::What do you mean,:: Blaze asked back. ::This is just the usual "Torchy McTorchface" trans—::
He paused for a moment, suddenly realizing something was different. He looked down at himself and his eyes went wide. "What the—HOW DID I DO THIS?!?"
::When's the last time you went fiery?:: Pulse asks, focused on his flight. ::Could that be a symptom of whatever's happening here?::
::This place, the death portal, new powers, who knows anymore. Does it feel any different?:: After Blaze yells Aegis keeps an eye out for anyone that might be trying to attracted to the noise.
but she is too distracted by the sudden power change to pay much attention to anything else.
::If something is messing with your powers you need to shutdown before you accidentally crisp us all but if it's just you but 'more wind' we need to keep looking for these guys.::
"Um…fairly recently,He answered, hesitantly. "I…um…I've been practicing changing my flame color lately…y'know, so I could disguise my power set? But this…what the hell, man!?
"I don't FEEL any different. I'm just…airy and windy and…I'm really sort of out of sorts at the moment."
::So, yes. Could you touch a tree or the ground or something to see how it reacts?::
::If us being blipped through time is going to cause us all new power developments,:: Violet muses, wrinkling her nose as she steps through the soggy ground, considering briefly just saying F-It-All and doing a hover-walk to the destination. ::It is almost certainly going to happen at the most inopportune times. Everyone stay sharp. Don't get caught off guard by your own powers going goofy.::
"Wow. That's cool. See anything up there?" Mud amazes.
Continuing on, with the now very windy but not so blazey Blaze, the group continues forward. For the next two hours, Pulse continues to hear the random blip bleep noise on her radio frequencies, and just when she's getting used to the headache, things go really badly for her. As if something slammed her in the side of the head, suddenly all her radio abilities go haywire!
The feeling is as if Pulse got hit with a taser in the side of the head. Her radar goes on the fritz, and her radio perception goes nuts, as if it was being swamped by random static.
::Holy f!$$, it just went from edges of a projector to green lasers on a cockpit.:: Pulse says as she buckles, stumbling and catching herself, never leaving her feet. "Comms are down." she says, out loud, a moment later. A clear lie to the team, but if anyone were close enough to hear it, it's what they'd be expecting.
When Pulse stumbles Aegis would move beside her offering supporting at the very least.
::Someone's near us?::She asked
::Sounds like I should see if I can still fly or not,:: Blaze/Zephyr(?) sent. ::Here does nothin'!::
And suddenly his new vantage point gave him a view of the jungle below…
::"Oh my GAWD,":: Violet replies. If her thoughts could carry a sarcastic tone, they would. ::"It's here GOES nothing. GOES. 'All intents AND purposes,' not 'all intensive purposes.' 'Beck AND call," not 'beckon call'. Le-vee-OH-sa. Anyway, you see anything up there, Transparent Lad?"::
Blaze, once above the trees, notices a ripple in the trees, as if something big was pushing them from side to side, moving in a more or less straight line toward the group on the ground. The motion in the trees is slight, but noticeable.
"Umm. Do you guys want to hide? I can dig us a tunnel?" Mud offers without much confidence.
::Whatever it is, it's BIG:: Blaze sent, ::not to mention strong! It's like it's moving trees aside on its way here, whatever it is. I could try and get a closer look…::
Of course, the idea of getting close to whatever was doing that wasn't exactly filling him with eager youthful curiosity. More like "OMG" and "WTF" and other things yelling at him to avoid this.
::Shield's up. I'm gonna do some radio disruption in that direction to see if I can block whatever's messing with me. If it goes into my magic circle and it stops hurting to think in radio, we'll know they're the same... if not, we've got a whole other set of problems besides the big one. If it doesn't work, assume we're surrounded. Going underground would just leave most of us squishable by something big.::
With that, she takkatakks in the air, before waving her hand in the direction the bogey was coming from.
in a 4" radius.
Pulse gains a temporary lessening in the intensity of the pulses hitting her as her disruption hits, but all it really buys her is a second of respite before the next pulse of radio waves blast into her again. She does pick up a pulse of directed radio waves that seem to narrow in on her, the radio waves picking up intensity as they narrow directly onto her, as if a cone was smushed down into a line, in between being blasted with radio distortions. She can just pick out a few satellite pings each three seconds, before they vanish again. She can also pick up multiple radio sources, from different directions, all seemingly pointing at her and getting closer. Although only one so far is slamming her senses.
Violet takes a cue from Common Sense and activates her Force Field, but remains on the ground, at this time.
::Yeah, radios all around us. The main thing screwing with me is directly ahead.:: Pulse thinks, facing where she'd fired her power, before letting it die out. ::We should pull back to keep from getting directly surrounded so we're not hit on all sides, and can focus on one target ahead of us. F##% it's back.:: Pulse makes sure to ping the GPS so anyone who is tracking her signal knows where they were when they last communicated, before starting to back up out of the circle that's closing around them.
Pulse is not sure if her pulse will reach the satellites given the amount of random radio noise around here. Or rather, she's fairly sure her signal will reach, but is also fairly sure that random noise will also reach it, meaning her signal is likely to be missed in all the random noise. She knows enough about signal processing to guess that the reason nobody has picked up on this is that the satellites are confused by the random noise, and are just ignoring anything they don't understand.
Mud stands around listening to the tremors wondering what's coming.
::I think they might be homing in on our radio signal devices. Like Radio-based sonar. Leave the radio and GPS and I'll stop transmitting, that might help us get out of their dragnet.:: Pulse adds, still slipping away from the group back towards the direction they'd come.
Everyone is on alert, trying to figure out what is coming. Blaze does an almost Aliens' type count down, 50 meters, 40 meters, 30 meters, 20 meters, 10 meters... While Mud tries to sense any vibrations. He senses something, but it's muted and spread out, more like lots and lots of little somethings and not one big something.
Exactly what it is finally makes itself clear as something bursts out of the foliage, moving at a speed that would make a car jealous in this dense foliage! Like an organic freight train a massive snake launches itself along the ground, massive in size, it's body nearly 3 feet thick as it's wide mouth opens and turns sideways to try to nab Pulse mid thrust!
Violet lets off a string of profanity that the content filter won't let me post but ends with "SNAKE!", and tries to blast the thing with her mind.
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Violet tries to lock onto the mind of the snake and sends a pulse of energy at it, but it's as if the mind isn't there, or rather, as if it's on a different wavelength than she's used to.
In a half second Mud recovers from his shock at the GIANT SNAKE and steps up to punch the creature as hard as he can.
Violet tries to lock onto the mind of the snake and sends a pulse of energy at it, but it's as if the mind isn't there, or rather, as if it's on a different wavelength than she's used to.
::Teachable moment!:: Violet broadcasts. ::I can't get a grip on its mind!::
Seeing Mud go after it with his fists of fury, she also punches at the air in encouragement.
Mud steps over and brings his fists down together as hard as he can on the back of the creature. He feels it compress under him, as the ribs, which are elastic, bend outwards and flex, absorbing some of the force.
::Why did it have to be snakes:: is the last thought that escapes from Pulse before she's promptly turned into a chew toy. Better a chew toy than a snack, though. The snake's teeth rend through her armor, its teeth sinking in as it displaces Bucky Balls - no harm done to their structure, but rather the structure of her suit. It becomes readily apparent to the creature that she is not a robot, as blood pools into its mouth. Whether it chose her because of her radio waves or her heat, she was uncertain, but the threat at hand was not an understatement.
With both of her arms pinned by the creature, preventing her from fighting back, she struggles to get free to do anything.
::Watch out for more. There are more radio waves all around us.:: she shares, thankful that she could 'talk' without having to breathe. She manages to squeeze out a "Motherf*~!ing Midgar Zolom. during the struggle.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" was his rather undignified response (what do you want? He wasn't expecting a HUGE F-ING SNAKE now, was he?}.
Barry didn't even think. He just put his hands out like he usually did when he wanted to shoot fire at something. This time however, instead of shooting fire, he'd shoot…something (what does an air person shoot, anyway?)
Aegis moves forward and tries to get the attention of the beast by swinging at the nearest limb?
Barry's hands point at the creature, and a baseball sized ball of compressed and tightly twisted air forms and rockets from his outstretched hand, slamming into the side of the snake, actually knocking part of it's coils to one side as the massive amount of energy expends from the ball!
Aegis, confused by what's attacking, tries to punch the snake, but misses it, punching out at normal height instead of lower toward the ground.
The snake slithers off into the jungle, moving through the underbrush with a shocking clip of speed. As it does so, it swallows Pulse, gulping her head first down it's throat!
"PULSE!"
He was of a definite mind to pursue, assuming he could get a bead. Even if he could only guess, he'd see what his air version of the exploding fireball was like.
Violet shouts helplessly as Pulse is dragged off by the snake, and immediately starts trying to track her.
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"Pulse!" Mud yells. Then, looks around wildly.
Not seeing where to go, he prepares a Mud Blob.
Aegis sprints off in the direction of the snake trying to follow it's path best she can even after losing sight.
Pulse manages to hold her breath despite the wind being practically crushed from her and the shock of the acid searing its way through her armor.
In her struggle to get free, she focuses on her new trick. She'd never tried to use either of her attacks without her hands, so instead, she focuses on creating a small group of concentric circles, which rapidly collide and draw one of the quarters out of her armor and into the inside of the snake.
::Lots of expletives here.::
Pulse flings some of her buckballs off down the length of the snakes insides, making it shudder and squeeze her tighter, but the creature seems to be used to 'difficult food'.
The snake comes tearing back through the group! This time heading straight for Mud!
The snake's mouth clamps down on Mud, and the fangs sink in!