FujiwaraPhoenix

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

Kochiya Sanae

Aventon — Forest Outskirts

The appearance of the new, far larger centipede compared to the ones they were cleaning up until this point in time cause Sanae to throw her hands in the air in exasperation. While the smaller centipedes were mostly terrifying due to a combination of how they had appeared and a natural aversion to the things, the fact that those were actually babies made Sanae feel like some karmic force may as well have been messing with her.

At the very least, though, the bugs being bigger made them feel a bit less terrifying in the "thoroughly grossed out" sort of way; large as they were now, they felt more like proper monsters than things dancing on the precipice of the uncanny valley.

It was still terrifying, granted, but it wasn't like there were hundreds of them trying to crawl over them and eat them alive.

"Of course those were babies!" the green-haired girl complained, shaking her head before aiming towards the centipede barreling down towards them and readying herself to rejoin the fight. Given their cooler heads (relatively speaking), though, Lewa and Mokou were the first to react to the new threat—never mind Remilia, though, as she was tossed through the air before the monster could even get close—and it took but a few seconds for a spiraling tornado of flames to rise into the skies above as it seemed to consume the bug.

"...Well," the young woman said, lowering her arm for a moment, "that seems a bit... Flashy."

It was hard to discount the visual impact of a spiraling torrent of fire, especially in the middle of a dark forest, but as the flames died down it became clear that the centipede that had been caught within wasn't lying dead on the ground. It's exoskeleton seemed to be glowing from the heat and a few of it's limbs had been scorched off, but the best that could be said about it was that it had taken some pretty heavy injuries and was taking more from effectively being cooked alive...

But that didn't mean it was going to stop there. In it's flailing and blind rage, the monstrous creature lashed out at everything and everything around it. With Mokou being the closest to it and the perceived cause of it's pain, though, she was it's primary target, the rest be damned. Seeing that it was most certainly not dead, though, Sanae wasted no time in adding her own projectiles into the fray to pepper away at the monster's exoskeleton.

On the other side of the battlefield, however, Remilia would not be given any sort of recourse to recover. The sound of those chitinous legs skittering across the ground would not cease, and though the baby centipedes had been mostly routed, they were not all dead. As such, when presented with such a free meal in the form of the prone Remilia, one such bug quickly attempted to approach her and bite away...

Only to disappear through an oddly perfectly circular hole that opened up for a brief second.

Any sort of confusion at that event (if it was even seen to begin with) would soon matter little compared to the other massive centipede that was now approaching Remilia. This one seemed no less aggressive than the one that had sent her flying, and it didn't seem particularly inclined to simply brush her away as the other had...

@VitaVitaAR@EchoWolff@Izurich@Lugubrious@Raineh Daze

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Aventon — Hunter's Lodge

Pleased that Anne had indeed chosen to hear her out, Millie nodded her head before continuing to explain herself.

"Ah, um... That lady was saying something about, uh... Walls between worlds weakening? And I think she said something about evil people trying to, um... Bind? Things to this world?" the young girl began to ramble, only for a sudden shriek from outside the building to cause her to freeze up. In a panic, the young girl quickly covered her head and curled up, nodding her head as Anne went to go check outside to see if anything was up. When there was no response from the woman, though, Millie slowly raised her head back up and called out in turn.

"Um... Is everything okay outside? Was someone hurt or something?"

@Drifting Pollen

Qlippoth Shift: A Supernatural Action RP About Combating Otherworldy Anomalies

Tachibana Masaru

Nagano Prefecture — Abandoned Mansion

As the larger creature stumbled and it's charge slowed, Masaru wasted no time in loosing one last shot aimed up through the bottom of it's head before attempting to retreat. While he had been expecting an immediate response from the thing after firing at it, the monster being forced to refocus meant that the young man had ample opportunity to draw back and pull the fight away from their healer.

Unfortunately, though, Masaru had failed to account for the possibility of the enemy simply siccing another enemy his way. A massive komainu-esque monster had popped out of the shadows, and when the young man glanced over at it for a brief second out of instinct, it was almost as if he could head an alert sound pop into his head. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it wanted his head, and that meant that a continued offense was absolutely not the correct choice of action.

Rather than trying to dance around the enemy he had been trying to kill until now (as he was unsure how likely that his arrow would even lead to a lethal blow to begin with), Masaru hopped backwards and turned his attention towards the komainu rushing him down before firing a few arrows towards the only obvious soft spots on it's body—namely, the eyes and mouth—before readying an arrow and aiming straight at the beast's head. There, a small spiral of water had begun to form upon the arrowhead thereupon, and before long that spiral had begun to move so quickly that the motion of the water could scarcely be perceived.

Wordlessly, the Agent let that arrow fly head-on towards the monster's head. If it came down to it, he would have to abandon any notion of trying to counterattack and focus solely on evasion, but he had to make use of what time he had now to do as much as he could. Wasting time occupying the enemy only mattered so much as he was alive and the others were getting things done, after all.

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

Aventon — Eastern Fields

Though a majority of the animals had gotten comfortable with their newfound freedom by the time Rayne and Fran had arrived on the scene, the latter leaping into the midst of all of them and summoning bolts of lightning where she stood was more than enough to spook them into fleeing. Given how they had just gotten through the chaos of invaders showing up and wrecking things here, thunder and lightning in the middle of a clear day was sufficient cause to panic.

And panic they did. Though the first sparks had spurred the cattle (among other things) to begin to charge, it didn't take long for them to begin to stampede, barreling around and only being roughly directed by Rayne as she desperately attempted to keep the other spooked creatures from getting caught up in the torrent of hooves and dust as it was steered one way or the other.

Unfortunately, what seemed to be missing from that haphazard plan was how to get the stampeding herd to stop when they were pushed back through the fence. Without any reason to stop fleeing the terrifying electricity that had traditionally never been a herald of anything good, the stampede charged straight through the wooden fence that was meant to contain them before continuing to run further east.

For what little it was worth, though, at least the other animals seemed to just be scared stiff by what had just occurred and weren't charging off to follow after the cows. Most of the ones that Rayne had thrown off to the side—or, well, was able to toss away from the stampede—were easily caught by some of the farmhands attempting to handle damage control, which otherwise left the sheep and pigs to be managed thereafter.

@DracoLunaris@Rezod92

Pokemon: Dream

Richard Evans

Route 5

Given how he was still getting paid for every Pokémon he scanned, Richard wasted no time in readying his Pokédex as he ventured into the tall grass. Compared to the caverns he had been traveling through prior, though, this environment felt a lot less... Claustrophobic, to say the least.

Before he could get too lost in his thoughts, though, the young Trainer soon felt Luna's hand tugging at the leg of his pants. A brief glance over showed that the Grass Snake Pokémon was pointing at something in the distance—something purple that most definitely stood out against the verdant colors of the plains—and Richard quickly moved to scan it in turn.

When the professor AI noted something being 'different' about the now-identified Nidoran-M, though, it was hard for Richard to not be curious. And so, when the Poison Point Pokémon bolted off...

Well, what else could he do but chase after it?

@Rune_Alchemist

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

Kochiya Sanae

Aventon — Forest Outskirts

In her adrenaline-fueled panic, Sanae had been able to think of little more than firing off enough projectiles and trying to dodge whatever centipedes were falling around her—this, of course, included any that were attempting to fall on top of her head as they had Remilia's. Regardless of how dangerous they might have been (which her instincts judged to be "fairly so"), the fact that they were both aggressive and falling from the treetops made this whole ordeal far more nerve-wracking than it had any right to be.

Eventually, though, the rain of bugs began to peter out, and with that came enough time for the young woman to finally take a moment to breathe and reassess the situation. Naturally, the others had been clearing through the horde of centipedes at their own pace (some moreso than others), and the floor had by this point been stained a sickly blue color that was wholly unpleasant to look at. The scattered pieces of their bodies lying around on the floor didn't exactly make it look any prettier, but the bugs being dead was them trying to bite her, if anything.

"Haah... What the heck was that?!" Sanae cried out, her left hand clutching at her chest as she held her gohei out with her right just in case that wasn't the end of them. "In what world is a centipede allowed to get that big?"

The threat hadn't abated yet—far from it—but at the very least the young woman had regained enough of her wits to start firing at the centipedes in particular rather than get the others with her too involved.

Though most of the group's efforts would continue to be placed upon trying to clear the still-oncoming waves of centipedes, anyone with the leisure to not have to worry about dying after being bitten might notice that the bugs as a whole seemed to be an opaque grey-black color, and that their bodies seemed to be softer than one might have expected of anything with an exoskeleton.

But between all of the sounds of battle, something else seemed to be lurking about. Though somewhat covered up by the sounds of the centipedes as they were moving about or being struck down, there was another noise—the sounds of chitin tapping against bark, against the underbrush—slowly increasing in volume as the fight dragged on.

@VitaVitaAR@EchoWolff@Izurich@Lugubrious@Raineh Daze

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Aventon — Hunter's Lodge

Millie's eyes shone with admiration at Anne's affirmation of strength, and a small 'ooh' escaped her lips at what she said. The pure faith that she had in the woman's words could have been seen as concerning in a sense, but that could just have easily been construed as childlike naivete at play.

"Okay, Miss Anne," the girl nodded in response to the woman's comments before pushing herself into a more comfortable seated position. "Uh... Do you mind if I ask you another question, miss?"

There was a bit of a pause as Millie hesitated for a moment, and provided Anne gave her okay, the young girl would continue speaking.

"R-right... Um... have you ever had, like... Weird dreams about people you've never met or seen before? There was a really pretty lady speaking to me in my dream talking about a bunch of really scary stuff, but I'm not really sure what she meant by all of it... Or if it means anything at all?"

@Drifting Pollen

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

@MrCellophane: Hm. Okay, well, I guess I should try to break things down as best I can here.
Re: characters: I personally don't believe that any of these three would fit in with the cast at large. Marius is, as far as I can tell, just a normal dude, and given the type of things being thrown around, I don't think he'd last long at all. The other two...
Well, from my limited knowledge of Warhammer stuff, I don't think those characters would play ball very well with the team when we have a vampire on hand (among other things). When you have very dedicated ideologues being told to play nice with races or people that go against their ideals and those people are in the camp of "strike first ask questions later", I think we have a bigger problem at hand.

But more problematic than that, I'd say, is that you're liable to just disappear off the face of the earth with no warning whatsoever. Though the honesty is appreciated, I don't think it's quite fair to anyone if we have to constantly be concerned about whether or not we can have a character be pivotal to a scene without knowing for sure if they'll even be present to allow that scene to move forward. With our weekly posting schedule in place here, I don't think you'd be a great fit for the long-term.

Qlippoth Shift: A Supernatural Action RP About Combating Otherworldy Anomalies

Tachibana Masaru

Nagano Prefecture — Abandoned Mansion

With most of the (comparatively) less threatening goo-soldiers kept down by the team's efforts, Masaru took a moment to take a breath and examine the battlefield as a whole. By some miracle or another, everyone else around him had pulled the attention of their enemies, which gave the young man ample room for threat reassessment. At present, there were only two main threats—the samurai that Zhao had tagged in to deal with and the sohei that the massive centipede was now trying to overpower. The ashigaru and ninja were effectively pinned and ability to respawn cut off at the source, which meant that all they really had to do was maintain the situation as it was now and things were as good as done.

...As if things would ever be that easy.

As though on cue, a rather familiar face (if it could even be called that) sprang up through the clouds of dust and ooze thrown around every which way—the very same figure that had blocked the rear team's advance earlier. While he could hear Agent Yuuma's shouts to engage anything flanking them, Masaru's attention had refocused towards keeping their new "friend" off of their healer.

"Don't need to tell me twice!" Masaru shouted back before firing a few volleys towards the massive monster charging towards Agent Mae and attempting to move in closer for a more "lethal" shot. Regardless of if the first few arrows actually left any meaningful damage, the young man's goal now was to try and land a shot—electrified, preferably—through somewhere soft enough for an arrow to stick. Failing that, though, it'd mean that he'd pull attention away from the medic, and at that point it'd be time to see how well he could dodge and roll through attacks to keep the thing occupied.

Hopefully, the answer to that question would be "well enough", else his first mission could well be his last.

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

Aventon — Town Streets

With the assent of the two girls now well in hand, the young man wasted no time in leading them towards the eastern gate. Given how the chaos had panned out in the rest of the town, the fact that it had escaped much of the destruction that the Heralds had wrought was a small solace, if any.

The walk back towards said gate didn't take particularly long, at least—not with it being a straight shot through from the center of town—and before long the trio had exited into the fields nearby. Needless to say, though, that the area had seen... Better days.

There weren't very many bodies of the deceased present, if at all, but there were signs of the farmland being thrown into disarray from the number of people who had so callously passed through to begin with. A look into the distance would show that the fields further away from the town seemed to be no worse for wear, though, but that was more of a secondary concern.

No, what was really the issue right now was that there was indeed no small number of livestock running around, and next to nobody running around trying to catch them at the moment. Not like it would really stick for anything beyond the cows, maybe, given the apparent destruction of the fences surrounding the pastures off in the distance.

"Ah... I figured the situation wouldn't have improved a bit," the young man sighed before glancing at the two who had volunteered to help. "...Would it be too much to ask if you also had any idea on how to stop anything we got back in from getting out again?"

@DracoLunaris@Rezod92

From Realms Beyond — An Isekai Crossover RP (Now Accepting)

Kochiya Sanae

Aventon — Forest Outskirts

"Fujiwara no Mokou..."

Sanae mulled over the name that Remilia had provided for a few moments, eyes closed as she dug through her memories, before something fianlly clicked for her.

"Oh! You're the one that, uh... What was it that the rabbit said again? 'Snuck out with the princess for a night on the town' or something?" she said, clapping her hands together at what had to be correct. After all, why would a resident of Eientei lie to her about something like that, especially when they had been so helpful during that whole lunar invasion incident?

Never mind what the truth was, though, more help was more help, even if she hadn't been part of any sort of team to pick them up and bring them back home.

It didn't take long for the group to begin to move again, though, and the smell of that decaying corpse hit the young woman's nose well before she saw it. To say it was nauseating to her was a bit of an understatement, and seeing the thing was far worse for her psyche.

"That's wretched," she choked out as she held her nose and mustered up the courage to look at the thing again. "In what world would someone even think of trying to eat that?"

This was, of course, no time for being grossed out—not when Remilia had brought up the possiblity that whatever had poisoned the boar she and Lewa had encountered could have encountered whatever this unfortunate one had.

"...It's not unlikely, though. I'm no expert in stuff like that, but if whatever ate this thing carved through it's stomach, it couldn't have been that strong. The boar we met was pretty durable if a bunch of danmaku didn't leave much of a dent in it's hide."

At this point, though, there was little else to gain from staring at the decaying corpse beyond a growing sense of disgust and physical revulsion. If anything, though, the fact that it was still fresh enough to be rotting meant that they were probably on the right track...

And that probably explained why the other boars had showed up in the area. Fun.

Moving further into the forest would come with the loss of a lot of the ambient noise they had been dealing with prior. While the leaves still rustled in the wind and plants still crunched beneath their feet, no longer were there any of the bird cries that had come in every so often. It was almost as if anything that could move away already had, which was not exactly the most encouraging of things to notice.

It was then, though, that Remilia would feel something somewhat sizable fall onto her head from the branches above. The sound of the impact was enough to cause Sanae to turn to look at what had caused that, and seeing what that was...

Well, it was enough to elicit a rather heartfelt scream.

A massive centipede, at least as long and as thick as her lower arm, had fallen onto the vampire's hat. While that was immediately concerning, of course, it didn't take long for her scream to alert... More of them.

From the underbrush, more centipedes—some twice as long as the one that Remilia had encountered, began to appear from every nook and cranny of the forest at her accidental provocation.

With a bunch of prey right in front of them, it would have been difficult not to expect the swarm to lash out at them.

Naturally, Sanae's first reaction was to fly upwards, only for more centipedes to reveal themselves in the trees above. That only resulted in the secondary response in her arsenal: fire ofuda at anything and everything in the vicinity to get those massive bugs away from her as they attempted to attack the group.

Momoyo had been one thing, but she at least looked mostly human!

@VitaVitaAR@EchoWolff@Izurich@Lugubrious@Raineh Daze

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Aventon — Hunter's Lodge

With Kendrick having left the pair to go and find Alvin, the uncertainty and confusion that was already peeking through Millie's voice was beginning to show on her face. That much might have been expected, given the situation; the last thing she had remembered was Alvin running away with her in his arms, and everything hurting all over before things went black. Waking up back in town was... Confusing, to say the least.

Hopefully, though, "Uncle Ken" would bring her brother back—and maybe with Papa too, if he was at home.

"Thank you, Miss Anne," Millie said as the unfamiliar woman brought her some water to drink. A small sip would leave her coughing, however, and the young girl would take a few moments to recover before putting the mug to the side for a bit.

Maybe she would try again later.

"Um... Miss Anne?" Millie asked, turning towards Anne with wide eyes, "Uncle Ken said you saved a lot of people. Does that mean you're super strong, like those heroes in the stories Papa told us?"

@Drifting Pollen

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Aventon — Town Streets

As the pair continued their conversation in the middle of the street, a young man—one lucky enough to have survived the chaos with only a few bruises and scrapes to his name—quickly scrambled into the area. There was cause for concern written plainly on his face, and given how out of breath he was it seemed as if he was in more than a bit of a rush.

"S-sorry to bother you, miss!" he said towards Rayne, taking a moment to catch his breath as he held a hand up for a moment, "But there's been a bit of a situation out in the fields, and I heard that you might be able to help? A bunch of livestock got loose and with everyone busy trying to help clean the town up, I've been running around like a headless chicken all morning trying to catch them. Some of the people working near the gates said that you were helping clear the rubble out, and I don't want to impose, but it'd be a real help if you could... Well, help."

Given the state of repairs and what could be done, though, maybe this situation was something worth looking into...?

@DracoLunaris@Rezod92

Pokemon: Dream

Richard Evans

Route 2

With some spare time to kill as he waited on Laurel's reply, Richard knelt down next to Luna and checked over her wounds from their brief excursion into the cave. As far as he could see, the damage from her scuffles with the Nacli were fairly superficial—a few bruises here and there from the stones thrown and a bit of mud stuck on her, but nothing too bad beyond that.

After flicking the latter off of her body, though, Richard soon found his Pokedex firing off with a notification. A quick glance over to it confirmed that Laurel had indeed stuck around; all the better for him, really.

"C'mon, let's not keep her waiting too long," the young Trainer spoke as he beckoned the Snivy to follow him to the beach.

Upon seeing Laurel, though, Richard responded in kind with a brief wave as he and Luna made their way over.

"The caverns could have been worse, honestly," he remarked before pulling out the newly-filled Pokeball at his waist and tossing it's resident—the somewhat roughed up Nacli he had caught earlier—out onto the warm beachside sand. "Found a new team member in there, though. Meet... Sara. Yeah, that feels about right."

Instead of having any reaction one way or another though, the newly-christened Sara seemed to be content burrowing halfway into the sand and relaxing there to heal off her wounds. Luna, too, seemed to be taking the time they had now to sunbathe a little and relax.

"Going to take that as an 'okay'. Right, well, I think these two need some time to shake off the damage they've taken, but once they're done with that we should be good to head out."

Route 5

Once Luna and Sara were rested and ready to go, Richard returned the latter to it's Pokeball before following Laurel's lead. When beaches gave way to rolling plain and hills, though, the young man was more than happy to take a deep breath of air.

Salty sea breeze had lost it's novelty a good two weeks ago, after all.

At Laurel's declaration that she would break away and continue training on her own—coupled with a little reminder to keep training—Richard gave a nod and waved to her.

"Catch you in a bit, then," he said as Luna followed soon thereafter, giving the young woman a wave goodbye of her own. "Well, Dark-type... We've got options, but let's scope the place out a bit first."

Hopefully the place would have something his team could square up against well enough...

@Rune_Alchemist