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Alexis barrels in, her foot aimed straight at Odysseus' head which, separated from its body, flies across the room, landing in the ruins of an ancient vase.
As masonry dust showers down, and alarming cracks spread across the room, the statues head speaks from it position. "What foul treachery is this? We had an understanding Cassiphone! I do not remember you being as duplicitous as your mother, but here is the proof. MEN ATTACK" he yells, and the statues turn away from Bone Daddy and towards the team!
Herman could see, barely, Shaun running at him. "No! They'll--" come at you ...and they are! Enough leverage! With a few growing swipes, Herman can decimate the bone shards. "Thanks, you crazy highlander!"
Kilt points to the trapped Wingblade. Herman nods and charges the skeletal rex. He grabs onto a leg and rips it off, crushing part of it to powder.
A few swipes from the skull were enough to give Hernan the opening he needed to get free. ”Thanks, you crazy highlander!”
”Ya’ can buy me whisky later! Right now, go get Wingblade!”
He pointed over to Bone Daddy’s ride, and Herman handily started ripping it apart. Well, he’s got that handled. He then spared a glance behind him, where he noticed the bones starting to re-assemble. Shit, we can’t just break these things... He looked back over to Hernan’s t-rex hobbling, noticing that the monster’s tail bones had suddenly gotten a lot closer to the ground. And how Bone Daddy was seared at the other end of that spine.
...this is either gonna be awesome, or hurt really bad.
”Get her out of there!” he yelled to the indestructible teen, ”I’ve got the guy who skinned Barney!” With a run and a leap, he jumped onto the giant skeleton and started scrambling towards the necro-pimp.
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Kaoru swore in Japanese as her call to Bronwyn failed to connect. She didn't see her on any of the cameras either (not that there weren't blind spots on those). She really hoped that meant the girl was just in some cellular dead zone or something. Or that her phone had just been smashed. And not that something else had happened to her. But the girl did track, so hopefully that meant she would be really good at running away from things.
She pushed those thoughts of our her head, once more addressing Silver Shadow. "Ok, nevermind the other person. I couldn't reach her." She then proceeded to fill the other girl in on the events going on as they happened, including the appearance of some freakishly tall dude in armor and a bunch of statues coming alive. And...apparently getting into a fight with Alexis. Which probably wasn't good. But it did give her an idea.
She scanned through her code files, certain she had seen something that might be relevant. Eventually she found it: a file named dinosaurs.py. She opened it to be sure. Oh lord, what is this? The program in question was a heaping mess: there was no discernable structure or overall design, everything seemed hardcoded with magic numbers scattered about, and if there were any more copy-pasta, it would have been fit to serve as an entree at an Italian restaurant. Glancing at when it was last modified, she got her answer as to why it was so terrible. It was probably one of the first programs she had ever written. She could vaguely remember it. It was a project she had worked on with both her parents. Something about controlling some of her dinosaur toys?
She glanced between what she had to work with and the camera feed of the animatronic dinosaur display she had seen earlier. Uggg, why is there so much hardcoding? There's no way I'm going to be able to generalize this enough to work on all the things in there in the time I have! Looks like I'm stuck with a...t-rex, triceratops, mastodon, sabre-toothed tiger, and...pteradactyl? She squinted, zooming the camera in on one of the robot pterodactyls and groaned. There was no way that clunky thing would be able to fly, and with those little tiny legs its mobility would be almost nil. It was basically completely useless. Whyyy would you go and pick a fking pterodactyl?!
As best as she could, she modified the code to give her some kind of remote control. Voice commands were out of the question (plus she doubted the robots had mics anyway). It didn't look like the dinosaurs were hardwired, so they might have some kind of bluetooth or NFC. Just to be safe, she had the program listen in for any sort of communication with a specific authorization code and as backup told it to attack anything moving taller than 9 feet (she wasn't exactly sure what armor-dude's deal was, but it probably wasn't a good idea to attack him if he was trying to help out).
She quickly downloaded the code onto her phone and then dialed into her conference call herself, giving her phone remote control over the camera images. "OK, gotta go AFK for bit. Got an idea. If you can somehow lead the bone dinos to the animatronic area, do. If not, well, I guess I'm bringing the display to them. BRB." She really wished she had her headphones. At least then she would still have audio on the conference call. Why oh why did she have to forget them? She set off at a sprint towards the display, glancing between her phone and her surroundings as she did her best to dodge the worst of the undead hoard.
As the Kilt began his climb, Herman's strikes tore away at the towering behemoth, ripping away its physical supports and gravely weakening its remembered flesh, the undead beast barely standing aloft. The Kilt nearly slipped from his handhold in the Rex's eyesocket as it teetered, sending his blade clattering to the ground as he clung to it tightly.
Atop his horror, Bone Daddy turned on Herman with an unsettling grin. "Now that's mighty unneighborly of you. An' here I thought your mother woulda taught you to respect your elders. Manners supposed to be bred in the bones, after all. But I can help wit' that." Herman's limbs suddenly shot out to the side as though he were being stretched on a rack.
"Jus' like your mother. All that muscle goin' to waste wit'out the right support."
***
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think she's to blame here. There's too many sides here, gotta take a chance on someone, and Alexis just made it a lot harder to make nice with the local statuary.
With careful but purposeful steps, Bran placed himself between the circling statues and Hex, Gae-Dearg held forth as a thin red line.
"Cassiphone," I see why she goes by Cassie, "Can you return this place to order?"
Kaoru, while an Assess roll might not be necessary, I'd love an Unleash roll to 'Reshape the Environment' with your zords. I promise, even on a miss you'll still be able to regain control of them :-p
Kaoru rushed into the hall of robo-dinos. Since it lacked undead to animate, it was relatively safe and there were a few students scattered about, hoping to wait out the chaos and destruction outside. Without hesitating, she quickly found a port on as many of the dinosaurs as she could (or, rather, as many dinos that matched whatever the hell her younger self had used as criteria for selecting them). Rapidly she began uploading her program, and one by one their eyes turned on, awaiting the program's main method trigger. Once done, she pauses briefly, taking a deep breath. God I hope this works better than the camera hacking... She pressed the start button and the creatures roared to life.
As the dinosaurs started to charge, no one was more surprised than her when at the same time the opening lines of a song began to blast through the speakers in her animatronic army. There was music in that program?!? Her eyes grew wide and some part of her mind desperately hoped no one could see the blush covering her face. Though a more detached part of her brain was commenting about suddenly knowing why her younger self had picked those specific models. Please God, let no one recognize that music... Even as she thought it, she knew it was a pipe-dream. After all, the music identified its source with the opening line: Go Go Power Rangers!
Odysseus didn't get a chance to say anything else, as Alexis' foot smashed his statues' head in. It laughed at her again, as it dumped cold water on her after having her head nearly twisted off. She trembled, looking up through her helm's perforated faceplate and let off an inhuman snarl.
There were seven statues left.
She charged forward like an ancient gladiator, dao sword in hand as she dove right into the crowd of statues, chipping away at their exteriors and losing herself in the moment. There was still a thrill she got from this that she didn't hate. She just hated being used.
Then a spear burst through her stomach from behind, causing her to pause and look down.
She was enraged. Again she'd been hurt, even as she snapped off the haft and yanked it out the other side, going defensive. She vomited up blood that dripped through the holes in her helm, giving her an even more savage look.
"YOU STUPID GIANT! WHY AREN'T YOU FIGHTING!?" She snarls at Bran, before reengaging - they can see the hole in her abdomen is closing up on its' own.
As Bran takes up his position inbetween Hex and the statues. seven heads swivel to follow him, whilst the eighth; the headless statue of Odysseus, stands behind them. "You defend the witch then? So be it. " Odysseus' damaged head yells from the other side of the room, as the seven other statues advance on Bran. Two of the statues are armed with swords, three with spears. The remaining two are unarmed, except for their large, stone, fists. For a moment the statues pause before three of them simultaneously launch an attack on Bran. Though he successfully paries the first, and the second attack, the third finds him and his side is pierced by a well-aimed spear thrust.
Cassie watches in horror as the statues she had unwittingly animated turn on the large man, startlingly, the same one from the alley. "I don't know how." she yells. "I don't think they're under my control!" she yells, backing up to keep as much distance between herself and the statues and the animated dinosaurs as she can. As her back contacts the wall, she looks down into the smashed chin of Odysseus, which scowls at her. "You should be afraid, vile witch! See, my men approach. They will kill your bodyguard soon enough and then you too will meet my spear!"
Cassie looks down into the statue's face. "But,.. no. It was an accident!" she says. I've got nothing against you! I don't even know who that girl is! Please call your men off and we can sort this out afterwards!"
Okay, this isn't too bad. It's like monkey bars. It's totally not a voodoo-fied T-f+#~ing-Rex, it's just monkey bars. He'd managed to swing all the way to the monster's head before the whole things started shuddering. Shaun was forced to drop both his switchbalde and the armored skull, clinging to the eye socket of the beast as it swayed from the damage. NOT LIKE MONKEY BARS NOT LIKE MONKEY BARS NOT LIKE MONKEY BARS-!!!
His grip wasn't strong enough. He was gonna fall any second. And now the witch doctor was taking over Herman! Then, he saw it. The coat-tail of the villain's ridiculous outfit hanging off the side of his steed. ...well, I'd already figured this was gonna hurt.
"Jus' like your mother. All that muscle goin' to waste wit'out the right support," Bone Daddy taunted.
"THAT'S WHY HE'S GOT ME!" Kilt jumped, grabbing onto the coat and dropping like a stone to the floor bellow, dragging the villain with him.
For a spear of stone or steel to pierce Bran's armor, the wielder had to be not only strong, but skilled, or at least lucky; the curves of the thick plates made it difficult for any weapon's edge to strike true.
So as the squeal of tearing armor filled his ears, two thoughts drifted across the mind of Bran the Blessed. These statues should really have been disarmed by the archaeologists who found them. Just a good safety precaution. and Good thing there's more armor underneath my breastplate...
The spear fouled in the links of the hauberk that made up the next layer of his protection, and he hurled back his assailant with a grunt, not wishing to go on the offensive, but increasingly doubting that he had any choice...
Herman hit the dino skeleton like a Mack truck, causing the whole ghostly creature to shudder and buckle. The dino rider then puts the son of Go into some sort of magical vise, ignoring his captive.
Wingblade squeezes out of the gap between the ribs and the clavicle just in time to see Kilt haul himself up the skeleton past her and jump at the necromancer in a crazy stunt to save him at the cost of falling nearly twenty feet to the concrete floor.
Wingblade dives to snatch him out of the air before he suffers a nasty impact.
With a flick of her deadly wings, Whippoorwill's protege spins upside-down to catch the Kilt, freeing the necromancer from his grip but sparing the Scotsman from a nasty impact with the ground.
"Dammit, Kilt!" Wingblade shouts at him as she reorients to give him a soft landing. "Don't kill yourself trying to impress us!" she chides before turning around to see what the necromancer has in store for her.
Alexandra arrives from the side, after having dragged some civilians out of the way. she watched Wingblade tear her way free of a kinda-there T-Rex, and she watched her save that idiot from falling to great injury... wait a minute, he was here!
but there was a lot going on. she needed to sentre herself. centre everyone fighting, if she could.
Alexandra takes shots as he falls,a few of them probably going closer to Wingblade and Kilt that is comfortable. Wingblade would recover pretty quickly, regenerators always did.
Mercy looked at the statues around her in the room. Half of them were fighting Bran, and Mercy was dealing with the other half. All she needed to do was to completely destroy them, right? They weren't invincible, but they were many and not as mindless as the skeletons.
Thinking had never been her strong suit. So she pushed ahead with her first plan, hit them all until they broke apart. Until this whole room broke apart!
She altered her stance, and as the statues came after her, she shifted her center of gravity, grabbed onto two at once by their arms, and spun them around her, launching them into their brethren statues. Which also flew back and crushed a ancient chariot, ripped through a tapestry, and finally watched as they were shattered into pieces as they burst through the adjoining wall into a room where another fight was happening.
Their numbers halved, Mercy turns towards the remaining four, which have grown far more wary of her than Bran. She seems to have an unholy aura around as she rushes to enter that fray as well. "Stupid giant can't keep up with me!" She shouted at Bran.
A lot of things happened at once.
Kilt jumped, latching onto the coat-tail. The pimp started losing his balance, losing focus on the spell. Both of them started to fall.
Then Wingblade broke free, and for some reason decided saving him from the fall was more important than the witch doctor.
That was followed immediately by a half-dozen darts flying in out of nowhere and peppering the pimp. Hopefully it was aimed at the pimp anyway. Another villain showing up now would not be great.
And on top of all that, the archway to the next exhibit over suddenly uploaded outward as half of a statue came flying through it.
At present, Shaun was more concerned with Wingbalde's "save." "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"
"Damnit Kilt! Don't kill yourself trying to impress us!"
"ARE YOU FOR REAL!?! I had him! I f~*@in' had him n'ye' just-!" He rather ungracefully dropped onto his butt as Wingbalde dropped him off. "GET TA' F+~! BACK HERE!!! Oh ya' unbelievable a*@!%~@!" He got back on his feet and tried to take in what was happening in the adjacent hall.
It looked like an entirely different skirmish. Multiple figures, easily distinguished by their organic-ness; people vs statues. Specifically, about four-and-a-half statues versus three normal people. Well, "normal" people. To his dismay Kilt recognized the imposing form of Bran, who had seemingly just taken a spear in the chest without any blood being drawn. A figure in a battle helm and a sports bra (what the hell?) was currently half-covered in blood and flinging evil statues around like they were made of paper. Judging from the fact that the blood was more than likely the figure's own (considering statue's didn't bleed last time he'd checked), Kilt figured she must be the homeless girl (what was her name? Lexus?).
The farthest figure, clutching a rod of some kind in the back of the room was...her. The girl from the alleyway. She looked somewhat panicked, and judging from the flow of the fight the statues were gunning for her. But why?
Wait, didn't the pimp say he was looking for something? His eyes fell on the rod in the girl's hands, and the gears clicked.
"WINGBALDE!' he shouted waving his hands to get her attention. "TA' ROD! GET TA' ROD! HE'S AFTER TA' ROD!" He pointed frantically at the girl as he sprinted forward, ducking through the new exhibit access hole and joining the statue fray.
As it turned out, rugby-tackling a man made of marble was pretty effective, especially after you smashed his head and solders to rubble against the corner of a display stand. Now freshly covered in powdered antique, Kilt darted over to the lady mage. "Ye' alright!? Can ya' move?"
Cassie looks up at,... (what was his name again?, Seamus?, No, Shaun, that was it.) and nodded, fear but also determination in her eyes. "I can move" she says, "But they need help! I might be able to do something."
Turning to face the statues still in combat with the big man and the crazy girl, she pointed the staff forward and began to mutter under her breath. The words sounded like greek . As she spoke, a nimbus of glowing amethyst energy surrounded the staff and began to build in intensity. After a moment, the energy shot forward, enveloping several red braided barrier ropes, which started to flail about, tangling the remaining statues' legs. For a moment, it looks like they might topple but then, one after another, each of the stone figures steps forward breaking the ropes, which fall to the ground, inert.
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As the darts come flying in from Silver Shadow, a look of uncertainty crosses Bone Daddy's painted face. He yells at her, "Stop that! There need't be an'body hurt if'n y'all had just run away! I jus' wanted t' rod!"
Wingblade rolls her eyes at Kilt's reaction to the save, but figures she shouldn't have expected anything less. With a powerful beat of her wings, she returns to the fray.
Bone Daddy sees the winged girl approach. "Then again..." He blows a handful of powder into Wingblade's face.
Shayera coughs and sputters a moment, scowling. "Poison? You realize this won't--" Her voice trails off and her face takes on a dreamy smile. "Hey," she says.
"Hey, chère. How 'bout you snuggle up with Bone Daddy an' keep 'im safe?"
Wingblade blinks, then lands next to him on the dino's neck and puts out her wings like a shield. "I can do that..."
What do you do???
As Hex draws more deeply on the rod's power, more and more whispers begin to fill her mind, tempting her, drawing her senses closer and closer.
Odysseus and his men went flying beneath Mercy's relentless assault, the ones who remained remotely intact still cut off from the fray by the collapsing walls.
This is crazy, she's going to bring the whole place down. He shoved a stony soldier back a pace and cried out to Alexis, "You cannot defend this place by destroying it. Have a care for your actions!"
Alexis didn't bother listening to what the giant had to say, as she was too far invested in smashing the remaining statues into pieces. Then the rumbling started anew. And strangely, weird guitar music playing out as well. She glanced to see the arrival of a fully fleshed T-Rex, a mammoth, a triceratops, and some ancient smilodon rush into the fray in the opposing room, where she'd smashed the other statues into.
She also saw Shayera, in her winged form, clinging onto some awful, hideous and gaudy man riding his own dinosaur in skeleton form. Her priorities shifted, as she kicked her current opponent into Bran's fray before running into the other room. She launched herself up and used the new creatures as springboards to put herself higher and higher into the air, until she was flying at the man and Shayera himself.
But Shayera was getting in her way, her wings blocking and buffeting Mercy from getting close to that man. "Stop it! You're supposed to fight him!" She shouted, trying to figure out why Shayera was acting like this.
She didn't know. She couldn't get through to her. But then Bone Daddy turned towards her and blew dust at her. It was effectively stopped by the helmet she was wearing caked in her blood, but it was enough to distract long enough for Shayera to knock her off of the dinosaur skeleton, landing hard enough on the floor to crack the concrete. She shrugged it off and got up, worry on her face - and she looked at the odd boy in the room holding half of a dinosaur leg.
"Hey! You!" She points at him. "You're strong too. Help me save Shayera!" She blunted demanded of him.
Shaun gave the mage a sidelong glance as her spell faltered. "I 'pprec'ate ta' thought mo neach brèagha, but right now ye'n' that fancy stick are ta' bad guy's target." As he took a defensive stance at her side, he started looking about for anything even vaguely weapon-shaped. "We need ta' get ya' out of here. Picka direction n' I'll be right behind ya'."
Herman watched as the walking voodoo stereotype blew some kind of powder at Wingblade, and barked an order at her. Some sort of mind-control bullshit. "Yo, did you seriously just roofie as superhero? Just how the hell you think that's gonna go for you?" Bone Daddy takes little notice, however, as he is focused on the strong girl yelling at Herman.
Wingblade's head felt like it was stuffed with cotton candy topped with cherry syrup and gumdrops. She giggled. She saw people running around, yelling and causing a great commotion, but she was high up. It was like a parade and she was on the top float. Bone Daddy had an arm around her waist to keep her close.
Someone wanted to be up on the top, too, but that was against the rules. She put up her wings to block that person, and kept her from staying on the float.
Crashing and bellowing roars caught her attention. She watched from her perch as bone dinos regular dinos smashed into each other, ripping and tearing. Wingblade watched closely with a wide smile on her face, making sure nothing got close to Bone Daddy.
"Tey got the robots t'fight now? Aww, an' someone went an' locked away me bone-men. Could you go let them out so tey can join t'party? Then come right back."
Wingblade giggles again. She loved parties. "Sure, Daddy." She leaps from the top of the parade float and soars over the fray, dropping down next to the service doors. She slashes them open easily and snips the red velvet ropes to let more partygoers arrive.
Pleased with herself, she launches back into the air to head back to Bone Daddy.
The mighty robots charged. Except for the pterodactyl, which just kind of hopped awkwardly in the correct direction behind its fellows. Kaoru shook her head but ran off after them. She headed towards the statue room, hopeful that the dinos would provide enough of a distraction for them to get whatever the voodoo pimp wanted and run away.
"Hey guys. We find out what he wants yet? Best to run while they're distracted. Wait...Shaun and Cassie? Nevermind, the robot army isn't going to block line of sight for long, so we should take advantage of it." Ugg, what was going on. It's like everybody she had met thought they were some kind of superhero! ...but then, she wasn't sure she was one to speak since she was still around. Like an idiot. This is what I get for WWSSD. I'm gonna get myself killed. Which is why running away is good now! Man, I wish I could teleport. That'd come in handy right now...
She scrolled around the security footage on her phone. "Oh god d*mnit; someone let the skeletons back out." Which means she'd probably have to decide if she was willing to sacrifice her laptop or risk sacrificing her life.
If only they could sense her frustration, Mercy thought the group would get more serious about saving Shayera. The gross powder made her compliant for some reason. She watched her fly off to undo Mercy's containment. If she got back to Bone Daddy, he might drug her more.
Like the man with the van who said he was just trying to give out free meals, and she wound up groggy and confused and him on top of her.
"Stop shouting and hit him!" She ironically shouted at Herman. She couldn't let that happen to Shayera. With a grunt, she jumped and springboarded off the triceratops, going for Wingblade.
Only one way to stop her from getting back to the bad man. Her blade stabbed and sliced through the joint that attached to her powerful back muscles, sending them both tumbling down. They landed hard next to Kaoru, the concrete floor no cushion at all for them.
I don't know how complete his control over Shayera is. I know she wouldn't hurt any of them in her own right mind, but who even knows what she's seeing them as? That dust he hit her with can't be chemical if it got a hold of *her* that quickly... Sorry sweetie, this'll be the fastest way.
All around was the chaos of battle, trumpeting music, crashing stone, Herman getting trampled by a robot dinosaur while he wasn't looking, but it all fell away to nothing. There was just Bran, Gae-Dearg, and the graceful arc of Shayera's flight.
And Alexis about to ruin everything.
The decision was made. Then everything was in motion, every part of his body working in practiced unison to send the dread spear rocketing out to pin Shayera to the wall, already working to drain Bone Daddy's enchantment from her as the force of the throw flung her out of Alexis's path as well.
That shouldn't be anything to hard to heal. Glad they're both tough.
Up in the hall of weapons, Kaoru noticed that not all of the skeletons were looking to rejoin the fight, some of them were just gathering up assorted weapons and shards, and beginning to scatter!
Alexandra was mentally going through counteragents for common mind-control poisons. The Hacker kid was doing well.
Good job... We need to get you a codename. but I love the dinosaurs. she says
but shayera was... shit, that needed dealing with. it meant Bone-daddy had another minion, which they needed the same way she needed surprise trepanning, and it meant he had a convenient shield, if she tried anything...
or, maybe Bran wasn't as fond of Shayera as she had thought... well, she was a regenerator, but, wow!
whatever, gave her an opening. she pulled the pin from a concussive explosive, and tossed it up to him, shouting Hey, Bonehead!
They'd been about to crash into each other, before Shayera suddenly was blown out of the way. Alexis cringed as she saw her mercilessly pinned to the wall with a spear like a butterfly on a nail, as she fell and tumbled and landed next to Kaoru in stunned anger. "Stupid Giant! I had her!" She shouted as she kipped up, her dislocated elbow snapping back into place.
The skeletons that were attempting to flee forgot one particular detail - cats loved to chase moving things. So the smilodon with its over-sized fangs pounced from one to the other, snarling and crushing them as any big cat would. But after they were all gone, it's gaze landed on some straggling students attempting to now flee for the stairs.
Cats loved to chase moving things.
Kaoru very quickly moved away from the confusing threesome of Alexis, Sir Tin Can, and Metal Angel, not sure why they were fighting or which side any of them were fighting for, but eager to stay out of it. Destroying skeletons and statues were one thing, but other people? That was pretty excessive.
Good job... We need to get you a codename. but I love the dinosaurs.
"What, you don't want to just call me t3h l33t h4xx0r?" The giant robo-cat then caught her eye. Oh sh*t. She was pretty sure that kind of behavioral programming was well out of even her elementary school reach. Which probably meant her mom had added it with the assumption that it would only be run in the little toys she had and not the small-horse-sized automata the code was now running through. She might want to do something about that...
Cassie glanced back at the exit leading further into the museum away from the melee, and then at the combatants. She knew Shaun was right, that they should run, but... No! She says. We can't just leave them to fight him. Not if we might be able to do something to help!"
For a moment she considered trying to use the staff again. She felt its seductive promise of power, but shook herself. No. She had to resist it. She wasn't great at magic yet - Gabrielle had drummed that into her repeatedly, and she hadn't studied enough but, maybe there was a way she should help. Gathering herself, she muttered some incoherent words: "καπέλο, αγκαλιάστε τον κύριό σας" and made a gesture towards the crazy voodoo man, using a simple cantrip to pull his hat down over his eyes. Unfortunately, however, as the tattered object slipped down over his head, it tore in two, having no effect.
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Wingblade couldn't wait to get back to Bone Daddy. The cherry-soda fizz in her brain started feeling less bubbly, so she was eager to get near him. A shadow from the ground moved quick, jumping up high to get at her.
She twisted in air, putting her wings out to defend herself and enraged that something wanted to ruin the wonderful parade. There was the briefest moment of contact--
And then a bloom of pain shot through Wingblade's core and caused her to go flying across the room and slamming against the wall.
The sugary high fades almost instantly, replaced with a bright lance of burning agony in her midsection. The bright masks and beads and large floats disappear from her vision, replaced by roaring dinosaurs of the bone and metal variety, along with a mass of skeletal humans moving around at the floor below.
She finally blinks away the hallucinations and looks down to the source of agony running through her gut. She recognizes the shaft of ancient wood. Gae-Dearg.
The red she hadn't seen in what felt like ages crawls around the edges of her vision. She sees Bran towering over the others in the battle below and she locks eyes with him. Her face is twisted in a rictus snarl.
Her blades go to work behind her, shredding the wall she's pinned to, and the spear loses its purchase. She drops, blades scraping along the wall and leaving a red, bloody trail, until she lands hard on the ground. She gets up and moves with determination through the combat, beelining straight to the Welsh warrior, Gae-Dearg still impaled through her stomach. Somehow, the mayhem of the battle just seems to part before her.
When she finally reaches Bran, her face is ashen from the pain, but set in a fierce, blazing glare. "Lose something?" she hisses. Her glower becomes more deadly as she rasps, "Get this thing out of me, then don't try to stop me."
The oddest mixture of emotions churned in Shaun's head. On one hand, she was being remarkably stupid and putting just about everybody in the building in danger. On the other, her conviction to help really...well, it really reminded him of when he was first starting training, pure conviction to help.
He rolled his eyes. "Understood lass. Gimme a secon' then." He crouched behind a near-by display stand, opened his duffle, and really hoped there weren't camera's pointed in his direction at the moment. A few seconds later he stood back up, shirt gone and kilt on (Mm, catchy...!), hastily applied blue warpaint on the left side of his face.
He re-emerged just in time to see Bran turn on Wingblade and bury his spear in her.
"...WHAT TA' F*#% YE' ARMORED BASTARD?!" Something had changed in the situation while he wasn't paying attention. He needed to re-assess...
His mind raced as he re-joined the mage, who he just now noticed was with the try-hard-er from school. Worry about that later man...! There was a new player in the room, a squad of robot dinos who for some reason were blasting the Power Rangers theme. All the statues were down, and everybody was gunning for the pimp. (Just liked he'd been STOPPED from doing! God damn double standard...!) There were still a whole lot of smaller zombies though, mostly made of new human remains. ...I really hope those aren't fresh... He also noted that Wingblade had landed and had approached Bran, hopefully to rip the a~~%+$$ a new one.
Mercy held her sword at rest along her arm as she plotted out what to do here. She looked at Kaoru, then at the dinosaurs, and considered she was the one using computers. She put a couple pieces together in her head, especially after seeing the ragged flesh of the mastodon ripped open to reveal the mechanical parts underneath.
Which meant the cat going after other students was also hers. It also wasn't alive, so she wouldn't feel bad about destroying it. But breaking things seemed to just make everything worse somehow.
"...I'll stop it. You make it stop attacking everything but that stupid man," Mercy told Kaoru as she rushes off to defend the students, interposing herself between them.
Kilt grabbed the discarded axe from the floor. It was old and dull, and he definitely wasn’t used to its balance like he was with the claymore, but it would work well enough.
He looked up just in time to see the helmeted homeless girl run up to the try-hard, then run off to engage a mechanical giant cat of some kind that was pursuing a few corned students. As much as he thought she was insane, he didn’t want anybody to get hurt. A quick flick of the wrist and he buried a 3-inch dagger into the robot’s head.
As Cassie did the exact opposite of what any sane person would do, Kaoru yelled after her, "But if they're after that whatever the hell it is, you could protect everyone a whole hell of a lot better if you lead them off somewhere deserted and- oh sh*t!" It was then that she noticed a very pissed Battle Angel heading towards Sir Spam-a-lot (and by extension towards her) and decided the prudent course of action was to get away from the clearly psychotic people, one of whom was currently impaled and dripping blood everywhere.
And then she had to do a complete 180 as she turned around and saw Shaun stripping for no apparent reason. Jeez, was no where safe? But it did very quickly make up her mind that trying to save the idiots was perhaps less important than acquiring a giant kitty pet. Typing rapidly into her phone, she brought her drone out of hover mode and sent it towards Señor Fuzzikins, doing her best to mimic the slightly erratic flight of a tasty, tasty bird.
Herman cursed a blue streak internally. His invulnerable body used as a tool was one of his greatest fears. He took time to extract himself, even in a crisis situation. Who knows what damage could be done to ancient artifacts, let alone anyone still below!
Bran reached down a hand for Wingblade to squeeze and yanked Gae-Dearg the rest of the way through her core, giving the dark red wood a fresh stain. "I will not stop you unless I must. Please do not force me to do so. His death is not worth the harm it would cause you."
Wingblade's body convulses as the spear is pulled through her stomach, then drops to one knee and holds her side while the wound starts to knit together again. "Don't talk to me right now."
She's back on her feet and in the air before the hole in her torso is healed, but it doesn't slow her down. She streaks across the exhibit hall with a wordless cry straight at Bone Daddy. He appears ready, and with a gesture sends another cloud of dust her way. But the straightforward attack had been a feint, and Wingblade angles her wings and immediately climbs straight up at the T-Rex skeleton that Silver Shadow had knocked him from moments ago.
Her power climb sends her past the giant carnivore, her wings splayed out with their razor sharp edges exposed. She decapitates the T-Rex as she zooms past. The toothy head in seeming slow motion falls directly toward Bone Daddy, who has to dive out of the way before he's crushed by the skull or perforated by its teeth.
Wingblade had reached the apex of her climb and stalled for a moment. As she begins to return to Earth, she reorients herself in a dive toward the necromancer. She angles her wings forward as she drops toward him. Again she cries out in anger as the impact approaches, with bladed wings about to meet tender flesh.
Bone Daddy also screams as he sees Wingblade fall towards him. There's the sudden of impact.
When the dust clears, Wingblade is hanging from her wings, the tips of which curved around and jabbed into the floor around Bone Daddy but all of the blades missing him by the barest of margins. One hand is clamped over his mouth while the other is clenched into a fist and raised to strike.
Mercy was trained to fight. Protecting others was not part of that. Then again, she was now the object that was moving around the most.
Cat loved to chase moving objects.
Her sword was knocked from her grasp as it pounced on her, roaring into her face as its claws dug into her shoulders and abdomen, tearing flesh and cloth apart. At least it was distracted this way.
It was not so painful that Mercy couldn't keep her grip on her surroundings, reaching out with one hand to grab the fallen blade, placing it in the cat's mouth and preventing it from tearing her head off. "Stupid cat! Get off me!" She snarled, managing to push past the pain and lift herself up enough to grapple with the cat. Hopefully Kaoru could regain control of it. The fact her sports bra was in tatters around her shoulders didn't bother her at all.
Cassie did her best not to look as Shaun, for some reason, darted behind a nearby display stand and began to strip. Turning back to the fight, she couldn't immediately see a way to help, or to escape like Kaoru was shouting at her.
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The ancient cat is about to go for another bite when flash of movement out of the corner of its eye grabs its attention. There's a whirr whirrr of the camera in its eyes zooming in and out and it crouches low before pouncing at the flying prey. It misses and goes sliding into a display case of some kind of tribal masks before catching itself and leaping once more. Slowly Kaoru lures it back into the room where the bone dinosaurs were still rampaging, trying to set it on any one of them before rushing to check on Alexis.
"Hey, you ok?" Holy sh*t's that's a lot of blood. But oddly Alexis seemed ok? She felt like she should be relieved by this. It was, after all, a very good thing that she hadn't been the cause of someone getting mauled to death. But then she noticed the girl's wardrobe malfunction and very quickly turned around. "I'll, uhh, find you a shirt." She quickly ran off to go grab Shaun's discarded shirt and return it to Alexis, carefully not looking as she hurled the garment at the girl.
Y'know, 3 days ago Kaoru would have sworn that expecting everybody around her to be fully dressed at all times wasn't a big ask. But it was starting to look like this was not her fate. God, why is this happening to me? What do people have against wearing clothes? And not changing in front of me? And...I guess not getting their clothes ripped off in front of me?
This is a complete shitshow... He hefted the antique as adverted his gaze from helmet girl’s suddenly exposed chest. ”An’ that’s why I ditched shirts. The damn things never survive a fight.” He spared a glance towards try-hard, who seemed to actually be trying to help. ”You laddie, ya’ got any other tricks? Any shields, barriers n’ that? We need ta’ get a better position here...wait was that MY shirt!?”
Kaoru rolls her eyes. "Yes, because I'm secretly from a family of billionaires, and we all carry around personal shields that fit in our backpacks. I've had one fking day to prep for this supervillain sh*t. Hell, my new phone hasn't even arrived after that incident on Monday. I've been making do with what I had already. And in case you hadn't noticed, you weren't using the shirt, Mr. The Situation's So Dire I Had Time To Stop and Put on Makeup." She ran her hands agitatedly through her hair while surveying the scene. What else could she do? She was so underprepared for this. But really, who could have guessed she'd be in the middle of TWO supervillain assaults in 3 days? The fact that she hadn't run for it already was staggering.
Mercy seemed confused when the cat suddenly rushed away. Even more confused when Kaoru tossed her someone else's shirt. She blinked, shrugging as she tossed it on, getting it bloody on the inside as it stuck to her curves and skin. "...You're both funny." She said quietly, now that the hammering of her heart wasn't as bad and she could think a bit more clearly. She looked around at the museum, and didn't know what to think.
"...Are we going to be in trouble for breaking things?" She asked, as bits of the ceiling crumbled away, scattering dust onto the cracked concrete. "...We should blame it all on the bad man. He touched Shayera," She said with anger in her voice.
”Alright laddie, firstly, how ta’ hell should I know who ye’ are?! Sec’ly, who ta’ hell ARE ye’?! Thir’ly, what ta’ F#+& is with this town n’ ruinin’ my clothes?!! Fourthly, this is WAR PAINT, it’s part of my UNIFORM as a HERO, meanin’ I actually know what ta’ hell I’m doin’n’ I know better than ta’ sic RABID F+%!IN’ ROBOTS on civ’s!” He jabbed a finger towards the previously cornered students. ”Now, get them out of here, n’less ye’ got somethin’ actually USEFUL up your arse, GET OUT OF TA’ WAY!”
He then shifted the point to the helmeted girl. ”N’ YOU do NOT get ta’ call me funny! I don’t know what ta’ f*$* Wingblade is thinkin’, lettin’ye’within’ a sixty mile radius of ta’ whole city!”
Wingblade remained poised over Bone Daddy, trembling with rage. She could envision raining blow after blow down upon his face until it was a pulpy mess. Her fist, though, stayed poised and ready to strike.
The necromancer starts to clutch at her other hand which she had over his mouth and nose to prevent any spellcasting. Wingblade realizes she's covering up his means to breathe, and the man is suffocating. His struggles grow more frantic as each passing moment causes his lungs to burn more and more.
"What's the matter?" she hisses through clenched teeth. "Don't tell me you're afraid of death?" His eyes bulge as the suffocation continues. "If you die, will your bones get up and join the party? Wanna find out?"
Beside Wingblade, there is a figure suddenly, with a weapon trained on Bone daddy. The silver shadow had snuck up on the chaos. her hand rests on wingblades arm, gingerly.
Wingblade, you are coming down off an unknown cocktail of potent drugs. I don't think you're in a state to decide if a villain deserves to die she says, in a level, calm, and authoritative voice, doing her best Whipporwhil impression.
I've followed your story long enough to know you aren't a killer. are you gonna let this a+$$&%! be the guy that changes that? She asks her.
While the others had "Bone Daddy" wrapped up, his skeletal minions were still running amok. All this old shit ...I don't care, but some people do. Besides, don't want to give Big Brother more ammo against young supers. While he couldn't fly, Herman was a hell of a jumper. He launched himself towards the skeletons like a cannonball, temporarily disabling some on their way to ...wherever it was they were heading. Unfortunately, now he was completely surrounded by skeletons.