Drifting Pollen

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This man certainly didn't waste any time in getting to the point. Almost as soon as Lyra arrived, the air before her opponent lit up with a brilliant flash, a searing bolt streaking across the space between them in a fraction of an instant to strike straight into the smoky depths of the Shroud.

Within, Lyra stood her ground. She recognized lightning, and did not fear it.

If the man in white had hoped to somehow blast apart the cloud with his electricity, he'd be sorely disappointed, for the Shroud reacted in precisely the opposite manner. Where it had been uniformly distributed in a roughly even cloud, the two feet up front now shrank a little, gently compressing as the tiny particles swarmed towards the impact of the electrical strike. Curling up, coming together, trying to wrap the bright tip of the thunderbolt in an embrace as black as midnight.

The energy output of a lightning bolt could be roughly sorted into four distinct parts. Two of these, the blinding flash and the resounding boom of thunder, would be absorbed the instant they passed into the Shroud, each wavelength gathered and stored by thousands of dark particles. Where other surfaces might have been briefly illuminated by the sudden radiance, this cloud remained completely black, not reflecting so much as a single photon.

The third threat came from heat. Heat enough to melt or even vaporize all it touched, to cause a rapid expansion of air and blow away anything not simply destroyed by the overwhelming increase in temperature. The Shroud couldn't simply devour this energy as it had the light and sound. It could, however, oppose.

When Lyra surrounded herself with the Shroud on her final approach to the pyramid, the relief she'd felt hadn't been entirely due to it blocking out the sun's light. The space within the quiet cloud was cold. Had she been fully alive, Lyra would have found herself shivering just from standing inside it. The Shroud resisted movement, so long as it wasn't initiated by Lyra, and on a basic level temperature was merely the random movement of infinitesimal particles, kinetic energy on a smaller scale. The faster something moved, the more the Shroud resisted it, and thus the hotter something burned, the more the Shroud cooled it. All that searing power unleashed by the thunderbolt would be stifled as soon as it entered the cloud, resisted and suppressed, crushed down to nothing more than a gentle warmth.

The electricity, the frenzied movement of charge responsible for that crackling bolt's energy, would meet a similar fate. The swifter the electrons, the more they'd be slowed. From an electrical perspective, the Shroud's constant opposition could be assigned a simple name.

Resistance.

For all its lethality, current was a cowardly thing. It flowed through the paths of least resistance, those it could pass through most easily, and against the Shroud it would break like a stream crashing into a wall, the powerful river of charge scattering and dispersing before a space that hindered its movement so greatly. If the man in white could corral and push the charges at range, he might be able to force some into the black cloud, but within they'd only achieve the merest fraction of their original speed, hardly enough to do any harm.

As quickly as the lightning bolt had come, it was gone. All the crackling power of a storm, reduced to little more than a whimper.

If that weren't intimidating enough, what came next might give Lyra's opponent a sense of what he was truly up against. Where the front side of the Shroud had shrunk inwards a little to swallow the thunderbolt, it would expand immediately afterwards, appearing to swell to four times its previous size, as if all the power of the attack had only made it larger and stronger than before.

In reality, its volume remained exactly the same. Lyra had simply shifted some of her Shroud forwards to form a thin wall facing her opponent, fourteen feet high and twenty feet wide, slightly curved at the edges to conceal its deceptive nature. The original shape of the Shroud remained intact behind it, half a foot shorter than before after shunting some of its mass forwards to form the facade.

She'd used a similar tactic against her previous enemy, though for slightly different reasons. As before, the thin wall remained dense enough to absorb all the light passing through it, visually indistinguishable from a full cloud unless one were to move far enough around to glimpse past its edge.

Lyra herself stepped swiftly to the right, the bulk of her cloud moving with her. She held the thin layer at the front in place, however, masking the small maneuver. Tiny ice crystals hovered around her, frozen by her power but not yet needed for her assault.

Her first counterattack had already been released.

She hadn't cut deep enough into her arm to trigger a transformation, but her dagger had made a large wound nevertheless, one that dripped cool fluid as she twisted the weapon to widen it. The dry air in this tomb lacked much water for her to use, but her body still held blood aplenty. A the thin layer at the front of her Shroud swept outwards, she'd freeze some into a sharp crimson spike and let it rest for an instant in the palm of her hand before it shot away, directed by her mind rather than any movement of her arm.

Though not quite so fast as the lightning strike, it still made for a quick and lethal projectile, little more than a red streak to a common human eye. The man in white, likely more skilled than most, might have been able to see it coming, but Lyra wouldn't give him the chance. Rather than shoot it straight at him, she brought it out of the Shroud right where he couldn't directly observe it- chunks of debris from a fallen pillar remained between them, and now she used one as cover for her projectile's advance, concealing its approach over more than half the distance between them.

By the time Lyra's little scarlet spear even entered the man in white's field of view, it would already be practically touching the outer layer of his defenses. She could tell he'd been doing something to the area around himself, but he'd have virtually no time to respond to the frozen missile before it entered that zone. If his protections, whatever they might be, required any kind of conscious input to function, he'd be hard-pressed to provide it before the icy point had penetrated deep into the fields of his power.

If not, well, she'd still be able to glean something from what happened, and adjust as necessary. Some battles took longer than others, but Lyra had yet to find a nut she couldn't crack.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

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] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

With one step of her journey behind her, one frozen corpse left to lie amidst an unknown farmer's abandoned fields, Lyra walked her way to the warm wastes, wearing a short and loose dress as rough as the sands, as bright as the sun.

She only had to take one look at the new landscape to know that her choice of attire had been correct. Gold was the color of this place. The gold of the bright sun beating down with all its fierce and oppressive pride, the gold of the parched earth drinking up the endless rays and burning her bare feet as she walked upon it, the gold of lost glories buried beneath sand and stone, now marked only by the towering stone ruins that still protruded here and there, great petrified beasts rearing their carved heads and sheer slopes forming vast wide arrows that pricked the sky itself. What she might have given, to see these empires in all their splendor!

All she found, however, were sand and rubble and solitude.

These, too, had a beauty of sorts. The skeletons of kingdoms, merging once more with the barren lands from which they had sprouted. The earthen bones cast long shadows beneath the sun, which turned about as the day slowly crawled by, tracing the same paths they had for thousands of years and would for thousands of years more before wind and time wore the last ruins down to nothing. Occasionally, Lyra would glimpse a snake basking in the light of day, or see the wide wings of some great predatory bird silhouetted up above. If one took the time to observe, these regions were never so dead or empty as they first appeared.

Nevertheless, she felt a sense of relief when she finally neared her destination and buried herself within the Shroud's cold embrace. The crushing heat had left her skin slick with sweat, and by this point she'd have rather faced the thread of dragonfire than spend another hour exposed beneath that harshest of skies.

She approached the mountainous edifice with a cloud of darkness surrounding her in full, seven feet high and seven feet deep and ten feet wide. Not the slightest ray of sunlight made it past the Shroud's surface, and heat soon died within it, leaving Lyra free to take the last steps of her journey with a certain refreshed tranquility. She stood slightly to the left of center within her eldritch aura, spear held in the crook of her right arm while her left hand rested on the hilt of a short dagger at her hip.

If she'd estimated the time as well as she'd hoped, she wouldn't be far behind the other one. The being who would, within the hour, become either her victim or her murderer. Another half-remembered body, or the last face she ever saw.

The man waiting within the pyramid would see the light from the entrance quite suddenly black out, as a smoky cloud the color of emptiness surged forwards into the tomb, rapidly ascending one slope before coming to a sudden halt some ninety feet away from him, rippling and churning like a living thing. The fallen chunks of a mighty pillar between them would obscure his view somewhat, yet the Shroud was large enough that at least some part of it would be visible.

Lyra had come running in, but the Shroud drank up the sound of her every footstep in an instant, absorbing just as easily the faint noise of her breathing, slowing now as she halted in her tracks. Her eyes did not see the man in white, but the light reflecting of his bright clothing struck the Shroud from several angles, letting her glimpse her new enemy. Handsome, lean, dressed as if he were attending a formal function rather than a duel. Armed, of course, and surrounded by buzzing power, but she couldn't help but smile a little at his dandy appearance, so at odds with the nature of their meeting.

A shame, perhaps, that he might never lay eyes on her.

Even if her mind allowed itself to drift just a little, her body already moved, doing what it would need to do to escape this place alive. Her right hand dipped into the pouch at her side, even as her left drew her dagger and slit open her right forearm lengthwise, careful not to cut to the bone. The man in white would likely strike first, but she'd have her reply ready once he did.

As for Mazono, he'd be left to make what he would of the ghostly black mass before him. An electrical current was there, but ever so faint- Lyra's nervous system lay dead and silent within her, not one signal traveling down its branching lengths outside of the rapid activity in her skull. She moved, and thought, but a physiologist would have hesitated to call her 'alive'. The electric man would have relatively little to extrapolate from, when it came to the question of what threat lurked within the lightless borders of the Shroud.

Two unknowns, with but one fate to share between them. This would be a fierce moment indeed.

[TZDL2017] Drifting Pollen vs Decoy - Quarterfinals

This week:

8:00 PM to midnight PT on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
May also be able to post on Wednesday evening, depending on how things go.

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

As one might expect from a warrior daring to fight for his life in a duel such as this, Caius was strong. He'd need more than raw force and intelligence against Lyra, however. As he'd soon come to discover, she could be a thorn in the side of even the mightiest beings.

A bullet detonated mid-flight, one projectile becoming a volley of buckshot to pepper a wide area. Good thing, then, that Lyra had thought to make the hole in her Shroud-wall large, big enough for the distortion to be visible even across the wide edges of its stretched-out shape. She'd left far more space than she'd needed for the bullet to pass through, and each individual shard of the shot would retain its forward velocity after the explosion, meaning they could only spread so far from their original trajectory before passing through their target. One bullet or ten, she'd made the gap big enough for it not to matter.

If one or two of them did somehow travel far enough to clear the edge of the gap and hit the Shroud proper, or if Caius managed to pull some other trick out of them in the tiny interval before they flew by- well, they'd still miss, because Lyra was being meticulous. Making the hole had shifted the edges of the Shroud-wall itself, a deliberately inefficient movement that involved adjusting the entire layer slightly. However, the fact that she'd even twisted part of her cloud into such a disproportionate shape in the first place demonstrated her fine control over it. If the hole wasn't quite large enough, she'd simply fold its edges back, widening it further as necessary before snapping it closed as planned. Less time to do so, to be sure, but she'd be moving far less mass than she had in creating the original opening.

To Caius, it would barely look any different than it might have if he'd just fired off the bullet and forgotten it. A hole in the Shroud, nothing behind it, there one moment and gone the next without so much as grazing what had passed through. Forethought to counter forethought, contingencies to counter contingencies. She had more, if he tested her further.

As he'd be finding out that very moment, in his own little center of power.

For one thing, he'd been too slow to respond. His defense- strange fields reminiscent of the most primitive forms of life -came only after she'd nudged her traveling stalks inward, and she'd only had to do so to keep them from flying away. They'd already been moving around Caius as a result of his own defense, and she'd unleashed her power from them as soon as they'd first entered his field. By the time her opponent had even reacted, she had a hold in his domain, all the water within her initial reach frozen and that same reach constantly spreading.

When a response did come, Lyra smiled a little, finding that she liked it in a way. An elegant use of power, both interesting and delightfully ironic.

His energy behaved like a predatory cell. Hers behaved like a virus.

Isolating the sources of infection made for a solid idea in principle, but with this method Caius would find it as frustrating as trying to snatch a swarm of wasps out of the air with his bare hands. Every crystal she'd infected could be maneuvered, controlled, and as bulky fields moved to enclose them they'd flow out and around, moving with or even fighting against the surrounding vector field to escape the oncoming prisons. Many would be captured, and yet even one loose fragment of ice could simply propagate anew, forming another cloud to be dealt with.

Therein lay the other problem for Caius. The infection with the stalks hadn't been a one-off trick, other than the fact she'd framed them as a physical attack. Her power over ice simply functioned that way: that which she froze she could control, and that which she controlled could be used to freeze. Lyra's range was quite short- two feet - but she could project that range from any piece of ice she controlled. Thus, when she froze indiscriminately, as she did now, her effective range could expand and expand and expand with the growing spread of ice, and Caius's psychic bubbles would be forced to do the same to keep up- which they couldn't for long without encompassing the man's own defense and letting her little pieces of ice where she wanted them regardless. Anything he vaporized, she could freeze again just as quickly, so long as she still had crystals nearby.

Given how slow his reaction had been and how ineffective his defense, she'd have more than enough around to work with.

She'd started her assault with a swift volley of six arrow-like stalks. A good number, but not all of those she'd first frozen behind the Shroud had been used. Even as Caius tried and failed to counter her growing clouds, she'd pluck out a second wave and send them flying off towards him, not bothering to adorn them with spiked points this time. Nor did she make any pretense that these were mere projectiles: their paths curved as they flew, so that each one would move in on Caius from a different angle, maximizing the spread of her power and reinforcing any areas where his encasements- improbable as it seemed -might have made a little progress. One would come in from directly above him, simply to test Lyra's curiosity as to how his clockwise vector field would affect something approaching perpendicular to the clock.

In a sense, he'd let Lyra into his house, and she wasn't leaving any time soon. If he chose to fire again amidst the mayhem he'd find a swarm of crystals shifting, intercepting his bullet and smashing themselves against it, deflecting its course towards the ground. What happened to her individual ice crystals mattered little to Lyra, she simply needed to spread her power around him, all over him, until that black armor was coated with frost.

Given that he'd barely slowed her down so far, he'd have very little time left to stop her.

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

The armored figure darted to one side, stepping in time with Lyra. Not the most elegant of dance partners, but obviously an attentive one, given that he'd followed the shifting of the Shroud even while it expanded. She took note of that. Added another point to the picture of him in her mind, a wispy outline that might one day grow to be as vast and beautiful as the golden landscape around them.

Only it never would. She'd never know this man. Today might be the last day anyone saw him alive.

Six sharp stings shot straight towards the dark knight and his guns, six sharp stings slung sideways as soon as they slipped in close. Their hungry spikes would never meet flesh, nor even armor, thanks to a deft deflection on the part of a wary target. Good thing, then, that those pretty points had been little more than an attempt at theatrics on Lyra's part. Easy to see a spear and assume a simple assault, when in fact their true purpose was somewhat more insidious.

Those stalks had never been an attack.

They were an infection vector.

If Caius had been sharp enough to detect the chill at the edges of the Shroud, he'd likely notice as the temperature near him shot down, or catch the slight distortion in light from the thousands of minuscule ice crystals forming in the air.

Physically, Lyra's frozen arrows had been little more than solidified water and some residual organic matter. However, like the nodes on Caius's own armor, they carried power within them. A quiet passenger, it had ridden along, reached its destination, and then jumped from there into the surrounding water vapor. And jumped. And jumped and jumped and jumped, every scrap of humidity in the air crystallizing into a tiny frozen shard. Neither liquid nor vapor would escape her: she seized all that came in range, wrapping it in the cold embrace of her mind.

The individual crystals could still be shifted by Caius's vector field, whirling around him in a growing blizzard, but the infection continued unimpeded: entering from six places at once, it moved outwards from its origins, not only bearing down on Caius but also seeking to flank him, surround him.

Worse, his supposed defense had only worked in Lyra's favor. She'd spread power from her stalks, but had not relinquished them, and as his field carried her weapons around in an arc she nudged them inwards, so that they'd orbit around him rather than fly off under their own momentum. If he'd gone with a conventional shield, the sudden freezing phenomenon would have spread only from the area the stalks had struck, but now he'd be dealing with an incoming tide of cold from his entire left flank and behind him as well, with the six projectiles moving fast to complete the circle. If the problem wasn't dealt with quickly, he'd soon find himself blanketed in crystals from all sides.

Under such circumstances it would take a will of iron to carry on with an attack, but perhaps he'd try and shoot regardless. Quick on the draw he as might have been, Lyra was just as quick in her reaction, which came almost by reflex. If an armored finger did squeeze a trigger, the large thin layer that made up the front of her Shroud would bulge outwards slightly, its top and sides spreading as a large gap appeared in Caius's line of fire, a hole in the dark wall for the bullet to speed through unimpeded. Once the shot had passed by, the Shroud would snap closed, returning to its previous shape.

Interesting, that he'd followed the Shroud's center but hadn't aimed there. Another mote to remember him by, locked away in Lyra's thoughts.

She could only hope he'd do the same for her.

[TZDL2017] Darth vs Drifting Pollen - Preliminaries

This week:

8:00 to 12:00 PT on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Will also try to be on during the same times on Monday and Wednesday, but cannot guarantee.

[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.