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STATUS: Acquire child. 8 yrs ago
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- Old Guild Username: DarkGrey
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Satiah
“Hm?”
The sudden murmuring of the people behind her and the sound of stumbling, erratic shuffling of sandals upon sandstone caught the handmaiden’s air. Satiah turned her body to face the source of the commotion, catching sight of the hobbling soldier. She raised an eyebrow, recognizing the man from his voice and appearance, “...Bak, are you drunk?”
Her eyes widened the moment he slumped over dead, blood starting to pool from a grievous wound in his back. From a dagger, by the looks of it. She frowned and knelt alongside Qar, who had arrived when the commotion had built up and was currently giving his adjudication. As much as she'd have willed it not to be, his death was final. “Rest in peace,” she said, rolling him on his back and swiping his eyes shut.
Then she stood, and at the moment, it was as if Satiah’s perception of the world had refined itself into a needle point. Information from her senses was rapidly acquired and demarcated into a binary assessment of usefulness. The sight of bone white masks among the sea of civilians, the flash of their blades in the sun, the presence of allied forces. Lines of attack and defense began delineating themselves within her mind’s eye.
“Nebet's in the temple. Amen's unknown.” A quick, composed response to Qar’s worried query, then a quick sidestep to avoid the first assailant, whom Qar had swiftly dealt with using his magery. “Both are likely to be surrounded by defenders. Amen can handle himself and likely has the most back up, Nebet is in the seat of her god’s power. They’ll be fine, unless they've sent a legion to overwhelm palace and temple attendants, but I'm sure they didn't. Too obvious. We should deal with our problems, first. They might hurt the innocents, otherwise.” Satiah’s robes shuffled as she parted her feet, lowering her center of gravity in preparation for the wave of opponents. “Zamonth, I’ll take this side,” she announced, moving away from the two and towards the crowd. “Oh, and try to take at least one alive!” she commanded, steadying her breath as the second wave of assailants broke from the sea of people.
The assailant launched himself forward with a lunge aimed for her core vitals. Behind the figure, four others made up this side’s portion of the wave, each readying their weapons and assuming complimentary stances. The moment was suspended in her mind. In an instant, cold lines of probability coalesced into vectors of movement, counters, stances, applications of force - she knew what she had to do.
’Avoid strike.’ Satiah lunged left, allowing the blade to pass through her robes with an audible tear, leaving a hole through which the enemy’s body began to pass. ’Envelope target.’ Throwing her arm over and forward and then hooking back, she converted that hole into a lasso - or noose. ’Disable first, counter second. Satiah pivoted on her front foot and guided her constricted opponent, still struggling to escape the all-encompassing fabric, by the back and into the path of his ally’s blades. ’Exert force.’ Raw essence flowed through her body and another palm strike snapped the first’s spine, ruptured an organ or two, and sent him and his partner flying into a nearby wall, her torn right sleeve falling gracefully after them and a smear of blood along the wall at the point of impact
Two dead. One incapacitated, or dead. Three approaching from separate angles - a triplicate pincer strike.
Satiah grinned like a feral beast. She kicked the dagger at her feet into her hand. A poor day to have not brought a bow along, but then again, armed with such a thing she would have made short work of these assassins. But that is life.
’Gather enemies.’ She darted backwards as they converged upon her position. ’Distract leader.’ She tilted the blade, reflecting the harsh desert sun directly into the eye holes of first charging assassin, staggering him. ’Target vulnerability.’ She launched the dagger into the stunned opponent’s collar. ’Use disarray to cut distance.’ Cutting the distance in an instant with an essence-fueled dash. ’Retrieve weapon.’ She tore her knife from the blinded assassin’s torso, creating an arc of spatter along the ground as she pivoted to the backs of the remaining two. The count was three dead, one maybe incapacitated, and two flatfooted trying to face their enemy. Unfortunately for them, the woman with the torn robe wasn’t to be seen standing above the corpse of their ally.
’Exploit blindspot.’
From above came the sound of fluttering cloth and howling iron. Too late was the one to the left to react, as the dagger carved through his comrade’s mask, leaving the woman in black crouching over the body like a lion. Seizing the opportunity, the assassin began to lash out with frenetic strikes.
’Avoid assault.’ Satiah rolled off of the corpse, distancing herself from the harshly angled thrusts and slashes. No longer following a well-organized rush or a coordinated skirmishing charge, this was a fully-committed assault - fast enough to pin her down, but following a rhythm of her own. ’Sweep.’ Her foot lashed out with a wide scything arc, one which was easily avoided. Fortunately, the backstep granted Satiah enough time to get to her feet, her hands were clenched in fists. ’Distract.’ She cast dust into the assassin’s mask. ’Parry blind strike.’ Pushing the arm aside with economical force, she stepped into his guard. ’Cross, with essence.’ And with the cathartic impact of her fist splintering matter, the masked assassin fell.
“Everyone alright?” she called out, taking the opportunity this pause in action granted to cast aside her torn robes. More glimmering blades, more masks in the crowd. What kind of crazy guy sends a platoon to kill five people?
Berserker
Da Streets
Interacting with: @Turboshitter Albert Prelati
A blank, unamused stare, like a calm preceding a storm.
Fortunately though, Albert managed to act fast enough to avoid the spirit’s retribution. Shivering uncomfortably at the feeling of the slime snaking its way off her body, she clicked her tongue irately. But she would accept it for now. Loathe as she was to admit it, it was the only way out of that situation. But if it ever happened again…
But what was this? A challenge? “Pfft. Of course!” Roland huffed, “A bullet is a bullet. Even if they had Archer shooting at us, it would take more than that to claim my head.” Fired from an enchanted high penetration anti-materiel rifle or not, it still wouldn’t be fast enough to render moot a Servant’s reaction time. She grabbed Albert and threw him over her vaguely slime-slicken pauldron.
“Directions?” she asked before making a beeline to the forest.
Prof. Sosthenes Antaeoi Kanakaris
Mizushima Household
Interacting with: @Eklispe Cu Chulainn, @1Charak2 Medusa, @Turboshitter Ren Mizushima
So many preparations, and an uncertain amount of time by which to complete them. While nighttime was a standard for magus activity, it was the afternoon and sundown was rapidly approaching. Even then, most rules - especially the unofficial ones - tended to go out the window when you started evoking demigods from another plane of existence.
An enemy could come for them at any moment, so there was no time to waste. Fortunately, standard arrays were relatively quickly deployed by a magus of his calibre. It was the esoteric ones that took more time, but the basics should suffice, especially if they were to go out hunting in the night and especially since Lancer was also getting to work.
But, still crouching to the ground, immersed in the earth and the rich leylines of Fuyuki City, Sosthenes stopped and let his circuits cool. Elsewhere, in audible range, his apprentice had issued a question to him. The professor looked down to his handiwork, then in the direction to his apprentice. Deciding this was as good a time as any for a tea break and a small lesson, the professor headed into the kitchen and began boiling water.
As he waited, Sosthenes spoke: “It all depends on the mechanics behind your Bounded Field. How it’s made and how it functions, most of all.” A cop-out answer so far, but he wasn’t finished yet as Ren might expect from a master geomancer. “If, for example, you had to array boundary runes, the breadth of the array would influence the size of the field. But it’s best to have a wide field, else it’s liable to be only useful once your enemy’s on top of you.” He stopped speaking, as the water for his tea had come to boil. Pouring himself out a glass and dropping a bag inside, he continued. “But there are ways to make a large, static field useful in a crowded area. If it’s offensive - which I assume, given your concern - we could combine it with a battle censure Bounded Field beforehand, turn it into a trap by indicating it’s a dueling ground and springing it when the enemy enters range. Or, depending on how it works, you may be able to incorporate a conditional system.” He took a sip. “I recall encountering one in this town a few years ago, for example.”
Da Streets
Interacting with: @Turboshitter Albert Prelati
A blank, unamused stare, like a calm preceding a storm.
Fortunately though, Albert managed to act fast enough to avoid the spirit’s retribution. Shivering uncomfortably at the feeling of the slime snaking its way off her body, she clicked her tongue irately. But she would accept it for now. Loathe as she was to admit it, it was the only way out of that situation. But if it ever happened again…
But what was this? A challenge? “Pfft. Of course!” Roland huffed, “A bullet is a bullet. Even if they had Archer shooting at us, it would take more than that to claim my head.” Fired from an enchanted high penetration anti-materiel rifle or not, it still wouldn’t be fast enough to render moot a Servant’s reaction time. She grabbed Albert and threw him over her vaguely slime-slicken pauldron.
“Directions?” she asked before making a beeline to the forest.
Prof. Sosthenes Antaeoi Kanakaris
Mizushima Household
Interacting with: @Eklispe Cu Chulainn, @1Charak2 Medusa, @Turboshitter Ren Mizushima
So many preparations, and an uncertain amount of time by which to complete them. While nighttime was a standard for magus activity, it was the afternoon and sundown was rapidly approaching. Even then, most rules - especially the unofficial ones - tended to go out the window when you started evoking demigods from another plane of existence.
An enemy could come for them at any moment, so there was no time to waste. Fortunately, standard arrays were relatively quickly deployed by a magus of his calibre. It was the esoteric ones that took more time, but the basics should suffice, especially if they were to go out hunting in the night and especially since Lancer was also getting to work.
But, still crouching to the ground, immersed in the earth and the rich leylines of Fuyuki City, Sosthenes stopped and let his circuits cool. Elsewhere, in audible range, his apprentice had issued a question to him. The professor looked down to his handiwork, then in the direction to his apprentice. Deciding this was as good a time as any for a tea break and a small lesson, the professor headed into the kitchen and began boiling water.
As he waited, Sosthenes spoke: “It all depends on the mechanics behind your Bounded Field. How it’s made and how it functions, most of all.” A cop-out answer so far, but he wasn’t finished yet as Ren might expect from a master geomancer. “If, for example, you had to array boundary runes, the breadth of the array would influence the size of the field. But it’s best to have a wide field, else it’s liable to be only useful once your enemy’s on top of you.” He stopped speaking, as the water for his tea had come to boil. Pouring himself out a glass and dropping a bag inside, he continued. “But there are ways to make a large, static field useful in a crowded area. If it’s offensive - which I assume, given your concern - we could combine it with a battle censure Bounded Field beforehand, turn it into a trap by indicating it’s a dueling ground and springing it when the enemy enters range. Or, depending on how it works, you may be able to incorporate a conditional system.” He took a sip. “I recall encountering one in this town a few years ago, for example.”
Busy with homework, gonna post tomorrow probably.
Takumi Minamoto - This is Fine.
Third Ward, Sakura Clinic, Fourth Floor
Something was wrong here.
With his attention drawn to the wounded kakuja before him, Takumi had taken note of the rising peculiarity in her behavior. Mere moments ago this woman had tried to kill him, his family, and a bunch of ghoul kids. To see her acting so much like a meek young schoolgirl... It was jarring, to say the least, and in response, Takumi’s expression could only shift into one of befuddled ambivalence. It was good she was taking this well, but at the same time there was definitely something awry about her behavior that was somewhere in the periphery of his mind, unwilling to come forth at his beckoning.
Then it clicked at the sound of Miyako’s giggling, and the sight of everything that followed.
Now, Takumi didn’t much consider himself an expert of social interactions - the most he could really do in a vacuum was discern lies - but he’d experienced this kind of behavior before and, contrary to what he believed it to be, it didn’t bring any great amount of comfort. All it brought was ‘if’s, ‘why’s, ‘how’s and other things he’d rather not think about right now. And this was all in addition to the sinking feeling that he’d made a great error somewhere by letting things come to this point.
Yes, despite the fairly well-put-together demeanor, Takumi was internally screaming, and going through mental jumping jacks to connect whatever dots he could grab at. He was, in all respects, absolutely paralyzed by all these emotions, projections, retrojections and how they all just did not make sense to his bird-brain. What did he even do to get her to like him so suddenly? Save her life? Cerebrally, he knew that Miyako couldn’t be called a mentally stable person, but was she really crazy enough to think she was enamored with him, or was she actually? Dammit, why did understanding people have to be so damn hard?
’...Oh fuck, what am I supposed to do?’ Takumi panicked inwardly, making a point of not showing anything on his face. He remembered the last time a girl liked him and he went with it: everyone told him that he “should’ve just said no” and that “you don’t go out with someone just to get them to stop bothering you”. In short: not a good time for anyone, and therefore not something he was willing to repeat for fear of making everyone sad or mad again. But he also knew couldn’t just reject her here and there, which was the crux of this predicament: how could he resolve this issue without hurting anyone? ‘That line about ignorance being bliss continues to make itself relevant, I see,’ he thought, diverting his thoughts away from the issue at hand.
Suddenly, he took a breath and stood from his crouch, playing with his knuckles as he pretended to be occupied looking at someone (in this case, Itsuki). After all: when in doubt, ignore all of your problems until they become problems. He scratched the back of his head. That wasn’t how the quote went. But it didn’t matter, just like how all this deliberation didn’t matter. Whatever he would end up deciding upon could come later.
Yes, he was content with this result.
Of course, a different statement from the woman tore Takumi from his ruminations. Miyako was looking for someone, it seemed, and fortunately that line of thought meant that she wasn’t thinking about him anymore. The corners of Takumi’s mouth turned downward. That wasn’t a bad thought; it wasn’t good to take solace in other people’s suffering. Still, Miyako’s sentiment resonated with Takumi, but perhaps not positively. Turning his eyes to their limit in order to look at the woman in his periphery, he replied simply: “I get it.”
At that point, Takumi realized he was kind of awkwardly facing Itsuki, so he shifted his body to the group in general, with his back towards Miyako, and posed the open question with a nonchalant shrug: “What now?”
Third Ward, Sakura Clinic, Fourth Floor
Something was wrong here.
With his attention drawn to the wounded kakuja before him, Takumi had taken note of the rising peculiarity in her behavior. Mere moments ago this woman had tried to kill him, his family, and a bunch of ghoul kids. To see her acting so much like a meek young schoolgirl... It was jarring, to say the least, and in response, Takumi’s expression could only shift into one of befuddled ambivalence. It was good she was taking this well, but at the same time there was definitely something awry about her behavior that was somewhere in the periphery of his mind, unwilling to come forth at his beckoning.
Then it clicked at the sound of Miyako’s giggling, and the sight of everything that followed.
Now, Takumi didn’t much consider himself an expert of social interactions - the most he could really do in a vacuum was discern lies - but he’d experienced this kind of behavior before and, contrary to what he believed it to be, it didn’t bring any great amount of comfort. All it brought was ‘if’s, ‘why’s, ‘how’s and other things he’d rather not think about right now. And this was all in addition to the sinking feeling that he’d made a great error somewhere by letting things come to this point.
Yes, despite the fairly well-put-together demeanor, Takumi was internally screaming, and going through mental jumping jacks to connect whatever dots he could grab at. He was, in all respects, absolutely paralyzed by all these emotions, projections, retrojections and how they all just did not make sense to his bird-brain. What did he even do to get her to like him so suddenly? Save her life? Cerebrally, he knew that Miyako couldn’t be called a mentally stable person, but was she really crazy enough to think she was enamored with him, or was she actually? Dammit, why did understanding people have to be so damn hard?
’...Oh fuck, what am I supposed to do?’ Takumi panicked inwardly, making a point of not showing anything on his face. He remembered the last time a girl liked him and he went with it: everyone told him that he “should’ve just said no” and that “you don’t go out with someone just to get them to stop bothering you”. In short: not a good time for anyone, and therefore not something he was willing to repeat for fear of making everyone sad or mad again. But he also knew couldn’t just reject her here and there, which was the crux of this predicament: how could he resolve this issue without hurting anyone? ‘That line about ignorance being bliss continues to make itself relevant, I see,’ he thought, diverting his thoughts away from the issue at hand.
Suddenly, he took a breath and stood from his crouch, playing with his knuckles as he pretended to be occupied looking at someone (in this case, Itsuki). After all: when in doubt, ignore all of your problems until they become problems. He scratched the back of his head. That wasn’t how the quote went. But it didn’t matter, just like how all this deliberation didn’t matter. Whatever he would end up deciding upon could come later.
Yes, he was content with this result.
Of course, a different statement from the woman tore Takumi from his ruminations. Miyako was looking for someone, it seemed, and fortunately that line of thought meant that she wasn’t thinking about him anymore. The corners of Takumi’s mouth turned downward. That wasn’t a bad thought; it wasn’t good to take solace in other people’s suffering. Still, Miyako’s sentiment resonated with Takumi, but perhaps not positively. Turning his eyes to their limit in order to look at the woman in his periphery, he replied simply: “I get it.”
At that point, Takumi realized he was kind of awkwardly facing Itsuki, so he shifted his body to the group in general, with his back towards Miyako, and posed the open question with a nonchalant shrug: “What now?”
Satiah
For such a serendipitous turn of events, Satiah was feeling quite drained. The actual construction of the speech had proceeded relatively without incident after Amen had returned. Which was good, because the tedium was getting to her; indeed, all the discourse and statecraft made Satiah quite dazed by the end of the conference, regardless of how much the content - which itself had a clear right answer that most, for some tragic reason, were too unwilling to call an acceptable measure - had appealed to her sensibilities. But at least a great deal of good was to come from this; they even had a plan to put in place.
Determining that she needed to get out of the stuffy study before her brain began to melt, Satiah left without much fanfare, disappearing from the scene in that shadowy way only a servant could. At the time, the woman had nothing in mind to fill her time. She was not hungry enough to join the men’s feast nor was she particularly willing to involve herself in the frivolous festivities, which themselves tended to be rather unsatisfying without any company.
So Satiah would simply wander the palace, contributing unobtrusively to the work of the palace servants. Fine-tuning and organizational busywork, mostly, until the trumpeting fanfare signalled the start of the speech. While she already knew what was to be said, Satiah hadn’t been doing much else and decided that she may as well watch. Maybe some assailant would take the opportunity to strike at that period - quite unlikely, given the retinue of royal guards arrayed there, but still a possibility.
And so, away from the convocation, the robed attendant watched, listened, and ultimate stopped paying attention. By the final stretch, all she really heard or saw was the murmuring of the crowd and strange patterns in people’s clothes, the curvature of the architecture, and other trivial intricacies of design. “...Eh? Huh, it’s over,” the vizier said after having been torn from her dreamlike state by the thunderous cheering around her.
Following the flowing flock into the festival grounds, Satiah found herself walking around the streets of Thebes, surrounded by people but still alone. At this point in time, she’d gotten hungry enough to acquire food from the festival vendors, satiating her growing hunger and no more than that. A few times she’d gathered glimpses of Qar and Zamonth - their figures quite distinct within the crowd - but hadn’t gone out of her way to address them as she followed the crowd aimlessly.
Alright, just got out of class and finished shoveling my street, so I'm good to start writing, @Blu
I'll only be able to throw out something tomorrow so it's your call boss.
There you go.
BTW is Charak still with us or should I Obi-Wan Sosthenes so that Cu can hang out with Ren?
BTW is Charak still with us or should I Obi-Wan Sosthenes so that Cu can hang out with Ren?
Berserker
Plummeting down 11 storeys
Interacting with: @Turboshitter Albert Prelati
Berserker, with Albert in tow, accelerated through the air, cutting it like she was Durendal itself as the building crumbled behind them. The ground was rapidly encroaching upon them, or rather, they were encroaching upon it. And soon, they would be as a roach underfoot.
Well, survival was no issue for a spiritual body like herself, but her Master was not quite so lucky. Which meant that she herself was not so lucky as well.
Above the whistling wind, her ears registered something, but she couldn’t much hear what the boy was saying between the cutting wind and the loose, flapping fabrics of their respective clothing. As well as what was likely civilians screaming at the sight of a destroyed hotel and plummeting bodies, but Berserker knew they were worrying for naught. Her Master had a plan, and a bottle that he had just thrust into her possession.
A single eyebrow was raised, which quickly became two when the bottle, uncorked, began releasing a rapidly expanding golden gelatin of some variety? “The f-” she began before being immediately silenced. Fortunately, in making the “f” noise, her mouth had been closed enough for her to quickly bar entrance to the golden slime.
They fell some more, and landed with a noise that was presumably some type of ‘ploop!’ - not that she could tell, as the slime was currently suppressing her ability to hear much of anything. To her, it was like diving from the mast of a ship and into the maw of a giant sea creature -a comparison which evoked similarities to Jonah and his large fish, but adjusted to be more suitably awesome for a hero of similar nature. Unfortunately, such a comparison implied the grim reality that one was within the soft, slimy innards of a creature - the exact situation the Servant and Master pair had found themselves in to prevent the squishy Frenchman’s death at the cold hands of Newtonian physics.
Albert could feel Berserker’s guttural growling through the semi-solid substance, and then might be able to see her tear herself from (or, perhaps it would be better to say she swam out of it?) the slime. “Absolutely disgusting,” she groaned once free from the creature, side-eying the golden Phantasmal Beast in all its age and gross gelatinousness. ‘Let’s clean up and regroup elsewhere, Master,’ Berserker transmitted, hearing the sirens in the background quickly approaching the scene of the explosion, ‘I don’t think the presence of a golden… thing… is going to qualify as something within the ordinary.’
Plummeting down 11 storeys
Interacting with: @Turboshitter Albert Prelati
Berserker, with Albert in tow, accelerated through the air, cutting it like she was Durendal itself as the building crumbled behind them. The ground was rapidly encroaching upon them, or rather, they were encroaching upon it. And soon, they would be as a roach underfoot.
Well, survival was no issue for a spiritual body like herself, but her Master was not quite so lucky. Which meant that she herself was not so lucky as well.
Above the whistling wind, her ears registered something, but she couldn’t much hear what the boy was saying between the cutting wind and the loose, flapping fabrics of their respective clothing. As well as what was likely civilians screaming at the sight of a destroyed hotel and plummeting bodies, but Berserker knew they were worrying for naught. Her Master had a plan, and a bottle that he had just thrust into her possession.
A single eyebrow was raised, which quickly became two when the bottle, uncorked, began releasing a rapidly expanding golden gelatin of some variety? “The f-” she began before being immediately silenced. Fortunately, in making the “f” noise, her mouth had been closed enough for her to quickly bar entrance to the golden slime.
They fell some more, and landed with a noise that was presumably some type of ‘ploop!’ - not that she could tell, as the slime was currently suppressing her ability to hear much of anything. To her, it was like diving from the mast of a ship and into the maw of a giant sea creature -a comparison which evoked similarities to Jonah and his large fish, but adjusted to be more suitably awesome for a hero of similar nature. Unfortunately, such a comparison implied the grim reality that one was within the soft, slimy innards of a creature - the exact situation the Servant and Master pair had found themselves in to prevent the squishy Frenchman’s death at the cold hands of Newtonian physics.
Albert could feel Berserker’s guttural growling through the semi-solid substance, and then might be able to see her tear herself from (or, perhaps it would be better to say she swam out of it?) the slime. “Absolutely disgusting,” she groaned once free from the creature, side-eying the golden Phantasmal Beast in all its age and gross gelatinousness. ‘Let’s clean up and regroup elsewhere, Master,’ Berserker transmitted, hearing the sirens in the background quickly approaching the scene of the explosion, ‘I don’t think the presence of a golden… thing… is going to qualify as something within the ordinary.’
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