druidquest

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Máire’s boots kicked up dust as she and the dragon woman danced around each other, her blades slicing through the air past the masked figure in repetition. Close, closer but still not close enough. This woman wasn’t just skilled, she was experienced - but still ever on the defensive, her initial aggression seeming to fall away now that she had to split her focus between two opponents.

No, more; a pack of wolves descended on the battle as if from nowhere, fangs sinking quickly into the shapeshifter’s mass and the dragon woman’s leg. Máire made to seize the opportunity, but the sound of hooves beating against the earth forced her to jump back out of the path of a charging stag. There was a crack like thunder and a sudden burning shock hit the side of Máire’s face and chest, and she recognized the sensation of plasma rounds before her surviving eye marked the man astride the glowing deer.

Her hood was singed and melted in places, the visible parts of her face painted iron as a swarm of silver dust rushed to repair the damage. A blue-white flash filled the air a moment later, and Máire’s right eye flashed the same color to compensate for her shocked retina.

The man was on the ground, and the dragon woman had her back to her. Six blades formed by her hand in an instant, not willing to let the opportunity go to waste a second time. They shot forward, only to explode into dust as some great hulking flesh barreled into her, lifting her off her feet and enveloping her in its mass. She was ejected a moment later, catapulted into the air away from the battle. The silver dust lingering in the area instantly swarmed to meet her, sinking through her skin and back into her blood before her feet touched the ground.

She saw the shapeshifter linger for a moment, gazing at the masked figure, before it turned and dashed northward, screaming out to Máire to retreat in a new, feminine voice. She grit her teeth, staring down the warriors they were leaving behind, bitterness filling her mouth. Then she shot one of her blades into the air, grabbing an invisible link only she could feel and using it to pull her after the shapeshifter.

Máire flew swiftly across the Graves, generating a new blade each time the last started to lose momentum. She spotted Rat down below, and switched to using her current blade as a pendulum, swinging in a wide arc toward the messenger. Her hand reached out as she got close, and in the next instant he was squirming in her arm as they flew onward, following the shapeshifter.

mahou shoujo

beep

HEROIC

Bouncer gazed at the scene around them, firefighters and paramedics doing their best to handle the small catastrophe which had befallen the people who worked here. People who would be out of work, lost and confused and desperate, and she wondered how many of them would become just another bunch of lowlifes the city’s “heroes” cleaned up off the street everyday when that desperation pushed them to keep their families afloat. She looked up at the empty sky fed by slow pillars of smoke, and wondered if these beacons of danger would have been ignored if they’d risen from a bank, or a corporate tower, or a luxury high rise.

Then the fox mentioned police, and a short bark of laughter escaped Bouncer’s throat. The police. Certainly, a series of kidnappings by unknown thugs would make headline news… if the victims hadn’t all had just one thing in common. If they’d lived in different neighborhoods, kept better company, been more desirable, been richer. Been anyone other than the type damned by circumstance to disappear silently beneath an indifferent gaze that never looked down. Perhaps the disappearances would have never been noticed, if not for nosy sorts like that wolf woman or the pair of goths Bouncer had run into the night before.

Or a woman who had choked herself with smoke to pull a pair of mobsters out of a structure fire.

“Nah, I think I’ll just tell you.”

“Probably worked here,” Bouncer switched lanes to answer the fox’s question, her hands finding their way into her pockets. You weren’t supposed to put your hands in the pockets of fitted suits like the one she wore, and she remembered this with the same speed at which the fabric of her slacks became vacuum sealed to her ass. “Pretty sure he talked like this was his place. I dunno, he was…” Bouncer trailed off, trying to remember what she could of the encounter. The whole mess felt like a blind haze of pain and smoke. “...Friendly,” she said finally.

Her eyes squinted against a headache, trying to pull up what further details she could, but it felt like trying to grapple a bunch of eels. She never did have a head for remembering things; any time she’d been asked to help with something by the wolf woman, it was always one of her boys who remembered the important things and just told her what to do when they got there, like-

“Mateo!” the thought occurred to her so suddenly that Bouncer couldn’t help calling out. Of course, even if she didn’t remember much about the realtor guy, Mateo would. “Do you know what hospital they took those guys to?” she asked, spinning on the ball of her foot to face the fox woman directly.

HEROIC

Can't believe... our GM has set it up so Grim has to punch an old lady...

@Blazion

thats the stuff.... oh baby

HEROIC

I just realized this rp wouldn't pass a reverse Bechdel test

@ThisIsFine

god thats so hot

HEROIC

oh that kind of hit and run

HEROIC

Bouncer was silent for a long moment, rocking back on her heels as she looked down at the blood soaking her pants leg. She supposed she really hadn’t given this plan much thought, had she? Still, wasn’t there supposed to be some kind of superhero etiquette about this kind of thing? Once you had a mask on, you were someone else, or something like that. Even if you weren’t, you were. It was like… respect for privacy, or whatever. Kayfabe. Bouncer could’ve sworn that was a thing. Beyond that, something about the fox’s tone made her chafe. It was too… familiar.

The other two were alive, though. That was expected, but Bouncer wasn’t sure how to feel about it. They were alive, and from what she could tell no one had recognized them for their vocations yet. That… well, Bouncer supposed she’d call that good enough, then. It was something she could deal with later.

She raised her eyes to meet the fox again, planting the soles of her feet back on the ground, then looked off again, back at the dying flames. “I told you what happened,” she finally answered, dropping the feigned voice. Bouncer played the course of events back through her mind, trying to make some sense of it. “I looked into an address, found a place that had got sold off.” She tossed the slip of paper at the vigilante’s feet, watching it flutter briefly through the air before the blood staining it dragged it down to the earth less than halfway between them. She looked away again.

“One of them old apartment complexes, being used to hold people snatched off the street. Owner was just some dope used for a name on paper, so we were gonna look into the guys who handled the transaction, see if they had any leads.” Bouncer gestured vaguely toward the ruined building. The former office of Nadar Realty, smoldering beneath the dark sky. “Then I got shot and the building caught fire.”

Bouncer didn’t bother to mention any of the smaller details. Who her “friends” worked for or how it was them who had looked into the address in her place. How she’d only been allowed to come along to humor her, or how she’d been told to stay in the car while Mateo and Erik handled the situation because they thought she’d just make a mess of things, and had thus missed everything up until she’d decided to go in anyway and saw them getting their asses beat by a guy who was supposed to be some scrawny accountant type. How the guy had seemed to know where she’d be before she was even there.

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders, trying to brush some of the ash off her suit but only succeeding in staining her palms. Bouncer clicked her tongue, rocking back on her heels again. She really wanted a shower, and all the smoke in the air stank. “I mean honestly there’s not much I didn’t already tell you. I just figured, you know, you’re supposed to be a hero or whatever. Maybe you’d want to look in on it now you’re…” Bouncer trailed off, thinking of how to phrase it. “Adjacent? I guess? I kinda suck at detective crap, so.”

HEROIC

dont objectify her. shes not a piece of meat, shes a profoundly stupid and incredibly attractive human being with toned abs like knitted steel cables and an ass that wont quit. god shes so hot do you think shes single? what was i talking about

HEROIC

her shirt is also torn and showing off her abs. thats important

other than that no, she has made no consideration at all for the proper methods of deception

HEROIC

i think more characters should just be dumb as hell honestly