Project: Gamer Ver. 2 (Young Justice/Gamer/Multicross OC)
- Thread starter Mister Ficser
- Start date
You're forgetting the simple power of time value of money.
Money stuck in a swiss bank a thousand years ago, withdrawn every fifty years and then put back in, has a LOT of time to multiply. Themiscrya would command billions, if not tens of billions, simply by investing some raw gold and silver and letting interest do the work.
And yes, they had money lenders and banking back in ancient Greece, and the Amazons are isolated. they still interacted with the outside world on their own secretive terms.
Well if a cure poison spell causes this much chaos, I can't wait for when "Mend" is available to the masses.
Imagine this: if something you own breaks, you can fixit yourself and don't have to rebuy it every 2 months. Why buy a new car? the old one works great! The Fridge? Purrs like a kitten. that burst pipe? done. Water damage? Repaired. Why buy anything new?
Just add Prestidigitation for cleaning and mold and your house will last for over a 100 years.
Imagine this: if something you own breaks, you can fixit yourself and don't have to rebuy it every 2 months. Why buy a new car? the old one works great! The Fridge? Purrs like a kitten. that burst pipe? done. Water damage? Repaired. Why buy anything new?
Just add Prestidigitation for cleaning and mold and your house will last for over a 100 years.
And then companies will actually have to innovate and not depend on planned obsolesce or stuff being made worse than they used to be made (edit:missed a word)
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Companies already depend on planned obsolescence. Thats why Mend would cause so much chaos. With Mend, all those Companies would go under because most of their costumers won't need them anymore after the first purchase. and that's not counting going to a garage sale and picking up something cheap and repairing it with Mend.
- Location
- united states
Before the Great Crusade I could agree with this sentiment. But After the crusade...
Well... As far as I know, Big E doesn't have much light to share with others anymore, except the light of all consuming Annihilation. Big E's got plenty of that after shedding most if not all that remained of his more empathetic and or loving aspects during the heresy, but he can't gift it out as readily as he might want considering he's stuck slowly dying in perpetuity on the Golden Throne.
I'd much rather have the levels of Innate Power and earned knowledge to equal Big E at his peak... then if I get wrecked its my own fault for not using it better.
The problem with that is that you would have to keep up with the money you lent out, be that to the money lenders, or those who need money directly, as well as your bank accounts, because if you disappear long enough they will assume your dead, or they will go under and who knows if someone will buy them out or not.
Also are those the kind of banks Europe had during the age of exploration where you payed them to protect your money, or the modern kind that pays interest (usually below inflation)?
banking in the primitive days was about moneylending or protecting your gold.
In medieval days it changed so that banks would give you a cut of their profits if allowed to loan out your funds, thus interest, allowed by Jews and spreading to the mainstream (and approximated and worked around in the Islamic world) began to be charged.
You're also missing the point that Amazon money, conveniently filtered through certain parties and families, could very well own major shares in many of those banks! When you have centuries to work with, you can pull off some powerful stuff... and they would have been foolish not to take advantage of their lifespan advantage, and Amazons are not fools.
Themiscrya is not going to go 'missing' long enough, which is why I said cycling the money every fifty years and such, taking it out and putting it back in under a new name.
Amazons are warlike, but they are also geniuses. Business is also a field of war, and they'd do quite well there... and they have some REMARKABLY skilled collection agents...
---
Also, the purple healing ray only working on women is not canon. At times there has been a version of it installed in the JLA satellite to treat the wounded heroes there.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Problem is, they did not interact with the world since before the founding of Rome. There are no banks with that kind of continuity. There are no thousand-year swiss accounts, because they did not leave their island until WW2.
Lordamnesia
What are we doing again?
Yes, but the Loa are a thing in DC, and that's a very specific invitation tbh. Specifically Rum, and a chicken. Which is going to be funny in the future where there's a lot of people doing tasks for the Loa for being absolutely retarded and summoning them
!
- Location
- SoCal
Supposedly it's still in the works.
50 years absolutely minimum. That would probably look like a 6 month to 1 year loan to normal people.
It's not my fault but I'll get blamed anyway
New
The Demon of Hell Street pt2
The once golden paths of Hell Street lay broken and gnarled. Once the pinnacle of opulence and avarice the street has been pulled apart for every golden brick by debt ridden demons.
The grand hellscraper that housed the damned souls of the most greedy bastards known to man, now sports designated windows for stock traders to fling themselves to their undeath. Mammon got tired of paying to replace the windows.
Mammon sits upon his worn golden throne as his corpulent form pours over the sides, the once jewel bedazzled throne showing empty sockets in place of his once proud collection. "Alright now tell me how exactly we are going to deal with us having no @#$#ing contracts, no @&$%ing innocent souls, and no satan damned market!" Mammon yells as he slams his meaty and eternally sweaty palms onto the elephant ivory table.
"Please sir." A literal rat faced demon with numerous hands and far too many mouths, begs his patron. "We have good news! Someone just made magic public to the world!" The little demon squees in a way that would make a person want to puke.
"Huh. That could work! We just need to get summoned more often and soon some stupid $%#% will make a deal! Oh this is perfect! We will be going right to the top once more!" Mammon exclaims with great joy as his folds jiggle and jostle from him standing up.
"Nothing can stop us now! Get all the cross roads @%#&ers up to the @#$crack that the humans call Gotham and get ready to sell sell sell!"
At his call thousands upon thousands of suitcase carrying demons flock to the schism in reality leading to gotham. Their overwhelming greed making them salivate at the new souls ripe for the picking. Like Mammon said, NOTHING CAN STOP THEM!
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"Duh duh do do da da, Bless the water goes here, do do do do da dah." Alchemist hums as he repurposes a comically large bucket he got for a 'steal' from a abandoned water park. The enchantments making the large bucket regularly refill and dump its contents down the now identified sorta hellmouth in the sewers of Gotham. Alchemist knows it isn't perfect and that honestly he will probably get maybe a demon or two tops, but every little bit counts.
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Lucifer Morningstar, The Son of Light, Firstborn, The Fallen, Temptation made flesh, lays upon his piano as he listens to a symphony of utter beauty. Oh how wonderful the sound of the barest most desperate HOPE in Hell giving way to despair. The choir of a million demons burning as, what can best be described as a lazy river of holy water, douses their desperate bid for innocent souls. Oh by Father does it just brighten his day when someone else does his tedious job for him. In fact Alchemist has been rather.... inventive in his gifting of magic to those little apes.
So inventive that it inspires a rather gleeful bit of deviousness in his black heart. Pulling out his Nokia he dials a number. "Ah hello my dear friend, I am calling in the Devil's Due." Lets see how many feathers he can make poor Amenadiel get bent out of shape.
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SPECIAL EDITION
NEW YORK TIMES
NEW MAGIC SPELL
HOW TO BLESS HOLY WATER
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Alchemist stares at the special edition of the paper. "Huh.....neat." He is probably going to get blamed for this. Alchemist contemplates this for a few seconds, then continues doing the laundry.
That is not canon. Amazons are very aware of man's world, staying aware of the technology and the powers that be, plus there are entire tribes of Amazons in Egypt, Africa, and South America that also interact with the outside, routinely learning the most important languages of the day, etc. The easiest way to stay aware is to have a few operatives who go out and maintain a presence in the world. They can sustain themselves as mercenaries, or just hide behind layers and layers of employees, family members, businesses, and the like.
The Themiscrya of the movie is not the one of the comics or cartoons, remember.
- Location
- Land of Confusion
I love this sentence, well done.
- Location
- RS,brasil
if you want to make the amazons worst just give the way they increase their numbers be canon, like they are ancient greek heroes, they are not morraly flawless in any way, they are always too human
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...But why?
- Location
- Auckland, NZ
Really not seeing the problem - as long as they can be taken again fairly quickly. And the original problem was stated as being in a hospital which should have enough security to prevent such from happening.
Pretty sure that the people who are living examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect make uninformed decisions about stuff they don't know about all the time while believing that they know better. It is, after all, how a lot of politics works:
Politician: Do you think that the government can make better decisions about how to spend your money better than you can?
Goobers: NO!!!
The government, of course, actually has the information necessary to make better decisions and it only ever spends the government's money.Goobers: NO!!!
And the people who use it for evil would have already have been evil. Most others will turn it into a benefit for society.
And those stupid few are going to have a hell of a lot more people stopping them.
The Guardians of Oa should stick to sitting on their pointy rocks.
Reminds me of the Costner movie where the 'hero' is allowed to escape Hell with the godklller weapon because the BBG was sacrificing children which Satan does not approve of.
Those people should also be looking at the meaning of the word 'sacrifice' because what they're doing isn't.
It's the DC universe where the barrier between Earth and Hell is so thin most people wouldn't notice the difference between the two.
NickXenix
PHO-tosynthesizer
The SCP Foundation will remember that.
Chapter 355, TT
New
Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 3.5.5
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
_________________________________________________________________________
28/09/2003
Situated in Alchemist's demi-plane, in a clearing beyond the ever-growing fruit orchard, a large group of people had gathered.
He'd said they would all be learning a new spell and Tiffany would honestly admit that she was looking forward to it. Especially after how the last week had been in school.
She'd been sullen and depressed, and so was Yuffie. The younger girl did her best to act like she hadn't been hit by the fact that they hadn't saved everyone but, well...
Yuffie had been moody and angry. Enough so that she'd even snapped at Ash. Then she'd broken down, crying and apologizing and hugging the hellhound. It was severe enough that Alchemist had even noticed.
A part of Tiffany kind of felt like she should be stronger than the young girl, that it shouldn't hit her as hard because she was from Gotham. People dying to Smilex was... normal.
Robin got it. They hadn't really talked much during their last sparring session but it had been rougher than normal.
And her one friend from school, Katie Walker, she understood. She was from Gotham, like Robin and Tiffany herself.
The other students didn't get it but Katie did. During their lunch breaks through the last week the two of them would just sit together and pick at their food in silence.
"Alright," Alchemist quietly called to the group as Jinx finally arrived, fashionably late. "The plan for today is pretty simple. I've gone ahead and used one of my Quest Tickets to buy the Salvation skill card. Yuffie, do you have a Mime Materia equipped?"
"...Yeah," the little ninja said from her spot at Tiffany's side.
"Jinx?" Alchemist asked as he turned slightly towards the newcomer. "Have you eaten a Mime Materia yet?"
"...No," Jinx admitted before she crossed her arms. "I just... I don't want to, alright?"
"...Alright," Alchemist agreed, the man pursing his lips as he thought. Then he turned back to Tiffany when she raised her hand, a question on her lips.
"Question?" Tiffany said as she put her hand back down. "Why does she need to eat a Materia while Yuffie can just equip one?"
"Jinx and I picked up an ability that lets us extract abilities, skills and passive abilities by eating Materia... which nobody else needs to do anymore," Alchemist looked down as he spoke, as though he just realized something. "Jinx, can I see your hand for a moment?"
"...Oh my god," Jinx mumbled with a frown on her face as Alchemist stepped over to her and gently took her hand. "Did you seriously just now think of this?"
"Yes," Alchemist admitted out loud as a look of concentration crossed his face for a moment. "Yes, I did." Then he let go of Jinx's hand and turned back towards Tiffany, his head continuing to swivel to look past her to Yuffie and Kary. "Does anybody else want a permanent, personal copy of the Mimic ability?"
"What all does it do?" Tiffany asked as Yuffie immediately said 'Yes!'
"Its basic function is to let you repeat a target's actions, except without having to use any HP or MP," Alchemist explained as he stepped over to Yuffie and held out his hand. "Once you take it to level one-hundred, it lets you 'hold' or 'memorize' an action semi-permanently, but it's locked at the basic level one version."
"...But you can use it without using any sorts of resources?" Tiffany asked, making sure she understood what Alchemist was saying. When he nodded she immediately asked, "Can I have it?"
"Sure," he agreed without any hesitation. He held his hand out for her to take and, the moment her fingers brushed against his...
-- Abilities Acquired! --
-- Mimic 1/100 --
-- Repeat any action you can see! --
-- WARNING: Do not use underwater against a group of smart alecks! --
-- On the Wings of an Angel --/?? --
-- ERROR! File not found! --
"Uh... Alchemist?" Tiffany called as she read, then re-read her second notification. "You gave me a second ability, here. And, uh..."
"On the Wings of an Angel?" Alchemist asked, to which she nodded. "Yeah, I've been meaning to give you a copy of that for a while. It will let you passively gain experience in skills you have in common with the people around you."
"...All I've got is an error message," Tiffany told him as Alchemist was in the process of touching Kary's hands.
"I kind of smuggled it out of another Gamer system," the wizard admitted. "Miserable experience, zero out of ten, do not recommend."
'I've already filed an error report,' Terra whispered into Tiffany's mind.
"How do you smuggle... How does that even work?" Tiffany asked as she looked at her skill menu, finding On the Wings of an Angel listed as a passive ability.
"The Devil owed me a favor so I asked them to graft whatever skills or spells I had or would master into my soul instead of leaving them in the System. Did that right after Tiamat turned your System off."
"...That just leaves me with more questions," Tiffany admitted. "Why would... the Devil is real?"
"They are," the man admitted to her. "I can introduce you some time, if you'd like? Lucifer is actually retired, runs this lovely piano bar in Los Angeles."
Tiffany didn't know why she was so surprised. He'd explained about the New Gods. And Tiffany had watched, in person, as Kary had turned into a Fallen Angel.
But Alchemist was talking about a literally religious figure as though they were a casual acquaintance.
"Alright!" Alchemist called as Tiffany continued trying and failing to process that particular mess. She watched as the man reached into his inventory and brought out a card. Tiffany pursed her lips in confusion, though, as it... shined. Instead of a face, detailing its rank, one side of the card was just pure light. "I'm down to one Quest Ticket after this. Player One, you'll have to use this, none of the rest of us can actually use skill books."
Taking the offered card, Tiffany was immediately beset with a system prompt-
--Would you like to use this item?--
--Spell Card: Salvation--
--Level 1/100--
--Cost: 84 MP--
--Accuracy: Null--
--Area of Effect: 30 Feet/9.14 meters(+1% per level)--
--Effect: Fully restores HP and cures all ailments for all allies. Revives all fallen allies to full HP.--
--Duration: Instant--
'This is... Horn's Grand Resurrector,' Terra whispered against Tiffany's mind, regret and grief in her voice. 'If Noa and I had this... we could have saved those that were stolen from us, those that were fed to the Mist Generators.'
Tiffany brushed a tear away from her eye with the hand gloved in Terra whilst the other clicked -Yes-.
"So," Tiffany asked as she felt the spell, felt the light burning itself into her mind. Between it and Terra, her head felt almost painfully crowded. "Are we just going to cast this at each other until we all have the spell permanently?"
"Basically," Alchemist agreed as he reached into the inventory again. This time, he came back up with some kind of military suit in black and... a big, bulky black helmet that had red eyes and a red slot for a mouth? "I was thinking of a field test, honestly. I'm... it's been a few months since I got into a fight and I'm starting to feel a bit rusty."
"If you're feeling neglected, Love?" Kary interjected, a touch of mirth in her voice. "You need only say so. I'll gladly intensify our morning training sessions."
"Ah... yay," Alchemist grumbled with a slow exhale. "...Probably a good idea, though."
"I'm glad you agree, Love," Kary told the man, warmth in her tone. "I've been feeling a bit envious of all the time you've spent with your dolls, lately."
Jinx snickered at the uncomfortable look on Alchemist's face before the man just grinned and shook his head.
"Alright. Focus, ladies. The Demonica Suit's Item World shouldn't have anything in it that we can't handle. But!" Alchemist's shout cut off the good humor that Tiffany had been feeling. The man didn't like getting loud unless it was important. "Midway in we'll probably start facing things that can pierce through our defenses or cast Almighty magic. I want you all taking this seriously before we get a wake-up call, not after."
Tiffany looked over the weird, black suit with a critical eye right up until Alchemist cast Gate on it, opening the way into its internal world.
Sure, it looked stupid. Really stupid...
But that warning definitely wasn't a joke.
-----
The Item World inside of the distressingly accurately named 'Demonica' suit was an insane slog through a variety of wildly different environments, all the while the team was harassed at every turn-
And there were a lot of turns. Unlike the Item Worlds Jinx had explored before, the Demonica was all tight corridors and narrow halls!
-by myths, legends and horrors from pretty much every corner of the world. It had started off innocently enough with things like ghosts and pixies, tiny women wearing blue leotards with little gossamer wings. But the deeper they went, the bigger things got. Both physically and metaphysically.
They were on the seventieth floor? Eightieth? Jinx wasn't sure, she'd lost track.
Whatever. They were on a boss floor and they were taking a break after they got done fighting a giant woman who'd fought them naked but for a single, oversized sword. Not that there had been much to appreciate on the giant woman.
The name Jinx had gotten on her from the Libra effect on her gear was 'Asherah'. And she'd been a giant with full, black lips and solid, golden eyes. But aside from her long, flaxen hair her body had been pure white and the only detail on her had been a series of black lines, some of which had formed patterns or boxes.
"Your decaying Earth cannot be saved by you humans or your God."
It'd been Jinx's turn to fight the boss. And it had actually gone pretty well. Asherah was a very physical fighter, though she apparently tried to channel some kind of debuff through some of her attacks. Which could have, maybe, possibly been a concern...
If she'd ever managed to land a hit on the Havoc Dragon.
Invisibility? Illusions? Filling the tight, narrow hall they battled in with the disorienting fog of Twilight Haze and using lesser illusions to create false noises for the entity to attack at?
Asherah had spent more time blunting her blade against the walls than she did even looking in Jinx's direction. Giving Jinx more than ample opportunity to line up the perfect shot to drop Asherah with a single bullet from her Outsider.
"So..." Jinx began to ask as they walked towards the portal that would lead further into the Item World. "What's Asherah's story?"
"She's an old goddess," Alchemist began to explain as the group of five stopped in front of the gate and spread apart. "A Babylonian fertility goddess and the mother of quite a few lesser gods. Her legend may have shifted and changed as it traveled so it's possible that she's also the goddess Astarte."
"...Neat," Jinx eventually said as she decided how she felt about that bit of lore.
The deeper they'd gone in the Demonica, the greater their foes had become. Swiftly rising from minor spirits or fae to greater spirits and lesser angels or demons. Then those, too, were replaced with increasingly more potent figures from myth and legend alike.
The actually scary part, at least what Jinx considered scary, wasn't really facing off against a three-meter tall giant in a golden scalemail onesie. It was how much damage their foes could do in comparison to their fragility.
Asherah had gone down to a single bullet and the goddess's own attacks hadn't done much but some of the other things they'd fought had been a lot more dangerous. One of those things, a flying starfish with a big, human-ish eye in the center of its body? It had a spell that let it reflect any physical attack that didn't have the Piercing quality connected to it! And the starfish could throw around the Almighty spell, Megido!
That had been the first time the entire party had lost their Shields of Glass. And Tiffany had gotten to experience what it was like when she hit herself.
But the second its own shield dropped? Yuffie had thrown a shuriken at the thing, a normal sized one from the bandolier that Alchemist had made for her birthday, and killed the thing in one hit.
Glass Cannons, Jinx thought they were called. The monsters inside of the Demonica might not have been able to hit hard enough to injure anyone but they could definitely hit hard enough to make the team feel pain.
"You doing alright?" Alchemist asked before he made his way towards one of the walls and slid down against it.
Jinx took a moment to decide how to answer that before sliding down next to him. "Yeah," she eventually said. "It's just... not what I expected."
"Yeah," Tiffany agreed as she leaned against the wall opposite the two dragons. "I thought demons would be more... I dunno. Viscera and gore and stuff?"
"Some are," Alchemist admitted. "Most aren't. There are the stereotypical ones, sure, but a lot of things are too alien to be that simple."
"Hmm..." Jinx hummed in thought. "What's the story with all of this? The Demonica, I mean. And why its Item World is so... weird."
A question that the others seemed to be interested in as well, considering both Yuffie and Kary came over to listen in.
"Well... I could say the two are connected but that's pretty obvious," Alchemist began to say as he lifted one hand to cup his chin.
"I mean, yeah?" Yuffie cut in. "I mean, come on, dad. If it's part of something's Item World then it's gotta be connected, right?"
"Yeah, but explaining that connection is a little hard," Alchemist defended himself. "It... all starts with this thing called a 'Schwarzwelt'. Which was a... pocket space? Or maybe a sort of... hole in reality. In the world the Demonica came from, the Schwarzwelt just appeared at the South Pole as a thin, black pillar that began to expand. After it ate a few research bases, the United Nations tried to send in probes to figure out what it was and they got snapshots of the different regions we've passed through."
Alchemist waved his left hand vaguely towards, well, everything and nothing.
"Because a bunch of politicians don't actually understand things like science or how junk data works, they decided that what they saw didn't make sense so they had to send a bunch of people into the Schwarzwelt to investigate. Their initial research efforts are where the Demonica suits came from. Stupid name aside, the suits were somehow capable of adapting and evolving to the environments and stresses they experienced. And between the extreme environments and the stresses of fighting forces that defy human comprehension..." Alchemist trailed off meaningfully.
"Surely there was a limit to its growth?" Kary asked before the woman crossed her arms and pursed her lips.
"Ah... hah. No," Alchemist told the woman with a shake of his head. "The Schwarzwelt could best be defined as a spot where fiction met reality. Where Dreams became Truths. It was supposed to be a sort of global reset, like the Demi-Fiend's Vortex World. Or Gwynn resetting time. That sort of... flexibility combined with the Demonica's original purpose meant that it could keep growing more powerful so long as it kept being pressed to do so. The sole surviving field explorer from the original expedition would become so thoroughly warped by his Demonica that he, alone, would traverse the Schwarzwelt and quell the gods and goddesses within that were fighting to decide who would get to determine the direction of the reset world."
"...That's insane," Tiffany mumbled. A sentiment that Jinx fully agreed with.
"That's just the start," Alchemist said with a derisive snort. "The higher forces of Order and Chaos can't really adapt or change. Can't truly learn or grow, not without a mortal host for them to use as an intermediary. They tried to repeat things, to force the Schwarzwelt to re-manifest at least another six times that I know of over one-hundred and fifty years. And that same person, warped beyond the limits of humanity, would go on to put them down. Over. And over. And over again."
"...The Demi-Fiend, the Doomslayer, this Demonica Soldier," Kary listed off as she shook her head, her black hair swaying back and forth. "Humans aren't supposed to do things like this, Love."
"Gods, goddesses, angels, demons and devils all broke the rules," Alchemist said as he stood up, with Jinx following right behind him. "Why shouldn't we?"
-----
Kary would admit, if someone directly asked her, that she found the narrow halls and tight corridors unsettling. It was distincty different in a manner she found personally unpleasant.
The reason had taken her a significant amount of time to determine. They'd traversed icy halls and tight, cramped sections that had been directly ripped out of the shopping malls she'd seen in Japan. Where they'd offered anything and everything imaginable at nonsensically inflated prices that simply boggled the mind.
The boss of that area, the first Item King upon the thirtieth floor, had been frustrating for the party to deal with. The beast, some hideous pig-god, had been fused to a giant machine that dwarfed the team by an incredible margin. The machine, a vehicle, stood nearly thirty meters tall and was thoroughly armored both physically and technologically.
Yet its controller, Horkus, was a foul and odious coward. Rather than stand and fight, the beast was somehow able to teleport the great mechanical monstrosity. Not to any of the other floors of the Item World, thankfully. They could not trace their steps backwards to the lower floors, after all.
But they ended up going back and forth a number of times to try and catch, then slay, the beast.
Finally, once a pattern had been determined in his behavior, Jinx had requested Alchemist's help to craft a truly massive magical Circle Against Evil before they pushed the pig-god into teleporting into it. Once removed from the giant vehicle? Killing the god had proven incredibly simple. And Jinx had claimed the giant vehicle as her prize for so cleverly outwitting its former possessor.
The back and forth journey through the empty halls had given Kary ample time to think, to try and analyze her unease. And, in time, she'd realized that she did not like feeling trapped in so small an area. That being locked into the twisting halls, sometimes without enough room to stretch her arms out fully...
It reminded her of her first life. Before it had even been a life. Of being a mindless servant, tethered to the Crystal of Fire and locked underneath of a volcano. And then of her imprisonment beneath a dwarven hold, trapped and held under the expectation that her Flame would revitalize the cooling mines.
She'd never considered herself claustrophobic before but, then, she'd never suffered under such tight limitations since she'd found her freedom.
At least it was not an overwhelming panic, the woman thought to herself. She was simply... discomforted.
The journey through the rest of the Item World was eventful and, aside from the ever-present discomfort, surprisingly enlightening. The team would take turns on who would take point, loosely cycling through the group.
Alchemist would always take lead if nobody else wished to. Her lover fought with an efficient brutality that still made her heart beat loudly in her chest. He would stick to either his black knife or his laser pistol, getting in close and implementing extraordinary violence to dispatch his opposition as swiftly as possible. The man would never be a master of the sword, a minor regret that was well tempered by admiration at his brutal cunning.
One of the myths that fought them in these halls, among the forsaken gods and other, lesser beasts had been a man-like spirit called a 'Kresnik' that fought with a sword and light magic. When one of these foolish creatures fought her beloved, it was not some honorable duel between blades. Instead, it had been a short and brutal exchange where the Kresnik had tried to slash at Alchemist who, rather than block or parry, had instead rushed into the spirit's guard, grabbing the crossguard of the creature's sword with one hand and ripping it, and the Kresnik, towards him while brutally stabbing and slashing with his own knife.
Alchemist had no honor as a swordsman. But he replaced that instead with a sharp, wicked knowledge of things like distance and advantage.
Perhaps that was why her lover was so partial to his long guns? She knew that, even before he'd claimed skills to further enhance his talents, Alchemist had nearly as much raw gift with those tools as she did with the blade.
Yuffie was almost the polar opposite. If at all possible, she refused to close distances and instead preferred to fight from afar. The girl would fling knives, shuriken and an endless stream of small, quick spells that would target any natural weaknesses in her foes. Though, in the rare event that something might survive the onslaught of metal and magic, the girl proved as tricky and cunning as Alchemist could be. She would teleport, seemingly at random around a target. Disorienting and distracting them until they were foolish enough to commit to an attack of some kind, just to then disappear and reappear outside of their guard.
And it was obvious that Yuffie had spent her time in the world of Gaia learning at her adoptive father's knee... because she would then take her own knife and, typically, go for the backs of her enemies knees. Crippling her foes before returning to her preferred distance to continue turning them into piles of ash or frost.
Jinx certainly kept things interesting. The young dragon made judicious use of illusion spells. Distracting, disorienting, disguising herself as her enemies, or transforming some of their foes to look like herself or another member of the party to initiate infighting.
One clever trick that Kary had seen was when they'd snuck up on a group of foes. Little snowmen mixed with floating pumpkins that carried lanterns. Jinx had, instead of directly facing these foes, instead cast a spell that surrounded her in a sphere of absolute silence. Then she simply withdrew her revolver and shot the enemy party to death, one by one in absolute silence.
They never even noticed.
Tiffany, Player One, had the most flexible fighting style. She had her shortswords and she had a shortbow, though Kary could not truly guess as to where she'd sourced it. It hadn't come from Alchemist, that much Kary was sure of.
The girl had figured out, finally, that she would get the best results if she remembered to buff herself up and debuff her foes of their strengths. After that, at least when fighting things that did not simply die in one critical blow, the girl would work to keep control of the pace of a fight.
Kary actually found herself approving of the way Tiffany handled herself. She did not have Alchemist's cunning brutality, Yuffie's frenetic energy or Jinx's masterful manipulation but, instead, she would pace herself. Tiffany would take a measure of her foes and then determine if she wanted to wear them out by moving just a bit too fast for them to keep up with, or if she needed to conserve her energy to find the right moment, the right rhythm in which to plunge her blades into the hearts of her enemies.
Kary herself fought in a similar way, though she was perhaps more prone to overwhelming her foes with unrelenting might should she think it a viable option.
They all had their strengths and their weaknesses. And their strange journey to the heart of the Demonica's Item World saw all of them both succeeding and being punished when they overreached. And, in the rare event that they fought something that could actually punch through their defenses, it had not been uncommon for there to be multiple casting of Salvation, bathing the wounded in brilliant healing light.
But all things, both good and bad, must come to an end. And that end, on the one-hundredth and final floor, took the form of three entities.
In the center of a thankfully large room stood what looked to be a woman. She wore a black, padded bodysuit that covered everything below her head and had on a long, flowing red coat. Upon her left arm was a large, silver bangle that had a curious purple sphere embedded in it. Her face was fully covered, however, by a mask that resembled the helmet of the Demonica suit. It was far more streamlined, however, and had a number of red lines forming circles around the eyes and mouth-slot.
At her right was a small specter wearing a leather jacket with a rainbow mohawk. Rather than legs, the entity's waist trailed off into gaseous clouds.
At her left was a great behemoth. It sat upon a great, gray and white serpentine tail and it appeared to have two sets of arms. One pair, on the lower portion of the beast's torso, appeared almost like the hind claws of some large cat. Its upper arms were great, muscular things covered in crimson scales and tipped with sharp, jagged claws. Its head, in contrast, was that of a white owl with a short, sharp beak and wise, yellow eyes.
"...Well," Alchemist whispered as their group gazed upon the Item God and its cohort. "Not quite what I was expecting."
"Did you think it was gonna be the soldier guy?" Yuffie asked.
"Yeah," Alchemist admitted.
"And who is this, love?" Kary asked as she looked upon the mostly still figures.
"The girl would be an echo of Alex," Alchemist began to explain. "A nephilim that could force a false ascension by eating these things called the Cosmic Fruits."
Dangerous, then, Kary determined as she looked over the armored girl with fresh eyes.
"Her allies would be a Shaytan, a spirit of temptation, and Amon, the seventh named devil of the Ars Goetia." Alchemist inhaled sharply and she could see his eyes darting across the group, a plan forming. "Kary? Can you keep the bigger one busy? He mostly does fire damage but he should have a few Almighty spells, too. I need the rest of you keeping Shaytan busy while I steal the god's gear and put her down."
"Why do you need three of us fighting what looks like the weakest link?" Tiffany asked.
Kary was not so overconfident in herself that she could not see the merit in asking such a question.
"He has a spell called Luster Soul that can maximize his allies attributes and he can fully heal any member of his party," Alchemist explained.
Kary nodded in understanding at the explanation. The echo and Amon could fight and cause trouble but the Shaytan could make them far more difficult.
"Simple enough," Jinx agreed. "Ready?"
Four voices sounded out in agreement and Kary unsheathed her blade.
Alchemist held one hand out to the side, three fingers held out. Then two. Then one...
Then Kary launched herself forward as Alchemist disappeared and Yuffie threw a handful of her knives at the floating, multicolored punk. Jinx and Tiffany dashed forward side by side, the both of them keeping close as they swiftly closed the distance.
The response to their actions was almost as swift as they were. The owl-headed devil, Amon, began to charge crimson magic about his massive hands, his beak opening and closing in a silent chant as the echo of Alex leveled a futuristic laser pistol in their direction. The Shaytan, however, did not have a chance to begin doing anything as four knives buried themselves into its chest, pink blood spraying from the wounds.
Before the item god could pull the trigger, however, her gun disappeared from her hands. And so, too, did her jacket disappear from about her shoulders...
And even her armor was gone, Stolen in an instant by Alchemist.
The nephilim's flesh being revealed should have been shocking. It was a being of radiant light, brilliance shining from it so bright that it was blinding. The only imperfection, the part of it that was human, would have been the eyes. Clear and blue and bleeding dark, crimson tears of blood.
A mortal stain on something that should have been perfect.
The Item God turned to face Alchemist whilst Amon finished its chant and Kary, Jinx and Tiffany were swallowed in pillars of flame.
But the fire did nothing to slow the girls down. No, Kary would not be quelled, not by the flames of something so weak as a Marquis from a realm that was unwanted and untouched by invasions. She charged forward, her hands held fast to her blade, magic and power coursing through her arms.
"To the current of life we succumb, its judgment swift and final. Its bite as cold as steel!" Kary shouted as she swung her blade, as she finally put to practice the arts she'd been slowly teasing from the Auracite once held by the swordsaint, Cidolfus Orlandeau. "Judgement Blade!"
A blade of ice ripped its way up from beneath the fallen angel, Time itself halting at her command!
And Kary lunged, a bloodthirsty smile spread wide across her face as she took in the shock, the fear that filled the inhuman eyes of the monster as her blade plunged towards its right eye. It did not put up its hands to defend itself. Nor did it try and dodge away from her, frozen in place as it was.
All it could do, then, was die.
Anchored to the corpse by her blade, Kary turned her head to observe her allies as they performed their own duties.
Jinx and Tiffany made swift work of the Shaytan. Yuffie's surprise attack had prevented it from casting its first spell. And between the other two, it was given no time to try for another. It had not lasted any longer than Amon had.
A short blast of light from the echo drew her attention but it seemed as though the Item God was largely powerless without her weapon. The blast of light she struck Alchemist with had been anemic, weak and powerless even before her lover's prodigious defenses were accounted for.
And Alchemist, in turn, lunged forward. His large hands, surprisingly gentle and precise when he worked on his projects and distractions, wrapped around the nephilim's face and lifted her off the ground. Kary could feel the power build up as Alchemist turned, dragging the resisting entity, clawing and scratching and fighting, around so they were facing away from the party...
And then a blast of yellow light ripped from his hand and decapitated the Item God in a single, likely painless, blow.
Freikugel.
Overkill.
Kary pulled her blade free of the devil corpse beneath her and hopped to the ground whilst the remains of the Shaytan dissipated like smoke.
The Item God's body faded away, turning into motes of light as the world around them seemed to breathe in relief.
It had been a short, brutal and distinctly one-sided exchange.
Just the way she liked it.
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
_________________________________________________________________________
28/09/2003
Situated in Alchemist's demi-plane, in a clearing beyond the ever-growing fruit orchard, a large group of people had gathered.
He'd said they would all be learning a new spell and Tiffany would honestly admit that she was looking forward to it. Especially after how the last week had been in school.
She'd been sullen and depressed, and so was Yuffie. The younger girl did her best to act like she hadn't been hit by the fact that they hadn't saved everyone but, well...
Yuffie had been moody and angry. Enough so that she'd even snapped at Ash. Then she'd broken down, crying and apologizing and hugging the hellhound. It was severe enough that Alchemist had even noticed.
A part of Tiffany kind of felt like she should be stronger than the young girl, that it shouldn't hit her as hard because she was from Gotham. People dying to Smilex was... normal.
Robin got it. They hadn't really talked much during their last sparring session but it had been rougher than normal.
And her one friend from school, Katie Walker, she understood. She was from Gotham, like Robin and Tiffany herself.
The other students didn't get it but Katie did. During their lunch breaks through the last week the two of them would just sit together and pick at their food in silence.
"Alright," Alchemist quietly called to the group as Jinx finally arrived, fashionably late. "The plan for today is pretty simple. I've gone ahead and used one of my Quest Tickets to buy the Salvation skill card. Yuffie, do you have a Mime Materia equipped?"
"...Yeah," the little ninja said from her spot at Tiffany's side.
"Jinx?" Alchemist asked as he turned slightly towards the newcomer. "Have you eaten a Mime Materia yet?"
"...No," Jinx admitted before she crossed her arms. "I just... I don't want to, alright?"
"...Alright," Alchemist agreed, the man pursing his lips as he thought. Then he turned back to Tiffany when she raised her hand, a question on her lips.
"Question?" Tiffany said as she put her hand back down. "Why does she need to eat a Materia while Yuffie can just equip one?"
"Jinx and I picked up an ability that lets us extract abilities, skills and passive abilities by eating Materia... which nobody else needs to do anymore," Alchemist looked down as he spoke, as though he just realized something. "Jinx, can I see your hand for a moment?"
"...Oh my god," Jinx mumbled with a frown on her face as Alchemist stepped over to her and gently took her hand. "Did you seriously just now think of this?"
"Yes," Alchemist admitted out loud as a look of concentration crossed his face for a moment. "Yes, I did." Then he let go of Jinx's hand and turned back towards Tiffany, his head continuing to swivel to look past her to Yuffie and Kary. "Does anybody else want a permanent, personal copy of the Mimic ability?"
"What all does it do?" Tiffany asked as Yuffie immediately said 'Yes!'
"Its basic function is to let you repeat a target's actions, except without having to use any HP or MP," Alchemist explained as he stepped over to Yuffie and held out his hand. "Once you take it to level one-hundred, it lets you 'hold' or 'memorize' an action semi-permanently, but it's locked at the basic level one version."
"...But you can use it without using any sorts of resources?" Tiffany asked, making sure she understood what Alchemist was saying. When he nodded she immediately asked, "Can I have it?"
"Sure," he agreed without any hesitation. He held his hand out for her to take and, the moment her fingers brushed against his...
-- Abilities Acquired! --
-- Mimic 1/100 --
-- Repeat any action you can see! --
-- WARNING: Do not use underwater against a group of smart alecks! --
-- On the Wings of an Angel --/?? --
-- ERROR! File not found! --
"Uh... Alchemist?" Tiffany called as she read, then re-read her second notification. "You gave me a second ability, here. And, uh..."
"On the Wings of an Angel?" Alchemist asked, to which she nodded. "Yeah, I've been meaning to give you a copy of that for a while. It will let you passively gain experience in skills you have in common with the people around you."
"...All I've got is an error message," Tiffany told him as Alchemist was in the process of touching Kary's hands.
"I kind of smuggled it out of another Gamer system," the wizard admitted. "Miserable experience, zero out of ten, do not recommend."
'I've already filed an error report,' Terra whispered into Tiffany's mind.
"How do you smuggle... How does that even work?" Tiffany asked as she looked at her skill menu, finding On the Wings of an Angel listed as a passive ability.
"The Devil owed me a favor so I asked them to graft whatever skills or spells I had or would master into my soul instead of leaving them in the System. Did that right after Tiamat turned your System off."
"...That just leaves me with more questions," Tiffany admitted. "Why would... the Devil is real?"
"They are," the man admitted to her. "I can introduce you some time, if you'd like? Lucifer is actually retired, runs this lovely piano bar in Los Angeles."
Tiffany didn't know why she was so surprised. He'd explained about the New Gods. And Tiffany had watched, in person, as Kary had turned into a Fallen Angel.
But Alchemist was talking about a literally religious figure as though they were a casual acquaintance.
"Alright!" Alchemist called as Tiffany continued trying and failing to process that particular mess. She watched as the man reached into his inventory and brought out a card. Tiffany pursed her lips in confusion, though, as it... shined. Instead of a face, detailing its rank, one side of the card was just pure light. "I'm down to one Quest Ticket after this. Player One, you'll have to use this, none of the rest of us can actually use skill books."
Taking the offered card, Tiffany was immediately beset with a system prompt-
--Would you like to use this item?--
--Spell Card: Salvation--
--Level 1/100--
--Cost: 84 MP--
--Accuracy: Null--
--Area of Effect: 30 Feet/9.14 meters(+1% per level)--
--Effect: Fully restores HP and cures all ailments for all allies. Revives all fallen allies to full HP.--
--Duration: Instant--
'This is... Horn's Grand Resurrector,' Terra whispered against Tiffany's mind, regret and grief in her voice. 'If Noa and I had this... we could have saved those that were stolen from us, those that were fed to the Mist Generators.'
Tiffany brushed a tear away from her eye with the hand gloved in Terra whilst the other clicked -Yes-.
"So," Tiffany asked as she felt the spell, felt the light burning itself into her mind. Between it and Terra, her head felt almost painfully crowded. "Are we just going to cast this at each other until we all have the spell permanently?"
"Basically," Alchemist agreed as he reached into the inventory again. This time, he came back up with some kind of military suit in black and... a big, bulky black helmet that had red eyes and a red slot for a mouth? "I was thinking of a field test, honestly. I'm... it's been a few months since I got into a fight and I'm starting to feel a bit rusty."
"If you're feeling neglected, Love?" Kary interjected, a touch of mirth in her voice. "You need only say so. I'll gladly intensify our morning training sessions."
"Ah... yay," Alchemist grumbled with a slow exhale. "...Probably a good idea, though."
"I'm glad you agree, Love," Kary told the man, warmth in her tone. "I've been feeling a bit envious of all the time you've spent with your dolls, lately."
Jinx snickered at the uncomfortable look on Alchemist's face before the man just grinned and shook his head.
"Alright. Focus, ladies. The Demonica Suit's Item World shouldn't have anything in it that we can't handle. But!" Alchemist's shout cut off the good humor that Tiffany had been feeling. The man didn't like getting loud unless it was important. "Midway in we'll probably start facing things that can pierce through our defenses or cast Almighty magic. I want you all taking this seriously before we get a wake-up call, not after."
Tiffany looked over the weird, black suit with a critical eye right up until Alchemist cast Gate on it, opening the way into its internal world.
Sure, it looked stupid. Really stupid...
But that warning definitely wasn't a joke.
-----
The Item World inside of the distressingly accurately named 'Demonica' suit was an insane slog through a variety of wildly different environments, all the while the team was harassed at every turn-
And there were a lot of turns. Unlike the Item Worlds Jinx had explored before, the Demonica was all tight corridors and narrow halls!
-by myths, legends and horrors from pretty much every corner of the world. It had started off innocently enough with things like ghosts and pixies, tiny women wearing blue leotards with little gossamer wings. But the deeper they went, the bigger things got. Both physically and metaphysically.
They were on the seventieth floor? Eightieth? Jinx wasn't sure, she'd lost track.
Whatever. They were on a boss floor and they were taking a break after they got done fighting a giant woman who'd fought them naked but for a single, oversized sword. Not that there had been much to appreciate on the giant woman.
The name Jinx had gotten on her from the Libra effect on her gear was 'Asherah'. And she'd been a giant with full, black lips and solid, golden eyes. But aside from her long, flaxen hair her body had been pure white and the only detail on her had been a series of black lines, some of which had formed patterns or boxes.
"Your decaying Earth cannot be saved by you humans or your God."
It'd been Jinx's turn to fight the boss. And it had actually gone pretty well. Asherah was a very physical fighter, though she apparently tried to channel some kind of debuff through some of her attacks. Which could have, maybe, possibly been a concern...
If she'd ever managed to land a hit on the Havoc Dragon.
Invisibility? Illusions? Filling the tight, narrow hall they battled in with the disorienting fog of Twilight Haze and using lesser illusions to create false noises for the entity to attack at?
Asherah had spent more time blunting her blade against the walls than she did even looking in Jinx's direction. Giving Jinx more than ample opportunity to line up the perfect shot to drop Asherah with a single bullet from her Outsider.
"So..." Jinx began to ask as they walked towards the portal that would lead further into the Item World. "What's Asherah's story?"
"She's an old goddess," Alchemist began to explain as the group of five stopped in front of the gate and spread apart. "A Babylonian fertility goddess and the mother of quite a few lesser gods. Her legend may have shifted and changed as it traveled so it's possible that she's also the goddess Astarte."
"...Neat," Jinx eventually said as she decided how she felt about that bit of lore.
The deeper they'd gone in the Demonica, the greater their foes had become. Swiftly rising from minor spirits or fae to greater spirits and lesser angels or demons. Then those, too, were replaced with increasingly more potent figures from myth and legend alike.
The actually scary part, at least what Jinx considered scary, wasn't really facing off against a three-meter tall giant in a golden scalemail onesie. It was how much damage their foes could do in comparison to their fragility.
Asherah had gone down to a single bullet and the goddess's own attacks hadn't done much but some of the other things they'd fought had been a lot more dangerous. One of those things, a flying starfish with a big, human-ish eye in the center of its body? It had a spell that let it reflect any physical attack that didn't have the Piercing quality connected to it! And the starfish could throw around the Almighty spell, Megido!
That had been the first time the entire party had lost their Shields of Glass. And Tiffany had gotten to experience what it was like when she hit herself.
But the second its own shield dropped? Yuffie had thrown a shuriken at the thing, a normal sized one from the bandolier that Alchemist had made for her birthday, and killed the thing in one hit.
Glass Cannons, Jinx thought they were called. The monsters inside of the Demonica might not have been able to hit hard enough to injure anyone but they could definitely hit hard enough to make the team feel pain.
"You doing alright?" Alchemist asked before he made his way towards one of the walls and slid down against it.
Jinx took a moment to decide how to answer that before sliding down next to him. "Yeah," she eventually said. "It's just... not what I expected."
"Yeah," Tiffany agreed as she leaned against the wall opposite the two dragons. "I thought demons would be more... I dunno. Viscera and gore and stuff?"
"Some are," Alchemist admitted. "Most aren't. There are the stereotypical ones, sure, but a lot of things are too alien to be that simple."
"Hmm..." Jinx hummed in thought. "What's the story with all of this? The Demonica, I mean. And why its Item World is so... weird."
A question that the others seemed to be interested in as well, considering both Yuffie and Kary came over to listen in.
"Well... I could say the two are connected but that's pretty obvious," Alchemist began to say as he lifted one hand to cup his chin.
"I mean, yeah?" Yuffie cut in. "I mean, come on, dad. If it's part of something's Item World then it's gotta be connected, right?"
"Yeah, but explaining that connection is a little hard," Alchemist defended himself. "It... all starts with this thing called a 'Schwarzwelt'. Which was a... pocket space? Or maybe a sort of... hole in reality. In the world the Demonica came from, the Schwarzwelt just appeared at the South Pole as a thin, black pillar that began to expand. After it ate a few research bases, the United Nations tried to send in probes to figure out what it was and they got snapshots of the different regions we've passed through."
Alchemist waved his left hand vaguely towards, well, everything and nothing.
"Because a bunch of politicians don't actually understand things like science or how junk data works, they decided that what they saw didn't make sense so they had to send a bunch of people into the Schwarzwelt to investigate. Their initial research efforts are where the Demonica suits came from. Stupid name aside, the suits were somehow capable of adapting and evolving to the environments and stresses they experienced. And between the extreme environments and the stresses of fighting forces that defy human comprehension..." Alchemist trailed off meaningfully.
"Surely there was a limit to its growth?" Kary asked before the woman crossed her arms and pursed her lips.
"Ah... hah. No," Alchemist told the woman with a shake of his head. "The Schwarzwelt could best be defined as a spot where fiction met reality. Where Dreams became Truths. It was supposed to be a sort of global reset, like the Demi-Fiend's Vortex World. Or Gwynn resetting time. That sort of... flexibility combined with the Demonica's original purpose meant that it could keep growing more powerful so long as it kept being pressed to do so. The sole surviving field explorer from the original expedition would become so thoroughly warped by his Demonica that he, alone, would traverse the Schwarzwelt and quell the gods and goddesses within that were fighting to decide who would get to determine the direction of the reset world."
"...That's insane," Tiffany mumbled. A sentiment that Jinx fully agreed with.
"That's just the start," Alchemist said with a derisive snort. "The higher forces of Order and Chaos can't really adapt or change. Can't truly learn or grow, not without a mortal host for them to use as an intermediary. They tried to repeat things, to force the Schwarzwelt to re-manifest at least another six times that I know of over one-hundred and fifty years. And that same person, warped beyond the limits of humanity, would go on to put them down. Over. And over. And over again."
"...The Demi-Fiend, the Doomslayer, this Demonica Soldier," Kary listed off as she shook her head, her black hair swaying back and forth. "Humans aren't supposed to do things like this, Love."
"Gods, goddesses, angels, demons and devils all broke the rules," Alchemist said as he stood up, with Jinx following right behind him. "Why shouldn't we?"
-----
Kary would admit, if someone directly asked her, that she found the narrow halls and tight corridors unsettling. It was distincty different in a manner she found personally unpleasant.
The reason had taken her a significant amount of time to determine. They'd traversed icy halls and tight, cramped sections that had been directly ripped out of the shopping malls she'd seen in Japan. Where they'd offered anything and everything imaginable at nonsensically inflated prices that simply boggled the mind.
The boss of that area, the first Item King upon the thirtieth floor, had been frustrating for the party to deal with. The beast, some hideous pig-god, had been fused to a giant machine that dwarfed the team by an incredible margin. The machine, a vehicle, stood nearly thirty meters tall and was thoroughly armored both physically and technologically.
Yet its controller, Horkus, was a foul and odious coward. Rather than stand and fight, the beast was somehow able to teleport the great mechanical monstrosity. Not to any of the other floors of the Item World, thankfully. They could not trace their steps backwards to the lower floors, after all.
But they ended up going back and forth a number of times to try and catch, then slay, the beast.
Finally, once a pattern had been determined in his behavior, Jinx had requested Alchemist's help to craft a truly massive magical Circle Against Evil before they pushed the pig-god into teleporting into it. Once removed from the giant vehicle? Killing the god had proven incredibly simple. And Jinx had claimed the giant vehicle as her prize for so cleverly outwitting its former possessor.
The back and forth journey through the empty halls had given Kary ample time to think, to try and analyze her unease. And, in time, she'd realized that she did not like feeling trapped in so small an area. That being locked into the twisting halls, sometimes without enough room to stretch her arms out fully...
It reminded her of her first life. Before it had even been a life. Of being a mindless servant, tethered to the Crystal of Fire and locked underneath of a volcano. And then of her imprisonment beneath a dwarven hold, trapped and held under the expectation that her Flame would revitalize the cooling mines.
She'd never considered herself claustrophobic before but, then, she'd never suffered under such tight limitations since she'd found her freedom.
At least it was not an overwhelming panic, the woman thought to herself. She was simply... discomforted.
The journey through the rest of the Item World was eventful and, aside from the ever-present discomfort, surprisingly enlightening. The team would take turns on who would take point, loosely cycling through the group.
Alchemist would always take lead if nobody else wished to. Her lover fought with an efficient brutality that still made her heart beat loudly in her chest. He would stick to either his black knife or his laser pistol, getting in close and implementing extraordinary violence to dispatch his opposition as swiftly as possible. The man would never be a master of the sword, a minor regret that was well tempered by admiration at his brutal cunning.
One of the myths that fought them in these halls, among the forsaken gods and other, lesser beasts had been a man-like spirit called a 'Kresnik' that fought with a sword and light magic. When one of these foolish creatures fought her beloved, it was not some honorable duel between blades. Instead, it had been a short and brutal exchange where the Kresnik had tried to slash at Alchemist who, rather than block or parry, had instead rushed into the spirit's guard, grabbing the crossguard of the creature's sword with one hand and ripping it, and the Kresnik, towards him while brutally stabbing and slashing with his own knife.
Alchemist had no honor as a swordsman. But he replaced that instead with a sharp, wicked knowledge of things like distance and advantage.
Perhaps that was why her lover was so partial to his long guns? She knew that, even before he'd claimed skills to further enhance his talents, Alchemist had nearly as much raw gift with those tools as she did with the blade.
Yuffie was almost the polar opposite. If at all possible, she refused to close distances and instead preferred to fight from afar. The girl would fling knives, shuriken and an endless stream of small, quick spells that would target any natural weaknesses in her foes. Though, in the rare event that something might survive the onslaught of metal and magic, the girl proved as tricky and cunning as Alchemist could be. She would teleport, seemingly at random around a target. Disorienting and distracting them until they were foolish enough to commit to an attack of some kind, just to then disappear and reappear outside of their guard.
And it was obvious that Yuffie had spent her time in the world of Gaia learning at her adoptive father's knee... because she would then take her own knife and, typically, go for the backs of her enemies knees. Crippling her foes before returning to her preferred distance to continue turning them into piles of ash or frost.
Jinx certainly kept things interesting. The young dragon made judicious use of illusion spells. Distracting, disorienting, disguising herself as her enemies, or transforming some of their foes to look like herself or another member of the party to initiate infighting.
One clever trick that Kary had seen was when they'd snuck up on a group of foes. Little snowmen mixed with floating pumpkins that carried lanterns. Jinx had, instead of directly facing these foes, instead cast a spell that surrounded her in a sphere of absolute silence. Then she simply withdrew her revolver and shot the enemy party to death, one by one in absolute silence.
They never even noticed.
Tiffany, Player One, had the most flexible fighting style. She had her shortswords and she had a shortbow, though Kary could not truly guess as to where she'd sourced it. It hadn't come from Alchemist, that much Kary was sure of.
The girl had figured out, finally, that she would get the best results if she remembered to buff herself up and debuff her foes of their strengths. After that, at least when fighting things that did not simply die in one critical blow, the girl would work to keep control of the pace of a fight.
Kary actually found herself approving of the way Tiffany handled herself. She did not have Alchemist's cunning brutality, Yuffie's frenetic energy or Jinx's masterful manipulation but, instead, she would pace herself. Tiffany would take a measure of her foes and then determine if she wanted to wear them out by moving just a bit too fast for them to keep up with, or if she needed to conserve her energy to find the right moment, the right rhythm in which to plunge her blades into the hearts of her enemies.
Kary herself fought in a similar way, though she was perhaps more prone to overwhelming her foes with unrelenting might should she think it a viable option.
They all had their strengths and their weaknesses. And their strange journey to the heart of the Demonica's Item World saw all of them both succeeding and being punished when they overreached. And, in the rare event that they fought something that could actually punch through their defenses, it had not been uncommon for there to be multiple casting of Salvation, bathing the wounded in brilliant healing light.
But all things, both good and bad, must come to an end. And that end, on the one-hundredth and final floor, took the form of three entities.
In the center of a thankfully large room stood what looked to be a woman. She wore a black, padded bodysuit that covered everything below her head and had on a long, flowing red coat. Upon her left arm was a large, silver bangle that had a curious purple sphere embedded in it. Her face was fully covered, however, by a mask that resembled the helmet of the Demonica suit. It was far more streamlined, however, and had a number of red lines forming circles around the eyes and mouth-slot.
At her right was a small specter wearing a leather jacket with a rainbow mohawk. Rather than legs, the entity's waist trailed off into gaseous clouds.
At her left was a great behemoth. It sat upon a great, gray and white serpentine tail and it appeared to have two sets of arms. One pair, on the lower portion of the beast's torso, appeared almost like the hind claws of some large cat. Its upper arms were great, muscular things covered in crimson scales and tipped with sharp, jagged claws. Its head, in contrast, was that of a white owl with a short, sharp beak and wise, yellow eyes.
"...Well," Alchemist whispered as their group gazed upon the Item God and its cohort. "Not quite what I was expecting."
"Did you think it was gonna be the soldier guy?" Yuffie asked.
"Yeah," Alchemist admitted.
"And who is this, love?" Kary asked as she looked upon the mostly still figures.
"The girl would be an echo of Alex," Alchemist began to explain. "A nephilim that could force a false ascension by eating these things called the Cosmic Fruits."
Dangerous, then, Kary determined as she looked over the armored girl with fresh eyes.
"Her allies would be a Shaytan, a spirit of temptation, and Amon, the seventh named devil of the Ars Goetia." Alchemist inhaled sharply and she could see his eyes darting across the group, a plan forming. "Kary? Can you keep the bigger one busy? He mostly does fire damage but he should have a few Almighty spells, too. I need the rest of you keeping Shaytan busy while I steal the god's gear and put her down."
"Why do you need three of us fighting what looks like the weakest link?" Tiffany asked.
Kary was not so overconfident in herself that she could not see the merit in asking such a question.
"He has a spell called Luster Soul that can maximize his allies attributes and he can fully heal any member of his party," Alchemist explained.
Kary nodded in understanding at the explanation. The echo and Amon could fight and cause trouble but the Shaytan could make them far more difficult.
"Simple enough," Jinx agreed. "Ready?"
Four voices sounded out in agreement and Kary unsheathed her blade.
Alchemist held one hand out to the side, three fingers held out. Then two. Then one...
Then Kary launched herself forward as Alchemist disappeared and Yuffie threw a handful of her knives at the floating, multicolored punk. Jinx and Tiffany dashed forward side by side, the both of them keeping close as they swiftly closed the distance.
The response to their actions was almost as swift as they were. The owl-headed devil, Amon, began to charge crimson magic about his massive hands, his beak opening and closing in a silent chant as the echo of Alex leveled a futuristic laser pistol in their direction. The Shaytan, however, did not have a chance to begin doing anything as four knives buried themselves into its chest, pink blood spraying from the wounds.
Before the item god could pull the trigger, however, her gun disappeared from her hands. And so, too, did her jacket disappear from about her shoulders...
And even her armor was gone, Stolen in an instant by Alchemist.
The nephilim's flesh being revealed should have been shocking. It was a being of radiant light, brilliance shining from it so bright that it was blinding. The only imperfection, the part of it that was human, would have been the eyes. Clear and blue and bleeding dark, crimson tears of blood.
A mortal stain on something that should have been perfect.
The Item God turned to face Alchemist whilst Amon finished its chant and Kary, Jinx and Tiffany were swallowed in pillars of flame.
But the fire did nothing to slow the girls down. No, Kary would not be quelled, not by the flames of something so weak as a Marquis from a realm that was unwanted and untouched by invasions. She charged forward, her hands held fast to her blade, magic and power coursing through her arms.
"To the current of life we succumb, its judgment swift and final. Its bite as cold as steel!" Kary shouted as she swung her blade, as she finally put to practice the arts she'd been slowly teasing from the Auracite once held by the swordsaint, Cidolfus Orlandeau. "Judgement Blade!"
A blade of ice ripped its way up from beneath the fallen angel, Time itself halting at her command!
And Kary lunged, a bloodthirsty smile spread wide across her face as she took in the shock, the fear that filled the inhuman eyes of the monster as her blade plunged towards its right eye. It did not put up its hands to defend itself. Nor did it try and dodge away from her, frozen in place as it was.
All it could do, then, was die.
Anchored to the corpse by her blade, Kary turned her head to observe her allies as they performed their own duties.
Jinx and Tiffany made swift work of the Shaytan. Yuffie's surprise attack had prevented it from casting its first spell. And between the other two, it was given no time to try for another. It had not lasted any longer than Amon had.
A short blast of light from the echo drew her attention but it seemed as though the Item God was largely powerless without her weapon. The blast of light she struck Alchemist with had been anemic, weak and powerless even before her lover's prodigious defenses were accounted for.
And Alchemist, in turn, lunged forward. His large hands, surprisingly gentle and precise when he worked on his projects and distractions, wrapped around the nephilim's face and lifted her off the ground. Kary could feel the power build up as Alchemist turned, dragging the resisting entity, clawing and scratching and fighting, around so they were facing away from the party...
And then a blast of yellow light ripped from his hand and decapitated the Item God in a single, likely painless, blow.
Freikugel.
Overkill.
Kary pulled her blade free of the devil corpse beneath her and hopped to the ground whilst the remains of the Shaytan dissipated like smoke.
The Item God's body faded away, turning into motes of light as the world around them seemed to breathe in relief.
It had been a short, brutal and distinctly one-sided exchange.
Just the way she liked it.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Could someone remind me, when do they plan to go back and deal with Zeus and the plot? I'm not criticizing things. I literally cannot remember.
I think they did, they're just trying to get as strong as possible first.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Uh, that's contradictory.