You sigh and stand, spear in hand as if it had always been there. "Do you need them alive?" you ask idly, considering your options. The bartender had been fun, you'd really rather not wreck the place.
"Not really," they shrug. "They already told me what I need."
In that case... you nod, fix the seven goons -- now spreading out, wary of the two of you -- in your mind, and rap the butt of your spear on the floor.
𐑢𐑩𐑯𐑕, 𐑞𐑱𐑮 𐑢𐑭𐑟 𐑱 𐑥𐑱𐑛𐑩𐑯...
The world ripples, like the whole thing was a still pond you had thrown a rock into.
...𐑣𐑵 𐑛𐑮𐑰𐑥𐑛 𐑝 𐑛𐑱𐑟 𐑤𐑭𐑙 𐑐𐑨𐑕𐑑.
A second ripple leaves only a void in its wake, the substance of the bar replaced by nothing at all.
𐑖𐑰 𐑛𐑮𐑰𐑥𐑛 𐑝 ·𐑕𐑦𐑥𐑐𐑩𐑤𐑼 ·𐑑𐑲𐑥𐑟,
A third ripple replaced the blank white nothingness with substance. A large outdoor arena surrounds you, artificial terrain arranged in a tasteful facsimile of a grasslands biome. The stands are full, crowd cheering and booing, and camera drones flit around you, trying to get the best shots to feed to the monitors above and around.
𐑢𐑧𐑯 𐑖𐑰 𐑒𐑫𐑛 𐑑𐑧𐑤 𐑜𐑦𐑛 𐑓𐑼𐑥 𐑰𐑝𐑩𐑤
The lighting shifts, stadium lighting casting your seven foes in harsh, ominous shadows, even as Eira and you are illuminated grandly.
𐑯 𐑓𐑮𐑧𐑯𐑛 𐑓𐑼𐑥 𐑓𐑴.
All of you shift -- or rather the world does, placing your respective groups on opposite sides of a demarcated middle line. A referee, a cephalopod with a top hat, raises a baton, and all of you find yourselves frozen, bound by the structure you just defined.
Which is convenient, because the next part requires a bit more focus.
𐑦𐑑'𐑕 𐑭𐑤 𐑕𐑴 𐑕𐑦𐑥𐑐𐑩𐑤, 𐑤𐑲𐑛 𐑞 𐑥𐑱𐑛𐑩𐑯
All of you stayed frozen for a moment, as your will and focus binds each group into a singular whole -- you and Eira, Fin Sextus and his six goons -- and your clothes shift to match, red highlights marking their clothing now, and white marking yours and Eira's. The crowd shifts in response, its members suddenly clad in red or white.
𐑢𐑰 𐑕𐑑𐑨𐑯𐑛 𐑹 𐑓𐑭𐑤 𐑨𐑟 𐑢𐑩𐑯.
You take the bonds tying team members together and twist them just so, and they shine, blinding-bright in the team-colors you designated, then vanish.
"And, start!" the referee declares, chopping down with their baton before floating backwards, out of the way.
Done waiting around, it seems, one of the goons, already panicked, levels a grenade launcher at you both and fires.
Both you and Eira dodge out of the way, but in opposite directions. You click your tongue, annoyed; you hadn't told them about the rule yet.
Well, they're a smart cookie, they'll understand with a simple demonstration.
"Eira!" you call out, and they snap their gaze over to you, one gun half-drawn. You fix your gaze on them, then, hands in plain view, pinch your spear-holding arm, hard enough to hurt.
They twitch ever-so-slightly, then laugh. "Race you!"
You have to pull your attention away, then, because the goons seem to have decided that you're the primary threat -- probably fair, given what you just did -- and five of them converge on you.
You duck under a wild stab, parry a clumsy thrust, and slap the weapon out of a third's hand.
You can feel energy gathering from Eira's direction, and chop one in the throat with your free hand. A lazy, bad-angled chop, but still more than enough for your purposes.
All five of them choke and stumble, grasping at their throats in shocked confusion.
You spin your spear and drive it through the nearest one's chest, putting far more force behind it than would ordinarily be wise. Bone and flesh impeded your blade equally, but both were
more than normal, and your normal strength wouldn't necessarily win you that race.
Matching wounds open on each of them, blood gushing through holes not pluggd by your spear. They stumble. Two of them fall outright.
With a searing
crack, and the mingled scents of smoke and fresh grass, all of their heads simply vanish, instantly vaporized.
You glance at Eira, holding both of their pistols, each one smoking. "Kill-stealer," you accuse, mock-indignant.
"I still win."
You shrug and tap your spear on the floor.
𐑚𐑩𐑑 ·𐑛𐑮𐑰𐑥𐑟 𐑧𐑯𐑛
The team colors fade away, as you carefully dismantle the connection.
𐑯 𐑞 𐑥𐑱𐑛𐑩𐑯 𐑩𐑢𐑴𐑒
The arena fades next, returned back to the plain white void.
𐑑 𐑓𐑱𐑕 𐑒𐑴𐑤𐑛, 𐑣𐑸𐑛, 𐑮𐑰𐑨𐑤𐑩𐑑𐑰
And the bar comes back into view, leaving all of you where you stood before.
For a few moments, before the seven headless corpses tumbled to the floor, blood pooling rapidly beneath them.
"Now, Eira, make sure to
pay the lady for the trouble," you instruct, jerking your head over at the door the bartender had ducked into. "Do you need a hand with uh..." you try to remember the name the head goon had given. "Ted Jeppin?"
"Gred Teppin," they correct, and shake their head. "Nah, I'll go settle accounts. Go find your fairy tale." They pause. "Do my pickup first, though. Don't want you to get distracted on a new mystery of the universe while the Antimatter Legion overwhelms the Pteramidians."
You nod. That's fair, honestly.
You're barely containing your excitement by the time you get back to your 'berth,' such as it is. Ordinarily you'd take the scenic route, walk slowly to take in the sights, even on a junk heap of a world like this, but not today. Today, you took every shortcut you could reach without forcing your will onto the world, stepping through wrinkles in space-time and hopping over obstacles, turning what had been an hour-long walk into barely the work of five minutes.
Plan-style voting is recommended. If you want specific configurations, or duplicates of a companion type (e.g one lover and two descendants), that requires a plan. Otherwise, I will just choose the top X options.
What awaits you at your berth?
For vessels, note that while you can travel the cosmos on anything, the vessel can make it easier or harder, or provide that travel with different qualities. Your powers enhance, but don't outright replace, base qualities.
[ ] [Vessel Style] A sleek, high-tech thing, not one-of-a-kind but close to it, cutting through the cosmos like a knife. Fragile, but quick and stealthy.
[ ] [Vessel Style] An artistic-looking shaped-wood vessel, not quite as sturdy as metal, but with shields and weapons to compensate.
[ ] [Vessel Style] An organic, biotechnological thing, pseudo-intelligent but decidedly inhuman. Capable of self-repair and adaptation, but more vulnerable to a straightforward beating.
[ ] [Vessel Style] Not a vessel at all, but a massive spaceborne creature you have made friends with, adapted to symbiosis with humanoid-scale species. They don't like to make planetfall directly, though, so you had to take a shuttle to the surface.
[ ] [Vessel Style] A shifting, crystalline thing, all modular parts and transforming components, inherited from the same friend as
Yesterday's Paradise was. It has limited conventional space, even with the spatial warping present in the interior, but living people are brought into a shared mentalscape, in which they take no space at all.
[ ] [Vessel Style] Something else? Write in, subject to approval.
You will be gaining at least one travel companion along the way.
[ ] [Companion Number] No companions
[ ] [Companion Number] One companion
[ ] [Companion Number] Two companions
[ ] [Companion Number] Three companions
Your companion(s) themselves...
[ ] [Companion Type] A friend
[ ] [Companion Type] A lover
[ ] [Companion Type] A descendant
[ ] [Companion Type] A colleague
[ ] [Companion Type] A rescuee
[ ] [Companion Type] A passenger
[ ] [Companion Type] A rival
[ ] [Companion Type] ...an enemy?
[ ] [Companion Type] Something else? Write in, subject to approval.