If you want something done right, do it yourself. Clearly the best course of action would be to transform into a bear, and then have the golem throw it right into the flying menace!
It's a shame our Levitation doesn't work while transformed. Flying werebears must be quite a sight.
...why is the update called 'You Can't Remember Your Name'?
Is water conjured from the memories of the caster?
[X] Unacceptable. Unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable! This journey has just been a long series of annoyances, frustrations and life-threatening ordeals; people constantly impeding your progress towards your literal God-given task, adorable animal-people rejecting your affections, people refusing to believe you're human despite your claims, the relentless onslaught of the Grimm as they attempt to take your life. You. Are. Getting. ANGRY. One thing is absolutely certain: you did not finally get a chance to actually live your life after over two decades of being treated like you were made of glass, only for you to die now.
-[X] Transmute your golem's right arm into a Drill, find the bastard that just hit you, and murder it the fuck to death!
Not wanting to peek out and see what was imitating her younger sister, Cattleya didn't bother stopping the golem's roll.
More explosions rocked her path, jostling her and being generally annoying. Still, she could hear the occasional crunch of the Grimm that were too slow to evade her approach, so it wasn't as if they were the only ones getting hits in. One particularly large collision nearly stopped her, but she used the spin to slam one of the golem's arms into whatever it was. All in all, things were going well... until they weren't.
One moment she was moving at a rapid pace and the next she was slamming against the walls of her chamber as the golem dropped into a pit. The fall was short and the soft clay probably saved her from the worst of the drop, but she'd obviously been guided into the pit intentionally. The creatures were apparently smarter than she'd given them credit for.
Regaining her bearings, as much as such was possible in absolute darkness, Cattleya could hear the triumphant roars of at least three of the beasts nearby. In bursts of three, more explosions wracked the golem, knocking it around as she attempted to have it stand. She tried to brace with its hands, but another series of blasts to the threw it onto its back and dim light began to leak through a crack in the shell that was probably way worse on the outside.
The winged shadow that passed over the crack at least gave her some idea as to how they'd kept pace with her.
Status: Heavy bruising, immobile leg
Magicka: (1780/3000)
Choose:
[] Transform and charge out while they're least expecting it.
[] Curl the golem into a ball and make a new one to fight them while you watch and direct through the crack.
[] If they're intelligent, maybe they'll accept a surrender?
Is there a way to use our new surroundings to our advantage? I don't expect Cattleya to have a spell for tunneling like a mole, but there's probably something she could draw upon. Maybe something she has seen Cynric, Louise or her mother cast.
[X] Plan: Desperate Times
-[X] You are losing. Badly. You need a breather. Curl up and try to build a protective dome around your golem.
--[X] Once you're covered, begin repairing and reinforcing for golem. You're going to need it in top form to turn this around. Also, try to widen and thicken your golem's left forearm. Make it into a shield.
---[X] When you're golem is ready, open a view slit. You're going to need to be able to see them to fight them.
----[X] Now comes the most important step: Get. To. Your. Feet. Whatever it takes. Pushing yourself up off the ground as quickly as you can, even at the cost of potentially overshooting it and falling over in the other direction? Try it. Using your momentum if you get knocked over to try and roll into a standing position? Try it. Whatever it takes to stand, try it, because you are going to die if you can't stand.
-----[X] Once you've gotten to your feet, keep yourself protected with your shield. Keep an eye out for opportunities to retaliate. If you can get close, engage in melee.
------[X] If you can't get close? Well, then things get tricky. Extend one finger on your golem's right hand. Punch at your target as accurately as you can, finger still extended pointing straight ahead. Crumble the finger off at the middle joint right at the full extension of your punch. Hopefully, the momentum of the punch will launch the finger at the enemy once it's no longer connected to the golem. Assuming it works even remotely as well as you're hoping for, continue until you run out of fingers to shoot. Then fire what's left of the hand. Then segments of the forearm. Stop once you run out of targets, or you reach your elbow.
-------[X] If there are still enemies left, start running and try to buy yourself some more time to think of another plan.
Time to get creative!
Honestly, I really do just want Cattleya to turn into a straight-up mecha pilot at this point. Let's just hope this can work.
Is there a way to use our new surroundings to our advantage? I don't expect Cattleya to have a spell for tunneling like a mole, but there's probably something she could draw upon. Maybe something she has seen Cynric, Louise or her mother cast.
There's always the possibility of transmuting a shovel from dirt, right? Oh, you could also try to have the golem dig with its hands. Or combine the two and make a giant metal shovel for the giant metal golem to use! Crumble might make it go a little faster too. The basic earth manipulation she can do to move material isn't going to be fast enough to dig an escape mid-combat.
You're in a ten foot deep crater that was prepared by a Sphinx guiding Deathstalkers to dig while the rest forced you toward it. If you can think of any way to use it toward your advantage, go right ahead, but Cattleya's magic is very limited due to being strictly Halkeginian technique(AKA requires a wand and chanting with almost no exceptions in their six thousand years of history) so a new spell isn't happening until she gets at least half a day to come up with a chant that modifies what she already knows.
[X] If you can't get close? Well, then things get tricky. Extend one finger on your golem's right hand. Punch at your target as accurately as you can, finger still extended pointing straight ahead. Crumble the finger off at the middle joint right at the full extension of your punch. Hopefully, the momentum of the punch will launch the finger at the enemy once it's no longer connected to the golem. Assuming it works even remotely as well as you're hoping for, continue until you run out of fingers to shoot. Then fire what's left of the hand. Then segments of the forearm. Stop once you run out of targets, or you reach your elbow.
I think it would work better if you just transmute a couple of iron balls before she stands up to use as ammo. I'm assuming she knows how to throw a ball considering how many pets she's had and that fetch is so common.
I think it would work better if you just transmute a couple of iron balls before she stands up to use as ammo. I'm assuming she knows how to throw a ball considering how many pets she's had and that fetch is so common.
Honestly, the original plan was to launch the entire arm from the forearm down for a pseudo-rocket punch, but we'd only get one shot since we need the other arm for defense and there are too many enemies around, so I needed to make it more efficient.
Things were not turning out as well as Cattleya had expected or hoped. She could hardly even call what she was doing fighting, not with how utterly overwhelmed she was at that moment. Every movement toward climbing to her feet, her golem's at least, was punished by another blast to knock her back down while the sliding, clicking noise of those damnable bugs' legs in sand grew louder with each new arrival at the crater.
Well, if what she was doing wasn't working then maybe she needed to rethink what options she had.
Thrown back to the dirt, this time the golem pulled its legs in and wrapped its arms about the knees. Ignoring the answering blasts, she pushed her Will out and into the surrounding earth. With the speed of cold honey, dirt seeped upward from all around, set back by rhythmic explosions that lit up the night, but unrelenting in its climb. Oddly, the blasts died off quickly, replaced by what sounded like a single scorpion rushing in and engaging her in melee.
Compacted rock and dirt, the dome wasn't really affected by the blows as more and more material piled on until she couldn't hear it anymore. Not that she was just sitting quietly, rather the pinkette had taken to pulling small clumps of earth against the golem. Repairing the damage done to her creation was easy enough with the excess of material to draw from once the dome was in place, the dirt flowing into each crack and crater for her Alchemy to change. That was only undoing the work of the Grimm though, not really fixing the problem.
What she really needed was a way to fight back. Something that would let her ground-bound golem reach an enemy that could simply fly out of reach. Water Whip was out of the question since she wouldn't be able to direct the golem at the same time, so that just left her with the golem itself. The flying beasts were intelligent though, so anything she made to throw would be obvious and they would just keep their distance. She needed some way to arm...
That was it! Why not just 'throw' the golem's arm? It was unusual, certainly, but that just meant it would be unexpected.
Of course, she would need to solve the issue of being unable to stand. A shield perhaps? It wouldn't need to last long, just enough time for her to brace for the next blasts. To that end, she added more mass to the left arm, thickening and spreading it into a large dished circle along the forearm. More dirt pulled in on the golem's torso to create a layer of plate armor that wasn't a part of the golem itself to avoid wasting magic bringing it into the more responsive control spell. In the middle of building up armor, she added a series of tiny slits that would hopefully let her see without letting any scorpions in. While she was at it, she thickened the construct's lower legs and added a pair of broad, clawed feet. For good measure, she extended the fingers and added claws to them as well.
By the time she was finished with her modifications, the dome was reduced to a thin shell that wouldn't stop a single blow if the Grimm hadn't retreated to a safe distance to see what she would do.
Rising, the golem broke through the shell and was immediately bombarded by five exploding fireballs that illuminated the entire area to reveal what she assumed to be the Sphinx Grimm Kali had mentioned. Thrown backward, she barely managed to catch herself and pivot on her back foot, bringing the golem down into a kneel facing her shield arm toward her attackers. More explosions rocked her, but this time she got her shield in place between the majority of the blasts.
Releasing control in that position, she brought more dirt up in rough pillars around her. They didn't last long, but they did their job, intercepting enough fireballs to allow her to get up. Planting one foot in front of the other, she deflected another blast and grabbed the ruined remains of a pillar.
Using the pillar to throw the golem forward, she walked through the hail of fireballs with her shield up. Each step added to her momentum until her construct had broken into a full sprint, clawed feet digging in to loose dirt that would have otherwise sent it sliding back down. The first Sphinx pounced as she reached the rim of the crater only to get backhanded with her shield hard enough to crush its armored head and send it tumbling downward.
If they were affected in any way by seeing their fellow sprawled in the dirt, they didn't show it other than to spread out from the loose mob they'd been in. As she charged the next nearest one, a giant scorpions moved to intercept. Cattleya simply batted a stinger aside and stepped on the beast's face to propel herself into the air, catching her target by the snake that was its tail just as it made to fly away.
Dragging it down, she grabbed its head with the other hand and slammed it into the ground. Seeing this, the other three didn't waste any time taking to the air as the veritable horde of scorpions surged in from all around the crater.
The first few died easily, but she was soon surrounded by bodies as the giant bugs pinched and stabbed at her golem. They were just chipping at her armor, the stuff already littered with cracks and holes, but they would eventually tear it to pieces. Two of them were even bigger than the golem she'd made before and that thing was twice the size of her current one. On top of that, the flying Grimm hadn't left, taking turns swooping closer to hit her with a fireball.
Using her shield to bash one of the biggest scorpions in the face only created a crack in the bone armor, but it gave her room to punch her other fist skyward as a Sphinx was diving in. Letting one of the fingers' break off from the hand mid thrust, her target was caught completely unaware as the clawed digit tore off one of its wings. The surprised beast slammed into the raised tail of the giant scorpion and ended up impaled on the tail. Cattleya didn't waste a second reaching up to grab the weighed down appendage, slamming it through the owner's face.
Stepping over the entwined corpses, she was about to go after another Sphinx when the remaining giant scorpion grabbed her shield arm in its pincers and pulled her back down. The thing then proceeded to repeatedly stab at her hiding place in the golem's torso. Each hit pushed through a foot of steel and she didn't really have any choice but to abandon the arm as she rolled out of its grasp.
The maneuver seemed to confuse the scorpion, giving her enough time to get out from under it and back to her feet, using its body as a shield from the much more cautious flying Grimm.
Gaining some distance from the scorpion that had taken her shield, incidentally crushing many smaller ones beneath her golem's feet, she took aim for an airborne target. Unfortunately, when she shot a finger at it, the results were much less impressive than the first one. The Sphinx didn't even need to dodge, in fact it actually stopped to stare as the digit went wildly off course and tumbled uselessly in the glass strewn dirt.
Seeming to practically scoff at her dismal attempt, the creature spat a fireball directly into the view slit she was using, causing the pinkette to reel back in shock and pain. It didn't do much actual damage, most of the blast blocked by the golem, but even a moment of exposure to such heat is unpleasant and she spent several seconds blinking away tears.
The scorpion used her distraction to catch up, its glowing stinger embedding in the back of the golem and lifting her into the air. Not penetrating far enough to reach the person inside, but still far enough to get stuck in her golem's steel flesh, the beast began to shake and flail her about in an effort to free itself. Cattleya was helpless as it sloshed her around in the water, slamming her head repeatedly against the soft clay walls. When it finally did manage to get her off, she was sent rolling through several glassen spears.
The Grimm didn't give her any time to recover as she was immediately hit with a pair of explosions and a near miss sent a cloud of dirt into her chamber. Punching out blindly, she sent the remaining fingers of her golem's hand skyward before sending the hand itself. None of them hit and several smaller scorpions were already upon her, clanging pointlessly off of metal. She smashed them easily and launched as much of her golem as she dared at the flying Grimm, but she quickly reached the elbow with nothing to show for it.
Two Sphinxes were still circling the area, bombarding her from out of reach. An angry scorpion that was bigger than her golem kept trying to impale her. The golem she'd created and put so much effort into was covered in gouges and had no arms. It seemed there was only one thing left to do.
Burning clouds of dirt and glass rose into the air as she sprinted away, dodging her pursuers' fireballs as best she could.
[X] Hunker down in another dome and reform the golem's arms to try again.
-[X] Take some time to heal and water yourself with water magic while hunkered down.
I feel like this section has dragged on, can she either make it or fast travel back anytime soon... She ran off into danger and we needed to direct her so that she doesn't die off-screen, sadly that means we can't go back and appreciate the rwby crazyness Louise caused...
