sure is a lovely day for the guild not to be kill
Fish of Oblivion
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Potassium
STATUS: Talk to your players and be open to their ideas, at the end of the day we're all just here to shoot the shit. 2 yrs ago
- Last Seen: 19 days ago
- Joined: 11 yrs ago
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2 yrs ago
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Talk to your players and be open to their ideas, at the end of the day we're all just here to shoot the shit.
2 yrs ago
Honestly, more structured/collaborative roleplays can be really fun and rewarding, but if you're going to open a project like that up you have to be flexible and open to compromise.
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8 yrs ago
current shitpost level: writing about how your favourite taiwanese puppet shows experiment with narrative for graded academic work
8 yrs ago
But god knows how many hours I've sunk into my collection of main series Pokémon game, so it's like making me pick between my children. :'D
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8 yrs ago
I mean, I write MUCH more Digimon-related stuff than I write Pokémon-related stuff, so I guess it wins by default in this context.
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Most Recent Posts
Even with the intense light from his wings fighting back against the thick fog, Parasimon moved carefully as he spread out from where he and Dynasmon had left Examon. The two had separated to cover more ground; Dynasmon heading towards the bay whilst Parasimon circled around. He only hoped that the other Knight was having more luck on his end of the search for the others. After his early luck with Examon, it seemed that the rest of the Digimon were less concentrated by area. Of course, with the state that Moon=Millenniummon’s assault had left each of them in, it was entirely possible that he’d fly over an unconscious individual, completely unaware.
That said, it was entirely impossible to ignore the sudden commotion that exploded into life a few hundred meters away from him.
Making a sudden turn upon the axis of his flight to look in the direction of the roar that cut over the winds, Parasimon found his sight immediately assaulted by an infernal explosion of heat and light that blasted straight through a massive patch of the fog. Even at this range, the power of the blast might have blinded a human or weaker Digimon, or boiled their eyes straight from their sockets: but Parasimon’s tolerance to such things had grown a ridiculous amount in the past few days, and so he merely flinched and covered his eyes by reflex. Lowering his arms a moment later, he took advantage of the sudden clearing of the air to instead concentrate his vision and gaze through the flaming heat to look upon the source of the explosion.
The thing that had joined them in their assault on Millenniummon.
Questions ran wild through Parasimon’s head. He hadn’t the time to appraise the creature earlier, caught up in the heat of the moment as they were, but from what he could glean at a glance, the Digimon was quite unusual. A dragon a fraction of the size of Examon, yet radiatiating the aura of a far different kind of beast: and a powerful life force that seemed on par with both his and Parasimon’s own. And then there was the peculiar sense of familiarity about it.
Parasimon slowly moved in towards the creature, weighing up his course of action. A moment later, he came to hover over the molten concrete and asphalt produced by its awakening: and, cautiously landing a short distance from it, decided.
“Alright, who the fuck are you and how did you get here?”
For a moment, the metallic dragon flew without even a growl coming out of a slightly ajar steel maw and it looked as if Parasimon’s understandably terse inquiry would be met with silence until...
“I have no fucking clue how we got here, but we presumably flew here, in case your eyes can’t see the big, totally not-invisible wings.” The voice was deep, guttural and rough on the edges, but the feminine undertone and audibly barbaric vocabulary were unmistakably Dorumon’s.
Parasimon paused, the lights of his eyes narrowing. A moment later, realization hit him and they returned to norrmal.
“... Oh, it’s just you.” Even from their limited interactions, there was no mistaking the creature’s identity: the strange creature that was part of Examon’s party. “Never mind, I half-thought some rabid feral had picked up a taste for synthetic meat and decided to pitch in.” Not that there seemed to be much of a difference at present, Parasimon privately observed. Even restored to lucidity, there was as little mistaking Dorugoramon’s overwhelming bloodlust as there was mistaking her identity.
“Right now, that doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea: a false persona gone rogue eating an indecipherably eldritch, synthetic Digimon,” Dorugoramon replied with a distinctly feral growl. “And, to your credit, I don’t think any of us remembered anything before waking up with our body nicely nestled in rubble and partially melted roadway.”
“Trust me, if I didn’t care for the taste, you’d probably drop dead from it.” If Parasimon had any hair, it would have stood on end at the memory of Millenniummon’s awful data filling him up: instead, the crystals covering his body let out a low, groaning hum as as new growths breached the surface of his foul flesh. Once again, he didn’t seem to notice, instead turning his attention to the other Digimon present. “How did you end up in that deep a rage, anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever been in that deep, and- well, you know me. That really is saying something.”
To that, Dorumon simply let out a raspy chuckle, steam coming out of her metallic maw. “It’s a long story,” she replied with a guttural growl, “but to spare you the boredom, Zei and I Biomerged. We were pissed off before we did so. I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story.” Pausing for a moment, she then added with a tone that suggested this particular bit was something of an afterthought, “Examon said that we underwent a Dark Digivolution, whatever that is.”
“Just being angry did that?” Parasimon stared at Dorugoramon, a dubious look crossing his face. He didn’t have a lot of experience with Dark Digivolution, but secondhand accounts and his general experience with the Tamers was enough for him to question her explanation.
Nonetheless, he decided not to press it. It didn’t look like she was outright lying to him: just concealing some of the facts. From what he did know of Dark Digivolution, something more traumatic than simple anger would be necessary to trigger it: and dragging whatever it was back up to the surface wasn’t going to help in this situation.
“Good grief. I thought I had issues, and then you lot turned up,” Parasimon huffed, with a shrug. “You damn humans really are an order unto yourselves.”
For a moment, Dorugoramon responded with complete and utter silence - not even a growl - before a voice finally responded with a tempered tone.
“Perhaps we are,” Zei replied, her calm voice momentarily hiding the burning rage now wielded with some modicum of control, “but that doesn’t matter now. I will not stop until my - no, our prey makes it last breath.” A feral snarl escaped the dragon’s maw, a strangely eerie noise to be made by what should’ve been the saner one of the two. Right now, she wasn’t the saner one, however.
Once again, Parasimon stared at the half-mad Digimon. That near-feral savagery still radiated from her in droves, only growing more palpable as she swore death onto the abomination in the sky.
“It’s not quite a vow, but I’ll accept it.” But this time, he found solidarity with it. There was no doubt about it, humans were a special kind of dangerous, one that had only ever been embodied in a handful of Digimon. It was exactly the kind of dangerous that Parasimon could get behind: and perhaps it was exactly what they needed to bring Moon=Millenniummon crashing down once more.
Now that the two Digimons were reunited, Dorumon couldn’t help but wonder where the others were.
In particular, she wondered where a certain gargantuan dragon was.
“Are you the only one up aside from us?” Dorumon, retaking control without so much as a twitch of her claw, asked Parasimon as the dragon turned her sights to him. “Where is everyone? More importantly, where the fuck is Examon?” The way the metallic dragon’s head dart around as she tried to see anything other than the obscuring fog around her seemed to suggest that she was particularly concerned about the other dragon in question.
“Dynasmon, the cat and the rat are awake, last I checked. They should hopefully be all together by now.” Parasimon paused for a moment, doing a headcount. He knew that MirageGaogamon, Guilmon and Ranamon were about somewhere: but as much help as they could be, Parasimon couldn't be certain of their ability to shake off their temporal torpor. He’d have to ask Dynasmon about finding them when they joined back up, but finding capable fighters had to be their priority now. That just left: “The only one of you that I haven’t seen or heard somehow is that mouthy little blue shit. Me and Dynasmon found Examon pretty quickly after we came to, but-” Another pause, before Parasimon decided it was best she knew. “Examon is still unconscious. Avalon is still protecting him, so he’s not completely helpless, but if he doesn’t come to soon, I don’t know what good moving him is even going to accomplish.”
Examon was still out cold; with Avalon protecting him, yes, but still out cold nonetheless. That didn’t sound reassuring to her in the very least, even with most of the party accounted for.
“Where is his position now?” Dorugoramon’s wings unfurled with a faint gust as the dragon crouched, ready to bolt as soon as Parasimon revealed where he found Examon. “I can’t believe this,” Dorumon muttered, all visible body language pointing to agitation. “All the work he did to wake me up and now he’s the one still taking his beauty nap?!”
“Back the way I came round. It’s hard to make out details in this fog, and I don’t know enough about this city to guess.” Parasimon sighed. This time, it wasn’t the human in Dorugoramon that was getting riled up: even he could discern the nature of the Digimon half’s fury. “We’ll need to go back around that way to find Dynasmon and the others anyway. Come with me and we won’t be able to miss him.”
To say that Dorumon was reluctant to follow Parasimon instead of going off on her own was an understatement, but with all the fog obscuring anything past a mile of her position, she might as well be flying in circles if she insisted on heeding her admittedly prevalent stubbornness. “Fine,” the dragon growled, her tail flicking quickly as she stood up. “I won’t wait for that damned mess of a Digimon to harm anyone, least of all Examon!”
That said, it was entirely impossible to ignore the sudden commotion that exploded into life a few hundred meters away from him.
Making a sudden turn upon the axis of his flight to look in the direction of the roar that cut over the winds, Parasimon found his sight immediately assaulted by an infernal explosion of heat and light that blasted straight through a massive patch of the fog. Even at this range, the power of the blast might have blinded a human or weaker Digimon, or boiled their eyes straight from their sockets: but Parasimon’s tolerance to such things had grown a ridiculous amount in the past few days, and so he merely flinched and covered his eyes by reflex. Lowering his arms a moment later, he took advantage of the sudden clearing of the air to instead concentrate his vision and gaze through the flaming heat to look upon the source of the explosion.
The thing that had joined them in their assault on Millenniummon.
Questions ran wild through Parasimon’s head. He hadn’t the time to appraise the creature earlier, caught up in the heat of the moment as they were, but from what he could glean at a glance, the Digimon was quite unusual. A dragon a fraction of the size of Examon, yet radiatiating the aura of a far different kind of beast: and a powerful life force that seemed on par with both his and Parasimon’s own. And then there was the peculiar sense of familiarity about it.
Parasimon slowly moved in towards the creature, weighing up his course of action. A moment later, he came to hover over the molten concrete and asphalt produced by its awakening: and, cautiously landing a short distance from it, decided.
“Alright, who the fuck are you and how did you get here?”
For a moment, the metallic dragon flew without even a growl coming out of a slightly ajar steel maw and it looked as if Parasimon’s understandably terse inquiry would be met with silence until...
“I have no fucking clue how we got here, but we presumably flew here, in case your eyes can’t see the big, totally not-invisible wings.” The voice was deep, guttural and rough on the edges, but the feminine undertone and audibly barbaric vocabulary were unmistakably Dorumon’s.
Parasimon paused, the lights of his eyes narrowing. A moment later, realization hit him and they returned to norrmal.
“... Oh, it’s just you.” Even from their limited interactions, there was no mistaking the creature’s identity: the strange creature that was part of Examon’s party. “Never mind, I half-thought some rabid feral had picked up a taste for synthetic meat and decided to pitch in.” Not that there seemed to be much of a difference at present, Parasimon privately observed. Even restored to lucidity, there was as little mistaking Dorugoramon’s overwhelming bloodlust as there was mistaking her identity.
“Right now, that doesn’t seem like such a terrible idea: a false persona gone rogue eating an indecipherably eldritch, synthetic Digimon,” Dorugoramon replied with a distinctly feral growl. “And, to your credit, I don’t think any of us remembered anything before waking up with our body nicely nestled in rubble and partially melted roadway.”
“Trust me, if I didn’t care for the taste, you’d probably drop dead from it.” If Parasimon had any hair, it would have stood on end at the memory of Millenniummon’s awful data filling him up: instead, the crystals covering his body let out a low, groaning hum as as new growths breached the surface of his foul flesh. Once again, he didn’t seem to notice, instead turning his attention to the other Digimon present. “How did you end up in that deep a rage, anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever been in that deep, and- well, you know me. That really is saying something.”
To that, Dorumon simply let out a raspy chuckle, steam coming out of her metallic maw. “It’s a long story,” she replied with a guttural growl, “but to spare you the boredom, Zei and I Biomerged. We were pissed off before we did so. I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story.” Pausing for a moment, she then added with a tone that suggested this particular bit was something of an afterthought, “Examon said that we underwent a Dark Digivolution, whatever that is.”
“Just being angry did that?” Parasimon stared at Dorugoramon, a dubious look crossing his face. He didn’t have a lot of experience with Dark Digivolution, but secondhand accounts and his general experience with the Tamers was enough for him to question her explanation.
Nonetheless, he decided not to press it. It didn’t look like she was outright lying to him: just concealing some of the facts. From what he did know of Dark Digivolution, something more traumatic than simple anger would be necessary to trigger it: and dragging whatever it was back up to the surface wasn’t going to help in this situation.
“Good grief. I thought I had issues, and then you lot turned up,” Parasimon huffed, with a shrug. “You damn humans really are an order unto yourselves.”
For a moment, Dorugoramon responded with complete and utter silence - not even a growl - before a voice finally responded with a tempered tone.
“Perhaps we are,” Zei replied, her calm voice momentarily hiding the burning rage now wielded with some modicum of control, “but that doesn’t matter now. I will not stop until my - no, our prey makes it last breath.” A feral snarl escaped the dragon’s maw, a strangely eerie noise to be made by what should’ve been the saner one of the two. Right now, she wasn’t the saner one, however.
Once again, Parasimon stared at the half-mad Digimon. That near-feral savagery still radiated from her in droves, only growing more palpable as she swore death onto the abomination in the sky.
“It’s not quite a vow, but I’ll accept it.” But this time, he found solidarity with it. There was no doubt about it, humans were a special kind of dangerous, one that had only ever been embodied in a handful of Digimon. It was exactly the kind of dangerous that Parasimon could get behind: and perhaps it was exactly what they needed to bring Moon=Millenniummon crashing down once more.
Now that the two Digimons were reunited, Dorumon couldn’t help but wonder where the others were.
In particular, she wondered where a certain gargantuan dragon was.
“Are you the only one up aside from us?” Dorumon, retaking control without so much as a twitch of her claw, asked Parasimon as the dragon turned her sights to him. “Where is everyone? More importantly, where the fuck is Examon?” The way the metallic dragon’s head dart around as she tried to see anything other than the obscuring fog around her seemed to suggest that she was particularly concerned about the other dragon in question.
“Dynasmon, the cat and the rat are awake, last I checked. They should hopefully be all together by now.” Parasimon paused for a moment, doing a headcount. He knew that MirageGaogamon, Guilmon and Ranamon were about somewhere: but as much help as they could be, Parasimon couldn't be certain of their ability to shake off their temporal torpor. He’d have to ask Dynasmon about finding them when they joined back up, but finding capable fighters had to be their priority now. That just left: “The only one of you that I haven’t seen or heard somehow is that mouthy little blue shit. Me and Dynasmon found Examon pretty quickly after we came to, but-” Another pause, before Parasimon decided it was best she knew. “Examon is still unconscious. Avalon is still protecting him, so he’s not completely helpless, but if he doesn’t come to soon, I don’t know what good moving him is even going to accomplish.”
Examon was still out cold; with Avalon protecting him, yes, but still out cold nonetheless. That didn’t sound reassuring to her in the very least, even with most of the party accounted for.
“Where is his position now?” Dorugoramon’s wings unfurled with a faint gust as the dragon crouched, ready to bolt as soon as Parasimon revealed where he found Examon. “I can’t believe this,” Dorumon muttered, all visible body language pointing to agitation. “All the work he did to wake me up and now he’s the one still taking his beauty nap?!”
“Back the way I came round. It’s hard to make out details in this fog, and I don’t know enough about this city to guess.” Parasimon sighed. This time, it wasn’t the human in Dorugoramon that was getting riled up: even he could discern the nature of the Digimon half’s fury. “We’ll need to go back around that way to find Dynasmon and the others anyway. Come with me and we won’t be able to miss him.”
To say that Dorumon was reluctant to follow Parasimon instead of going off on her own was an understatement, but with all the fog obscuring anything past a mile of her position, she might as well be flying in circles if she insisted on heeding her admittedly prevalent stubbornness. “Fine,” the dragon growled, her tail flicking quickly as she stood up. “I won’t wait for that damned mess of a Digimon to harm anyone, least of all Examon!”
By contrast to the agony that had wracked his body moments before, and the fluid discomfort that had washed over him before that, Dante felt a total numbness as whatever was happening to him seemed to draw to a close.
His vision was still blurry, but was clearing fast, with more and more details of his surroundings reappearing from within the borderless, incoherent shapes dominating his limited sight. His hearing, meanwhile, was still shot to hell. The sound of wind was gone, but had left painful ringing behind in his ears to continue blocking out all sound. Perhaps most pressingly, he felt the full sum of his weight returned to him despite the lack of feeling in his body. The full sum and then some, it seemed, as no sooner had he realized he no longer felt weightless, his footing gave way beneath his fatigue and the return of his mass.
He felt the shock of his fall course through his body, but it only served to jolt him further back to awareness as his body’s lack of feeling shielded him from the pain. With his limbs already against the ground after the fall, it wasn’t hard to at least push himself upwards into a sitting position. It seemed that the lasting numbness wasn’t the most immediate of his concerns at the very least.
‘Ah, fuck, come on. I’ve been possessed before, what’s so different this time?’
That was the very angry and very real voice cursing away on full volume in his head.
Dante tried to rise from the ground back up to his feet, but only succeeded in bringing himself to a crouch. Though his body felt nothing, let alone any pain, the ringing in his ears combined with the increasingly incoherent ranting of the voice in his head was enough to make up for that several times over. Whilst feeling slowly returned to his body as he balanced himself on weightless feet, the torturous sensation claiming his head interfered with any attempt he made to bring himself back to full focus.
Then came an impossibly loud noise. Although at first, the sheer volume of the sound threatened to drown him into unconsciousness altogether, the voice in his head cut out was ultimately the one that ceased to be. The resulting moment of silence in his head was enough for Dante: although shaky, the sudden moment of clarity was sufficient to shakily climb back to his feet and gather his wits.
“... Oh. Oh fuck.” And that was when he almost wished he’d remained unable to tell what was going on.
The massive tree from the centre of the clearing had been ripped clean from its roots, and was suspended in the air by some unseen force: the same that had entrapped him minutes before. Directly beneath it, radiating absolute sadistic pleasure, was the child from before- NecroWisemon? Dante may have questioned how he suddenly knew what the horrible thing’s name was, if his thoughts hadn’t been sent into a fresh panic by the gigantic object that was about to be brought down on them.
‘... Yeah, not gonna lie, getting gored on that was bad enough. Getting crushed is going to be even worse.’ Once again, the voice in his head was definitely not helping.
There was nothing he could do, and both he and the voice knew it. Like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, with his body and control over it too rattled to even hope to move out of the way of the tree in time, he froze stiff.
Seconds became minutes. Those minutes became hours. The sudden inevitability of death at the end of a rollercoaster ride of hope and despair stretched his last moments out into a painful eternity of suspense.
But the tree didn’t come down. Precarious movements upon an invisible access ground to a halt, as did everything else around it save Dante’s panicked breathing and the sounds of the other three humans who were about to die. The sudden cessation of movement from the imminent threat of his surroundings, and the resulting silence, once again gave Dante room to think: and that was what led him to the realization.
He wasn’t the one who’d frozen. It was the world around him.
“What’s going on? Is everyone alright?” In a mixture of confusion and relief, he blurted out the first two questions that came to mind. But if answers were coming, he wasn’t going to hear them: he hadn’t noticed before, caught up in the panic of the moment as he was, but his voice felt and sounded different. Deeper. Scratchier.
Identical to the one in his head.
Everything came together in that instant. The disorientation, the weightlessness, the sensation he’d felt as that mysterious object entered him: he raised his hands to his field of vision, and felt his eyes widen on instinct as he finally realized what had happened to him. The frame was similar enough that he hadn’t connected the dots, but everything else- his height, his garb, the few visible patches of flesh- was different enough that the revelation hit him like a freight train. Grabbing his face, he confirmed in an instant that it was more than a hallucination: where he’d felt the bone of his skull warp and erupt outwards moments before, horn-like structures had emerged and eye sockets had closed up.
‘Wow, you finally noticed. You really suck at possessing people.’ Dante was wordless from shock, but the voice- Astamon- had plenty to run off at him as he stared in horror at his transformed body. ‘Fuck’s sake, Wyrdmon is never going to let me live this one down.’
First was the footsteps, and then the rustling bush. Then the face, hooded in red, green eyes wide, appeared between the parted bush branches. Clockmon, he knew. "Oh my stars." It - no, she - also sounded like a young child as she stared at the four. "I - I know there's a lot going on right now and I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but you four - please, this way." She pointed behind her with her mallet and briefly lost her balance, legs stumbling in the shrubbery. "I can't keep this up for much longer, and that tree's going to hurt if it lands on you." She seemed pleased as two of them - humans, digimon, who knew any longer? - moved at her pleading. Even if the young woman - Rubani - Meicrackmon - fell at first.
Although absorbed in his horrified torpor, Dante’s attention found itself split between his state and Clockmon as she entered the clearing: and he lowered his face from his hands as he turned to look at her. Whether from registering her words or sheer frustration, he began to rouse from his mental paralysis as the reality of the situation kicked in. The newcomer seemed to be the source of the sudden lapse in time. The experiences of the last few minutes made Dante want to turn and run as far as he could from any mysterious childlike being that presented itself to him and the others, but something about this one seemed familiar and reassuring, somehow. As if his own instincts were telling him that he could trust her.
That was enough to let him think straight for a moment. Whatever had happened to him, he was already adjusting to it. Though he was still struggling to accept the transformation that had been thrust upon him, there was little physical component to his distress: the voice had quietened down, whether of its own accord or not, and he felt more and more strength and stability return to him as it did. Though he still had more questions than he could think to put together, whether or not he’d be able to move around in this new body didn’t seem to be one of them.
And, as the newcomer and the voice had so helpfully pointed out, the tree being held over their heads was probably the immediate concern. Looking from Clockmon to the three figures a short distance away, he saw the disturbing visage of NecroWisemon frozen in time, along with the horrified expressions of Piximon and MarineAngemon: steeling himself with a sigh, Dante turned to follow Clockmon and the two figures- Meicrackmon and Baalmon?- who’d made to leave the clearing while they could. He was going to have to take his chances and bank on his instincts being correct about Clockmon.
His vision was still blurry, but was clearing fast, with more and more details of his surroundings reappearing from within the borderless, incoherent shapes dominating his limited sight. His hearing, meanwhile, was still shot to hell. The sound of wind was gone, but had left painful ringing behind in his ears to continue blocking out all sound. Perhaps most pressingly, he felt the full sum of his weight returned to him despite the lack of feeling in his body. The full sum and then some, it seemed, as no sooner had he realized he no longer felt weightless, his footing gave way beneath his fatigue and the return of his mass.
He felt the shock of his fall course through his body, but it only served to jolt him further back to awareness as his body’s lack of feeling shielded him from the pain. With his limbs already against the ground after the fall, it wasn’t hard to at least push himself upwards into a sitting position. It seemed that the lasting numbness wasn’t the most immediate of his concerns at the very least.
‘Ah, fuck, come on. I’ve been possessed before, what’s so different this time?’
That was the very angry and very real voice cursing away on full volume in his head.
Dante tried to rise from the ground back up to his feet, but only succeeded in bringing himself to a crouch. Though his body felt nothing, let alone any pain, the ringing in his ears combined with the increasingly incoherent ranting of the voice in his head was enough to make up for that several times over. Whilst feeling slowly returned to his body as he balanced himself on weightless feet, the torturous sensation claiming his head interfered with any attempt he made to bring himself back to full focus.
Then came an impossibly loud noise. Although at first, the sheer volume of the sound threatened to drown him into unconsciousness altogether, the voice in his head cut out was ultimately the one that ceased to be. The resulting moment of silence in his head was enough for Dante: although shaky, the sudden moment of clarity was sufficient to shakily climb back to his feet and gather his wits.
“... Oh. Oh fuck.” And that was when he almost wished he’d remained unable to tell what was going on.
The massive tree from the centre of the clearing had been ripped clean from its roots, and was suspended in the air by some unseen force: the same that had entrapped him minutes before. Directly beneath it, radiating absolute sadistic pleasure, was the child from before- NecroWisemon? Dante may have questioned how he suddenly knew what the horrible thing’s name was, if his thoughts hadn’t been sent into a fresh panic by the gigantic object that was about to be brought down on them.
‘... Yeah, not gonna lie, getting gored on that was bad enough. Getting crushed is going to be even worse.’ Once again, the voice in his head was definitely not helping.
There was nothing he could do, and both he and the voice knew it. Like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, with his body and control over it too rattled to even hope to move out of the way of the tree in time, he froze stiff.
Seconds became minutes. Those minutes became hours. The sudden inevitability of death at the end of a rollercoaster ride of hope and despair stretched his last moments out into a painful eternity of suspense.
But the tree didn’t come down. Precarious movements upon an invisible access ground to a halt, as did everything else around it save Dante’s panicked breathing and the sounds of the other three humans who were about to die. The sudden cessation of movement from the imminent threat of his surroundings, and the resulting silence, once again gave Dante room to think: and that was what led him to the realization.
He wasn’t the one who’d frozen. It was the world around him.
“What’s going on? Is everyone alright?” In a mixture of confusion and relief, he blurted out the first two questions that came to mind. But if answers were coming, he wasn’t going to hear them: he hadn’t noticed before, caught up in the panic of the moment as he was, but his voice felt and sounded different. Deeper. Scratchier.
Identical to the one in his head.
Everything came together in that instant. The disorientation, the weightlessness, the sensation he’d felt as that mysterious object entered him: he raised his hands to his field of vision, and felt his eyes widen on instinct as he finally realized what had happened to him. The frame was similar enough that he hadn’t connected the dots, but everything else- his height, his garb, the few visible patches of flesh- was different enough that the revelation hit him like a freight train. Grabbing his face, he confirmed in an instant that it was more than a hallucination: where he’d felt the bone of his skull warp and erupt outwards moments before, horn-like structures had emerged and eye sockets had closed up.
‘Wow, you finally noticed. You really suck at possessing people.’ Dante was wordless from shock, but the voice- Astamon- had plenty to run off at him as he stared in horror at his transformed body. ‘Fuck’s sake, Wyrdmon is never going to let me live this one down.’
First was the footsteps, and then the rustling bush. Then the face, hooded in red, green eyes wide, appeared between the parted bush branches. Clockmon, he knew. "Oh my stars." It - no, she - also sounded like a young child as she stared at the four. "I - I know there's a lot going on right now and I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but you four - please, this way." She pointed behind her with her mallet and briefly lost her balance, legs stumbling in the shrubbery. "I can't keep this up for much longer, and that tree's going to hurt if it lands on you." She seemed pleased as two of them - humans, digimon, who knew any longer? - moved at her pleading. Even if the young woman - Rubani - Meicrackmon - fell at first.
Although absorbed in his horrified torpor, Dante’s attention found itself split between his state and Clockmon as she entered the clearing: and he lowered his face from his hands as he turned to look at her. Whether from registering her words or sheer frustration, he began to rouse from his mental paralysis as the reality of the situation kicked in. The newcomer seemed to be the source of the sudden lapse in time. The experiences of the last few minutes made Dante want to turn and run as far as he could from any mysterious childlike being that presented itself to him and the others, but something about this one seemed familiar and reassuring, somehow. As if his own instincts were telling him that he could trust her.
That was enough to let him think straight for a moment. Whatever had happened to him, he was already adjusting to it. Though he was still struggling to accept the transformation that had been thrust upon him, there was little physical component to his distress: the voice had quietened down, whether of its own accord or not, and he felt more and more strength and stability return to him as it did. Though he still had more questions than he could think to put together, whether or not he’d be able to move around in this new body didn’t seem to be one of them.
And, as the newcomer and the voice had so helpfully pointed out, the tree being held over their heads was probably the immediate concern. Looking from Clockmon to the three figures a short distance away, he saw the disturbing visage of NecroWisemon frozen in time, along with the horrified expressions of Piximon and MarineAngemon: steeling himself with a sigh, Dante turned to follow Clockmon and the two figures- Meicrackmon and Baalmon?- who’d made to leave the clearing while they could. He was going to have to take his chances and bank on his instincts being correct about Clockmon.
As the gunfire-esque sound split the air and shook his eardrums, Dante stopped in his tracks, falling behind Rubani.
The child hadn’t noticed the two of them yet. Dante, however, was quick to notice the glint of silver that suddenly appeared next to him as the ground shook slightly, as if a great deal of force had suddenly been buffered into the ground through his body.
What was that? Where had it come from? Now that he got a chance to take a look, he could make out that it wasn’t a bullet, but some kind of knife: and judging by the fact that it was sticking out of the child’s arm, it most likely didn’t belong to him. That led to one clear conclusion-
“We’re not alone.” Dante’s voice was quiet, a whisper too low to be heard, but it carried a palpable sense of hope. Whether the child was playing or actually unable to directly hurt them, their chances of successful escape against his powers seemed slim. But a powerful distraction, if not an outright ally coming their way; that was a different question entirely. For a moment, Dante allowed himself to hope for the best.
That sense of hope grew as the sound of increasingly heavy footsteps rang out from the clearing, shaking the ground as the impact of the dagger had done before.
And then, in a single moment, that hope fell apart. The creature that emerged from the clearing- the blindingly fast humanoid feline- was almost laughably futile in its charge towards the child. A brief but ill-fated struggle might have provided a moment’s opening: instead, the child sidestepped the creature’s attack as if it was no more threatening or pressing a concern than a fly buzzing around his head.
“... Let’s get out of here.” Reduced to stating the obvious at no-one in particular, Dante’s voice would have sounded entirely flat with despair if not for the undercurrent of fear that cracked it. With his sinking heart beating out in increasing panic, he began to move after Rubani again: with all hope of rescue dashed in a mere instant, the only choice that presented itself was to bank on the possibility that the child couldn’t hurt them, and all the terrifying uncertainty that it offered.
---
Unable to articulate beyond growls of frustration, Astamon clenched his jaw as he saw NecroWisemon effortlessly block his attack.
This was it, then. After years of clawing his way up from the gutter, after all he’d forced himself to endure, this was how it ended. Dying with empty hands and a mangled body, unable to defend himself. Unable to fight to his last breath.
Unable to protect his allies or avenge the one who’d taken him in in the end.
The thought, and the knot of anger that it tightened where his stomach should have been, spurred him into action. The aura that he had pooled into his dagger, the dark qi that gave him his terrible might, flared into life again and enveloped his whole body. Like black fire, it hissed and ate at his myriad wounds, once again making him wish for an opportunity to disable his pain receptors: but he knew that there was no time to waste.
An arm of qi reached out like incendiary lightning and dived down at the splinter that Astamon was skewered on. With a single fluid motion, the black energy ate through the wood, scorching either side of the wound the same dark colour as itself as the splinter broke and sent him falling gracelessly to the hard ground below.
Failing to land on his shaky feet but preventing himself from collapsing entirely with an aura-empowered arm against the forest floor, Astamon looked around him. Besides reinforcing his body, the qi had allowed his vision to regain focus. Now, he could clearly see Baalmon and Flaremon in the clearing with him: and like him, they were struggling back to their feet, however precariously. Baalmon seemed the most stable of the two: there was no mistaking the poor state that Flaremon was in, organs barely remaining in their proper place despite his attempts to stand.
More importantly, however, Meicrackmon was nowhere to be seen. Either she’d already passed or, more likely, she’d been the one he’d seen moving whilst impaled and had already leapt back into action. More than wanting to assume the latter, Astamon banked on it: if Meicrackmon was capable of fighting alongside him and making good on her cantankerous behaviour, maybe they could turn this around and buy time for Baalmon and Flaremon to withdraw.
Strength returning to his legs as he pushed himself up with his arm, Astamon rose back to his feet. His gun was still broken, and now even his dagger was out of the question. All he had left was the strength in his body and whatever was left of his aura. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dived forwards-
And barely a second later, ground to a sudden stop as he got a better look at what laid beyond the mouth of the clearing. Meicrackmon was down again, seemingly for the count this time. That was chilling enough to chip into his resolve by itself, but then he dared to look to the side.
Astamon had heard stories of these beings, but only now was he able to see one with his own eyes. At a glance, they could have passed for a Digimon akin to himself or Baalmon. But with the otherworldly sensation that filled the air about them as if they’d been superimposed onto the space that their bodies inhabited, and the way in which their outlines fizzed and hissed at a scarcely perceptible level, there was no mistaking that they were anything but: nor was there any mistaking what they actually were. Humans. Honest to God humans.
And they’d been drawn right into the line of fire along with their doomed selves. The last obstacles to NecroWisemon’s rampage, all gathered like eggs in a basket and ready to be smashed. Thoughts of fighting to the death abandoned Astamon in that moment, and black flame swarmed and raged around the chunk of wood still stuck in his chest as he opened his mouth to scream out at them.
But he didn’t get the chance. He felt himself burning: not from the flames, but from his core’s exposure to the world around it as it was torn from his body, his senses degenerating into a black miasma of pain and terror as his gutted body collapsed into countless fragments.
---
Dante didn’t get a chance to react as everything went to hell. Mere moments after he picked up his feet to go and help Rubani and the others, the child made his next move: at first, all he could comprehend was the feline creature seeming to disappear from his peripheral vision. And then, from the other side of that vision, something came flying towards him.
And as it entered his body, the world around him seemed to give way.
The sensation wasn’t quite as before, when he’d woken up. Rather than the dreary, inebriated state he’d awakened into, he now felt as if he was falling in place, completely weightless against an intangible rush from below. A strange sense of calm overcame him and his prior terror, anxiety floating away as if it were as weightless as himself.
His senses weren’t quite absent. Whilst his vision was blurred beyond any ability to see what was happening to him, and his hearing was overwhelmed by sound of screaming winds assaulting him from every side. He felt nothing of those winds, however. Instead, as the weightlessness began to abate, he felt as if he’d been hollowed out: and as if his body and limbs were being pulled at either end by extreme force. Yet it felt nothing like it should have. Rather than stress as bones readied to break and joints threatened to dislocate, Dante only felt discomfort creep up on him as his form seemed to adopt the consistency of rubber, stretching along with the force pulling it rather than being torn apart by it.
It was only when whatever was happening claimed his head that that discomfort blossomed into pain, and the pain back into renewed terror. This time, he couldn’t help but cry out in a harsh shriek of pain as something erupted from his skull, the bone warping and taking on a new form unlike the familiar humanoid build that Dante’s body had been stretched out into. The process seemed to be nearing completion, and he felt something pour into his body as his head continued its painful distortion: Dante may well have thrown up at that very moment, if not for the seeming absence of organs to respond to the nauseating panic he was experiencing.
Of course, throwing up wasn’t all that may have happened as the sounds of wind abated to give way to the unfamiliar, roaring screams of pain that rattled his body from within.
The child hadn’t noticed the two of them yet. Dante, however, was quick to notice the glint of silver that suddenly appeared next to him as the ground shook slightly, as if a great deal of force had suddenly been buffered into the ground through his body.
What was that? Where had it come from? Now that he got a chance to take a look, he could make out that it wasn’t a bullet, but some kind of knife: and judging by the fact that it was sticking out of the child’s arm, it most likely didn’t belong to him. That led to one clear conclusion-
“We’re not alone.” Dante’s voice was quiet, a whisper too low to be heard, but it carried a palpable sense of hope. Whether the child was playing or actually unable to directly hurt them, their chances of successful escape against his powers seemed slim. But a powerful distraction, if not an outright ally coming their way; that was a different question entirely. For a moment, Dante allowed himself to hope for the best.
That sense of hope grew as the sound of increasingly heavy footsteps rang out from the clearing, shaking the ground as the impact of the dagger had done before.
And then, in a single moment, that hope fell apart. The creature that emerged from the clearing- the blindingly fast humanoid feline- was almost laughably futile in its charge towards the child. A brief but ill-fated struggle might have provided a moment’s opening: instead, the child sidestepped the creature’s attack as if it was no more threatening or pressing a concern than a fly buzzing around his head.
“... Let’s get out of here.” Reduced to stating the obvious at no-one in particular, Dante’s voice would have sounded entirely flat with despair if not for the undercurrent of fear that cracked it. With his sinking heart beating out in increasing panic, he began to move after Rubani again: with all hope of rescue dashed in a mere instant, the only choice that presented itself was to bank on the possibility that the child couldn’t hurt them, and all the terrifying uncertainty that it offered.
---
Unable to articulate beyond growls of frustration, Astamon clenched his jaw as he saw NecroWisemon effortlessly block his attack.
This was it, then. After years of clawing his way up from the gutter, after all he’d forced himself to endure, this was how it ended. Dying with empty hands and a mangled body, unable to defend himself. Unable to fight to his last breath.
Unable to protect his allies or avenge the one who’d taken him in in the end.
The thought, and the knot of anger that it tightened where his stomach should have been, spurred him into action. The aura that he had pooled into his dagger, the dark qi that gave him his terrible might, flared into life again and enveloped his whole body. Like black fire, it hissed and ate at his myriad wounds, once again making him wish for an opportunity to disable his pain receptors: but he knew that there was no time to waste.
An arm of qi reached out like incendiary lightning and dived down at the splinter that Astamon was skewered on. With a single fluid motion, the black energy ate through the wood, scorching either side of the wound the same dark colour as itself as the splinter broke and sent him falling gracelessly to the hard ground below.
Failing to land on his shaky feet but preventing himself from collapsing entirely with an aura-empowered arm against the forest floor, Astamon looked around him. Besides reinforcing his body, the qi had allowed his vision to regain focus. Now, he could clearly see Baalmon and Flaremon in the clearing with him: and like him, they were struggling back to their feet, however precariously. Baalmon seemed the most stable of the two: there was no mistaking the poor state that Flaremon was in, organs barely remaining in their proper place despite his attempts to stand.
More importantly, however, Meicrackmon was nowhere to be seen. Either she’d already passed or, more likely, she’d been the one he’d seen moving whilst impaled and had already leapt back into action. More than wanting to assume the latter, Astamon banked on it: if Meicrackmon was capable of fighting alongside him and making good on her cantankerous behaviour, maybe they could turn this around and buy time for Baalmon and Flaremon to withdraw.
Strength returning to his legs as he pushed himself up with his arm, Astamon rose back to his feet. His gun was still broken, and now even his dagger was out of the question. All he had left was the strength in his body and whatever was left of his aura. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dived forwards-
And barely a second later, ground to a sudden stop as he got a better look at what laid beyond the mouth of the clearing. Meicrackmon was down again, seemingly for the count this time. That was chilling enough to chip into his resolve by itself, but then he dared to look to the side.
Astamon had heard stories of these beings, but only now was he able to see one with his own eyes. At a glance, they could have passed for a Digimon akin to himself or Baalmon. But with the otherworldly sensation that filled the air about them as if they’d been superimposed onto the space that their bodies inhabited, and the way in which their outlines fizzed and hissed at a scarcely perceptible level, there was no mistaking that they were anything but: nor was there any mistaking what they actually were. Humans. Honest to God humans.
And they’d been drawn right into the line of fire along with their doomed selves. The last obstacles to NecroWisemon’s rampage, all gathered like eggs in a basket and ready to be smashed. Thoughts of fighting to the death abandoned Astamon in that moment, and black flame swarmed and raged around the chunk of wood still stuck in his chest as he opened his mouth to scream out at them.
But he didn’t get the chance. He felt himself burning: not from the flames, but from his core’s exposure to the world around it as it was torn from his body, his senses degenerating into a black miasma of pain and terror as his gutted body collapsed into countless fragments.
---
Dante didn’t get a chance to react as everything went to hell. Mere moments after he picked up his feet to go and help Rubani and the others, the child made his next move: at first, all he could comprehend was the feline creature seeming to disappear from his peripheral vision. And then, from the other side of that vision, something came flying towards him.
And as it entered his body, the world around him seemed to give way.
The sensation wasn’t quite as before, when he’d woken up. Rather than the dreary, inebriated state he’d awakened into, he now felt as if he was falling in place, completely weightless against an intangible rush from below. A strange sense of calm overcame him and his prior terror, anxiety floating away as if it were as weightless as himself.
His senses weren’t quite absent. Whilst his vision was blurred beyond any ability to see what was happening to him, and his hearing was overwhelmed by sound of screaming winds assaulting him from every side. He felt nothing of those winds, however. Instead, as the weightlessness began to abate, he felt as if he’d been hollowed out: and as if his body and limbs were being pulled at either end by extreme force. Yet it felt nothing like it should have. Rather than stress as bones readied to break and joints threatened to dislocate, Dante only felt discomfort creep up on him as his form seemed to adopt the consistency of rubber, stretching along with the force pulling it rather than being torn apart by it.
It was only when whatever was happening claimed his head that that discomfort blossomed into pain, and the pain back into renewed terror. This time, he couldn’t help but cry out in a harsh shriek of pain as something erupted from his skull, the bone warping and taking on a new form unlike the familiar humanoid build that Dante’s body had been stretched out into. The process seemed to be nearing completion, and he felt something pour into his body as his head continued its painful distortion: Dante may well have thrown up at that very moment, if not for the seeming absence of organs to respond to the nauseating panic he was experiencing.
Of course, throwing up wasn’t all that may have happened as the sounds of wind abated to give way to the unfamiliar, roaring screams of pain that rattled his body from within.
@ONL As a lazy fuck and a pun-loving fuck, I can't rightly judge you for that one. :p
And yeah, reasonable amount of overlap between Lit and History in that sense: context is important, whether it's understanding the minutiae of historical politics or writing lengthy shitposts about what some git 500 years ago meant by this. And hell, it was probably really them damn commies to blame. I knew that Comrade Mordred was up to no good.
>2017
>not accepting your glorious anime overlords
Are we going to have a problem here, lads?
And yeah, reasonable amount of overlap between Lit and History in that sense: context is important, whether it's understanding the minutiae of historical politics or writing lengthy shitposts about what some git 500 years ago meant by this. And hell, it was probably really them damn commies to blame. I knew that Comrade Mordred was up to no good.
>go through the interest check, browsing around, seeing if there's anything interesting
>oh, this sounds cool
>open the thread
>it's anime
ENOUGH
@SigurdKILL IT BEFORE IT LAYS EGGS!
>2017
>not accepting your glorious anime overlords
Are we going to have a problem here, lads?
how in the fuck did i get distracted for this long
@ONL @Sigurd Was definitely a fun thing to write, all last minute existential crises and nitpicking aside!
Conclusion wasn't quite as elaborate as the buildup to it, admittedly. The big point that came out of it is that the significant Arthurian texts of each period almost completely differ in how Camelot collapses, and the cause of that collapse in each corresponds to a major social/cultural/political issue of the time (e.g, The Wars of the Roses in Le Morte d'Arthur, Victorian gender roles in Idylls of the King, pretty much everything to do with the British Empire and Germany between World War I and II in The Once and Future King because White was an angry, angry lad).
@ONL @Sigurd Was definitely a fun thing to write, all last minute existential crises and nitpicking aside!
Conclusion wasn't quite as elaborate as the buildup to it, admittedly. The big point that came out of it is that the significant Arthurian texts of each period almost completely differ in how Camelot collapses, and the cause of that collapse in each corresponds to a major social/cultural/political issue of the time (e.g, The Wars of the Roses in Le Morte d'Arthur, Victorian gender roles in Idylls of the King, pretty much everything to do with the British Empire and Germany between World War I and II in The Once and Future King because White was an angry, angry lad).
@Fish of OblivionYou can't complain about that (except the pain, toil, tears and sweat you sacrificed to ur human overlords). What did you write about actually?
Nah, definitely not complaining. Who needs self-respect/sanity, anyway? :'D
As for what I wrote about, my dissertation/major project ended up being on different adaptations/versions of Arthurian Legend: @RBYDark can vouch that it was a bit of a wild ride, what with the edgelords, sexual politics and Mordred generally being a bad lad.
Oh. Wasn't sure whether or not everyone was supposed to be awake or not. Let's give the attack a long travel time- It's meant to be a distraction though. I kinda thought Parasimon or someone else was awake.
Well, Parasimon and Elle/Wizardmon are, but they're the only three awake besides Rodendramon at present- and out of them, only Parasimon's in a state to fight right at this very moment. And yeah, that's really all you need to edit in: longer or more vague travel time/distance from Moon, and then someone can intercept or the attack can peter out in Moon's wind shield?
@tobiax Sorry if I'm a bit late pointing this out, but going straight for the offensive on Moon PROBABLY isn't the best possible tactic you could go with here. You're not going to accomplish a tremendous amount on your own, regardless of how powerful Rodendramon might be as an individual: most you're going to accomplish is catching Moon's attention and getting everyone killed along with Rodendramon whilst they're still stuck as sitting ducks.
If you wanna argue that it's in character for him to go straight for Moon, then fine. Just edit a bit so that there's more room for error with the attacks he's firing off, then someone or something can stop him from triggering a bad end?
If you wanna argue that it's in character for him to go straight for Moon, then fine. Just edit a bit so that there's more room for error with the attacks he's firing off, then someone or something can stop him from triggering a bad end?
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