woven with intricate patterns in colors that match the environment. She makes these herself, and each one is meant to reflect the nature of the lands she finds herself in. They offer virtually nothing in the way of physical protection, but they're short and loose enough for her to move freely in them.

She also wears a thin belt, with a dagger at her left hip and a small pouch at her right, and carries a long white spear.

Weapons or items:

- Dragon spine: A two-handed thrusting spear, crafted with great effort from the bone of a beast Lyra slew long ago. It's around seven feet long, and made entirely of the same material, with no visible seams or cracks. Light, sharp, and astoundingly durable.

- Dragon tooth: A short white dagger, made from the fang of a beast Lyra slew long ago. Mainly used for a specific purpose (see Abilities), but also works pretty well for shanking people in a pinch. As sharp and tough as the spear.

- Gas bombs: Six egg-shaped stones, kept in a pouch on her belt. When she touches one, it will begin to rapidly deteriorate, and will explode after two seconds, releasing a cloud of thick green gas, a unique substance synthesized from the decomposing corpses of dragons. This gas is an incredibly potent corrosive substance capable of eating through solid matter with frightening speed. Flesh, metal, kevlar, and even artificially synthesized or magically strengthened substances are vulnerable. However, it doesn't attack dragon bone, nor purely supernatural 'solids' (such as force fields or energy barriers). Other than the aforementioned properties, it behaves much like any vapor, and can be stopped or dispersed by forces or barriers it doesn't eat through.

Abilities:

- Physical abilities and training: Even before dying, Lyra had something of a natural talent for combat. Her speed is well above peak human levels, and she has the reaction times to match it. Years of experience have helped her learn how to maintain excellent control and balance while moving extremely fast, as well as how to apply her swiftness to close-quarters combat and traversal of difficult terrain. Her strength and endurance aren't amazing, but she hasn't slacked off on them and isn't nearly as weak or frail as she might appear.

Her true specialty, however, is stealth and deception: she's quick, quiet, and light of foot, and able to mask her presence and intent well enough to launch effective surprise attacks on even seasoned warriors and assassins.

- Gale runner: Lyra was born with some psychic potential, and can use it to hinder mental attacks somewhat, but she never learned to attack the minds of others or create magical constructs. Instead, she attuned her instincts to connect with something far simpler but still hugely powerful: the air. Through a specialized form of telekinesis, she can usher it into motion, and direct its path in gusts both slow and fast, with the latter able to reach speeds beyond anything found in nature. She can't produce 'constructs' such as blades of wind, nor control air on a delicate enough level to pull it out of someone's lungs. On the other hand, she can generate gusts at range and even ride on flows of air like a kite, using the wind's speed to move herself around when her own maneuverability proves insufficient.

- Undead body: Since Lyra's retrun from the grave, she's found that she doesn't really function quite like she used to. Due to her particular state of undeath, she remains animate even though most of her biological functions have stopped: she moves, thinks, and senses her environment, but doesn't breathe, eat, or maintain a set body temperature. It's possible for her body to perform these functions, but it takes a voluntary effort on Lyra's part to do so. Her nervous and circulatory systems seem to have shut down entirely, and she's shown no signs of aging as time goes by. Her brain and muscles still work, but everything else is bypassed by the inscrutable force that holds her in her current state.

- The Shroud: Lyra is bound to a floating mass of dark particles, a cloud of mysterious smoke that moves with her wherever she goes. In more casual settings it will lie hidden in her shadow, compressed and passive, but in combat she deploys it in full force, and it can grow large enough to fill a small house. The Shroud seems to be related to her state of undeath, and Lyra can manipulate the size and shape of the cloud as if it were part of her body, which combined with her wind summoning gives her excellent control over its form. However, it can't spread out beyond a certain minimum density, which restricts its reach to two thousand cubic feet at most.

Other than being movable, the Shroud possesses three dangerous abilities. The first is that it absorbs and stores light and sound, including frequencies beyond those visible and audible to humans, such as ultrasound or radio waves. It's perfectly black, and masks any noises passing through it. Light and sound it absorbs can be gathered and later redeployed offensively, as wide bursts or tightly concentrated beams.

The second ability is that it not only responds to Lyra's thoughts and impulses, it relays sensory information as well. While she's inside it, it can directly plant in her mind the patterns of light and sound coming into contact with its outer edges, allowing her to see and hear what's going on outside. It also keeps her aware of its own contours, allowing her to effectively 'feel' anything within the cloud. The Shroud differentiates between her own thoughts and those born of other powers, obeying only those that are truly hers, and she can use it to detect foreign incursions into her mind.

The third ability is that the Shroud will resist any and all movement within itself not initiated by Lyra or her abilities. Its minuscule particles are made of a strange material from a far-flung universe devoid of life, and they bend physics around them slightly, slowing down other matter and energy passing through areas where the particles are gathered. This effect works more powerfully against faster movements: walking through the Shroud is merely uncomfortable, running through it is like pushing against a wall of molasses, and bullets or anything similarly fast will face opposition strong enough to slow them to a crawl. The more spread-out the Shroud is, however, the less powerful the slowing effect becomes. At five hundred cubic feet or below, the slowing effect is as described above. However, it decreases proportionally with spread, so that at two thousand cubic feet the effect is only one-fourth as powerful. As a result, when spread too thinly it will self-concentrate around sources of movement where necessary, to better resist them. Although Lyra, her weapons, and the matter/energy she controls with her powers are immune to this effect, she can't control the effect itself.

- Cryokinesis: Lyra can freeze liquid or gaseous water, and manipulate ice and snow. On a basic level this functions similarly to her power over wind, so she must use what is present in her environment rather than creating it herself. She has fairly precise control over ice, and can both levitate and reshape it, but this comes at a cost: this ability doesn't extend over a wide area, but instead gradually spreads, like a virus. Her cryokinesis must be initiated within a range of about two feet from her. Once she's seized control of a fragment of ice, she can maintain this control outside of said initial range, and spread control to water and ice near the fragments she already commands. In short, she usually starts with small amounts, but can chain her cryokinesis to build up larger effects.

The actual freezing process is of course exceedingly fast. Solutions pose some additional problems: the more solute is dissolved in water, the closer her power needs to be to freeze it. Bodily fluids are complex enough that her ice needs to make direct contact before she can freeze them. Lyra's power can also be used to keep ice packed together, which can vastly increase its effective hardness- but the more ice she applies this to, the lower the overall effect. Similarly, the speed at which she can make ice move decreases as the amount of ice she's controlling increases, though in both cases the inverse is also true. Lyra may release ice from her control if she so chooses.

- Bone dragon: Once per fight, if Lyra brings her dragon-tooth dagger into direct contact with her own bone, she may transform herself into a massive skeletal dragon. This form lasts about a minute. Her own bones grow explosively outwards, becoming durable dragon bone and forming a thick shell around Lyra's human body while extending around it to form the monster, with the shell located within the ribcage. In addition to being fucking awesome, this form grants her tremendously increased strength and durability, as well as the ability to emit the green gas seen in her gas bombs from her jaws and nostrils in huge quantities. Although it has no skin, muscle or nervous system, this form can move and fly as if it did. After the time runs out or the shell is somehow broken, the bone dragon will shatter into thousands of pieces, releasing Lyra onto the field.

Backstory

Lyra's first memories are of hard times, of dust and dirt and exile. Some years before her birth, her people were forced out of their ancestral homelands, whole cities laid to waste when an ancient and powerful dragon decided to make their mountain home its territory. Faced with the wrath of a monster none could challenge, the indigenous population was left with little choice but to flee. Even as they left their lands behind, however, they vowed to one day take them back.

From a young age, Lyra and her fellow children were trained in the arts of war and magic. Their elders told them stories of their homeland, instilling within them a burning will to return to the life of old. Year by year, they practiced relentlessly, eventually leaving their parents to travel the world and seek new skills and powers that might help them defeat their mighty enemy.

Lyra had never been particularly talented with conventional magic, so she sought out an order of psychics, and learned to channel the wind through more direct and instinctual means. She wasn't satisfied with this, however, and strayed further still, scouring her homeworld for something powerful enough to finish her enemy for good. She traveled further than any other, through burning deserts and towering mountain ranges, to the farthest reaches of the continent. She saw landscapes that dwarved anything she'd ever dreamed of, came to know of peoples and creatures whose vibrant diversity fascinated her, and heard enough tales and histories to fill a thousand books. As a girl she'd been told to yearn for her stolen homeland, but as a young woman she found her true home: on the frontiers, exploring, ever forging new paths.
Still, she couldn't keep traveling forever. There remained her duty, one she had to see through for once and for all, before she could truly be free.

So she sought out a rumor, a ghost. Whispers of a traveller from another universe, a mad genius wielding unimaginable power. She walked out across a frozen sea, to the faraway point where she'd heard this being sometimes passed through her world.

To this day, Lyra has never told anyone what she found there. What is known is that she came back with the Shroud.

There was no more need for training or exploration. She traveled straight back to her homeland, and rather than wait for her comrades to gather their forces, walked straight into the dragon's domain and challenged it alone.

It was barely even a fight. The beast blew through her defenses and snapped her up with its massive jaws, swallowing her in a single gulp.

As she'd intended.

Lyra had made a contract of sorts, a deal. She'd give up her mortal life, and receive in exchange a rebirth, a one-time resurrection via a permanent joining with the Shroud. For the other party, she was a guinea pig of sorts, a test of whether the otherworldly cloud really worked as predicted.

What Lyra got out of it was a way to kill her dragon.

No human could survive in the corrosive, poisonous interior of the dragon's stomach. She died in an instant- then woke up and tore the beast apart from the inside.

As soon as the news reached her people, they rejoiced. Scattered families flooded back into the ancestral homeland, with the many would-be dragonslayers acting as a powerful deterrent against any foreign powers trying to claim the now dragon-free territory for themselves. Lyra herself was honored and celebrated, with many suggesting that she should be made queen of this land now reclaimed.

She politely refused. In that fateful meeting out across the sea of ice, Lyra had learned that there was far more to the cosmos than one lonely planet and one simple quest. Something in her craved more. There were endless foreign lands waiting to be explored, monsters far worse than dragons that needed to be killed, impossible roads she yearned to journey down. So she carved new weapons from the beast she'd slain, and set off on her own once more.

Since then, she's left her world behind, traveling to new realms and honing her skills and powers along the way. There's no knowing where her path will take her, but as of yet she'd shown no signs of wanting to stop.

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

8:00 to 12:00 PT on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
Will try to post on other days too, but can only guarantee the above.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Fuck yeah, let's hunt some monsters!

The Colosseum Re-Opens

The demonic portal might have closed, but the supernatural madness was far from over. From where the emperor sat, there came a flash of light, and suddenly smoke billowed out from the throne, spreading across the sky like a thundercloud. The crackling of flame could be heard as a towering figure rose up beside the emperor, and stepped forwards, glaring down at the arena with a gaze that had cowed armies.

The audience's mouths collectively fell open as they beheld the spectral form of Julius Caesar, wreathed in flame. Hades had claimed him long ago, but now he had arisen once again, to personally oversee what was sure to be the greatest match in Roman history.

Arms spread wide, he called down to the fighters below. "Ego sum impatiens. Pugna incipere!"

With one hand he pulled out a flaming fig and took a bite out of it, sitting back on a seat that formed out of smoke behind him. With such an austere figure watching, the gladiators would no doubt give this their best!

Crash Course! - A Boku no Hero Academia RP

After that first wild ride of a greeting, Shuko really shouldn't have been surprised when Tommy pulled her into a hug. The boy's personality shone out like a beacon, as if his small body just couldn't contain so much warmth and energy at once, the excess spilling over and flooding into the world through his movements and speech. A sudden embrace was only natural, for him.

On the other hand- how long had it been, since anyone outside of her family had shown her affection like that? How long had it been since she'd accepted it?

Her arms gingerly closed around him, for just a moment, and she made an effort to give him a small smile as they separated. "I don't mind. Anyone would be thrown off balance by a day like this." Her hand fell smoothly into his, and she kept pace behind him, barely needing to be pulled. It felt easier, letting him take the lead.

When he released her, Shuko's hand fell straight back to her side.

The plant girl- Akemi -was utterly adorable, and Shuko quietly imagined herself stepping forwards and simply burying herself in those soft vines, just as Tommy had done. She stood back, however, and let him handle the introductions, her only contribution a small wave as he indicated her to Akemi. It was sweet, watching the excited boy ramble on with effervescent optimism, setting aside the manners and rules of adults for a simple, innocent approach.

Almost too innocent.

Who really behaved that way, blurting out everything in their head to complete strangers? An easy way to overwhelm people, to put them off balance or off guard. An act, carefully tailored to induce an impression of harmlessness and endear oneself to a mark, setting up future opportunities to take advantage of-

Stop. He was a kid. Younger than her, even.

She broke out of her thoughts just in time to catch him looking over at his bags, and deftly stepped between him and them. "Don't worry, I'll get those for you." Giving him no time to launch into another monologue, she walked briskly but quietly towards his bags, carefully picking them up once she got there.

For a short while, this took her away from the center of attention, away from where the students were gathering as Boro asked for volunteers. An excuse, in a way, to keep her from stepping up. She let the babble of the other conversations fade into the background, and focused on the smoke still hanging around them. What was it made of, how did it work? She watched it, idly playing with numbers as they came up, while she retrieved Tommy's bags and moved to return them to him, in no particular hurry.

By the time she'd done so, the others were already crowding around Boro, confronting him with voices loud and small. Shuko stayed silent, watching with wide eyes and a growing sense of dread. It was only when the devil guy had started ranting about sins that she slipped in among them and spoke, her voice quiet and wavering.

"Please, let's- let's not fight." She was trembling just a little, not looking anyone directly in the eye. "We came here to learn to be better, didn't we? Mr. Boro, I'm sorry." Here she glanced at him, a slight gleam at the edges of her eyes, and cast her vote.

"None of us deserve to be here."

Her eyes dropped to the ground, as if in shame. "None of us would be, if not for Tumble."

Inwardly, she wondered if anyone had even heard her.

ATHLETIC AESTHETICS (Doc Vs. Negatomsk)

@RiDaku

Please don't butt into the argument. As Dias mentioned up above, it's best if things are kept between the two fighters until the matter is resolved or a judge opinion is needed.

As that one dude in the Godzilla movie said, "Let them fight."