Chapter 31 - Entracte
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
"And what of death? Death eternal, and fear of it, as certain as your words, dictates our actions today. Only through its defeat can we truly be free to blossom into true humans."
- Unknown Sage
Entracte
It'd be madness to fight the Mangler right here, on top of a rooftop. A death sentence for everyone involved. It was their only recourse to accelerate their escape via the air.
"No, Johnny, we aren't fighting the Mangler; focus on the gunmen," Zane said, finding within himself a surprising calmness.
He stepped out of cover. He allowed the dark vines and silver brambles to manifest on his arms, their spikes digging into his wounds like a crown of thorns sipping on blood. All of them scratched past the colored-mineral scales that had sprouted from his skin and flesh, filling in the wounds as much as possible to slow bleeding, to avoid further injury. It was a reactive sort of power. He could feel a similar toughness inside of his chest, on second thought, where draconic flesh or scale had filled in the space of his ribs. It'd lead to more permanent damage if he allowed it to fester, but for now, he could survive with it there.
At this distance, the gunmen attacking them were specks of shapeless dark, flashing every couple of seconds as their muzzles released bright light and deafening noise. His eyes danced, drinking in their positions, as time itself slowed down to a narrow trickle of its usual flow, every second from his perspective being maybe a thousandth from theirs, his cognition accelerated with his newfound physique and his Invocations, letting him perceive the world in what could only be described as crawling lethargy. He could even see the bullets streaming past him, visibly distorting the airflow around them and leaving behind light, airy feelings as his jacket ruffled in their wake.
He didn't focus on any of that, not even as he jumped up into the air in order to obtain a better elevation, crossing thirty meters in maybe three seconds, and sixty meters in twelve, peaking up at around a hundred meters roughly twenty seconds later - all from his own perspective, of course. It must've been a blur for them, down below.
Instead, he focused as he formed several floating masses of clumped flower petals fed from his Knight Arm, like vivid balls of sun-kissed summer and warming spring, their mass fed from his Knight Arm: petals of crimson, scarlet, orange, golden, lemon, sapphire, and other colors far more difficult to describe in one word. All of the balls compressed mystically and sprouted thorns, sharp branches tougher than titanium and yet somehow less flexible than stone. All of those he also compressed, torn and crumpled up, and intermixed with the petals, to create destructive balls of floral matter, dead and living, writhing like there were snakes dancing on their surface.
He flung them at the cover of their foes, five spiraling globes of natural devastation, rage and unfairness poured into an attack. A few seconds later, the devastating flower shots reached their position and exploded into a whirl of cutting motion, each petal released as a flying cutting blade, and every thorn a skewering piece of shrapnel. Some wayward parts of those explosions reached the enemy helicopters, making sharp incisions on the rotors and tail, forcing the crafts to dive and maintain something resembling a stall in order to not crash, freeing up their hands.
A few seconds later, magically propelled by his own will, Zane dropped back down onto the rooftop of Mephistopheles' skyscraper, while the top floor of the other skyscraper collapsed in on itself, killing their attackers, and hopefully, not killing any civilians.
A hiss filled the air now, the rushing shockwave of air from his attack, ruffling clothes and hair, almost blowing Buddha's glasses off his face. As Zane walked over to the group, he demanifested his Knight Arm self-consciously. Poseidon and the Sun Wukong duo were staring at him. It was impossible to tell the expression of Mephistopheles, Spike, and Hephaestus under their helmets, but they were likely shocked as well - with the sheer power and decisiveness with which Zane had decimated their foes. Only Johnny Buddha seemed to, almost, take the events in stride, almost as if he'd expected such an extreme thing to happen.
"We need to move, now," he told the others.
"Most impressive, but I don't believe you'll be going anywhere."
All of them turned, Zane being first, to face their new opponent, who'd appeared out of nowhere, seemingly in between eyeblinks.
It was a woman in a sable dress, very formal and somewhat modest, revealing only the left leg where the dress had a long opening for it, and concealing the rest down to under her knees. Her arms were mostly free of clothing, aside from black leather gloves. Her neck had a choker on it. Her brown hair was styled into a hime cut.
And behind her, a small platoon of soldiers in armor. Rather than wearing helmets, each one had a mask similar to the one that Mr. Wisteria wore: eggshell-white with dark pits for the eyes and a third eye painted on in the middle of the forehead. A few of them had ordinary, high-grade automatic rifles with glowing red runes painted on, while others had weaponry that seemed to be outright stolen from the realm of science fiction - a team of two individuals, one wearing a huge battery backpack and bearing some kind of activation panel, while the other held a massive glass barrel running with a current of scarlet-red energy.
"You're with Olympus," Johnny surmised, taking the lead.
"She is. Her name is Queen Bitch," Mephistopheles said with an undercurrent of insulting humor.
"You may call me Elsa," she replied softly, not sparing the dying man a glance. "Zane Li Black, you've truly come a long way since entering our program. You are a success beyond our grandest imagining - not merely to become a bearer of cards, but to transcend them entirely? How very novel."
"What do you want?"
"We'll talk about that in just a moment," she replied, offering a smirk in place of an explanation.
A few moments passed, and there was a noise of breaking, shattering glass, and then ripping concrete and steel. A breath later, the Mangler climbed up to the top of the roof. He sniffed the air and his head snapped in Zane's direction. He was about to dash to continue their fight from before - when Elsa whistled: a long, drawn-out, shrill note.
It caused the Mangler to howl in what any listener would be able to testify sounded like utter agony, then whimper and bend over in pain, transformation decaying and reversing to leave him a man-wolf covered in fur once more, his coat and clothes manifesting seconds later.
The woman approached him with unhurried footsteps, whistling still, keeping him floored on the ground. He screamed when she changed her pitch for a moment, then screamed in a different tone when she came back to the previous one. She started to whistle out a merry tune, resembling nothing less than a classical piece, while the Mangler writhed on the floor of the roof, screaming and yelling incoherently in various garbled tones, fingernails ripping apart as he tried to rake through the roof hopelessly, leaving his fingers bleeding.
She finally reached him, and stabbed down into his back with her heel, stopping her whistle and leaving him - a crying, gibbering wreck.
"Bad dog," she chastised, as one might a misbehaving puppy. She kicked again, and a cloud of violet dust lanced out of her heel to cover his entire body. A few moments later, the cloud dispersed, to reveal a small wolf pup. She picked him up by the scruff, making him howl and move his feet in an attempted escape. "We'll be dealing with you later."
"So you were the ones to release the Mangler from wherever you'd chained him up," Mephistopheles said in simple words. "It seems like my theory was right. I must question, however - what purpose is there in killing Zane Li Black? If he is, as you said, a success?"
"A successful threat," Elsa answered, playing with the Mangler pup.
It nipped her in the finger with its small teeth, and she smacked her lips distastefully as she drew back the same hand and hit it over the head, prompting another whimper. Zane wasn't sure whether to move in and help - it was the fucking Mangler, but at the same time, she'd turned it into a fucking puppy.
Even if he wanted, there was a small team of people with magical rifles pointed at them standing behind her. It seemed like a safe bet they'd know about his speed and powers if they were here and so confident in keeping him at gunpoint.
"At any rate," Elsa said, tossing the Mangler puppy over to the soldiers like one might toss a phone or a wallet - one of them caught it in his arms. "It's rather simple, Zane. You've caused some problems for us, with your existence."
"I seem to do that with everyone that I meet, lady," Zane found himself saying, and before he could stop, like blood from a wound, he added, "All I ever wanted was to open a flower shop."
"Here are your options," she said, raising up three fingers, and then lowering one. "First, continue fighting against us, and probably die. As a consequence, most of your friends will also probably die. Even if you killed me and my men here, somehow, we have more where the Mangler came from."
He tensed slightly.
"Second, kill yourself."
He untensed. "Real mature."
"I am serious!" she added with something resembling faux offense at being taken for a jokester. "How could I not? It'd save everyone a lot of trouble. I wouldn't have to unleash that beastie Connor over here to cause more trouble for anyone, and we'd all be able to continue in peace."
"Right. And number three?"
"Also principally similar to suicide, but in a different way," she answered - suddenly prim, putting her hands together. A smile graced Elsa's features as she said, "We'll have you sign a contract and make you a company asset - a recruit employee."
He found himself blinking. "Are you serious?"
"Of course! As I said, you're a great success! And powerful to boot. We have a grrreat dental plan - poor Blake here already benefited from sharpening his cute little fangs," she said, reaching over and scratching the Mangler's chin with her fingers. It growled. "I do recommend it. Oh, and the food in the mess hall is nothing short of divine!"
He looked at the Mangler, and remembered Elsa's whistle. A control measure? He was likely kept in a cell most of the time, to have become so feral - his true form was that of a man, after all. "I find myself doubtful that I'll be allowed to eat with such esteemed personnel."
"Who knows?" Elsa shrugged. And then, deviously, she smirked. "I am but a humble messenger from the heavens, Zane Li Black, and you've impressed the Boss. If you maintain such a streak, I am sure you'd advance in the corporate ladder very fast. It'd open a new world for you - a world of opportunity. It'd let you leave behind this unsightly place and walk among the elites where you were meant to be. A flower shop? Oh, baby, forget it - a flower company, one that spans worlds, with you as the chairman. I can show you cultivars and species of flower beyond your wildest imagining. All day, you can do whatever you please. And you can bring your friends!"
---
As of right now, you have 2.9 Ambrosia.
As a result of a magnificent attack roll, Zane has spontaneously developed a battle technique/Invocation called, for the moment, Flower of Devastation. It bears similarity to its father technique, Flower Shot. The difference is that Zane pours out a larger portion (20%) of petalmass and accelerates it with spin to produce an explosion at the impact point, comparable in power to a minor cruise missile, easily devastating an entire building the size of a skyscraper if aimed properly. He can theoretically shoot multiple Flowers of Devastation per battle if he's willing to space his shots.
Would you like to re-name it?
[ ] No (+5% to Invocation damage, +15% to Invocation range.)
[ ] Devastation Blooms (+20% to Invocation radius.)
[ ] Write-in.
Which do you select from Elsa's offers?
[ ] The First: Fight - There is only a single flower worthy of your championship in this entire cosmos, and that is the Perfect Lotus.
*Requires you to fight the Mangler.
*And Elsa, whatever powers she has.
*And her goons, who are presumably equipped with Anti-You weaponry.
*As this is the start of a new Arc, access to Brawler of Midwood means you're likely to survive - but unlikely to win.
*It's likely that everyone aside from Zane and the Olympus staff on that rooftop will die. Are you prepared to sacrifice Spike and Johnny?
[ ] The Second: Death - You die.
*Ends the Quest.
*Pretty simple.
*Recommended for new players.
[ ] The Third: Employment - Become an employee of the Olympus Corporation, as one of the junior assets.
*An option unlocked by being an utterly tenacious bastard, good rolls, and picking an option that grants external (non-Godcard) powers.
*Continue the Quest as an Agent of Olympus.
*A lot of the Godcard plot gets left behind due to sheer irrelevancy. You'll still have to deal with the mess you've made (Hell invasion, Mangler effort ops, teenage dating,) but it'll all be on the back-burner for a lot of the time.
*Discover a lot of multiversal lore over time, including Olympus' origins, as well as its mother company...
*You get to see how the sausage gets made.
- Unknown Sage
Entracte
It'd be madness to fight the Mangler right here, on top of a rooftop. A death sentence for everyone involved. It was their only recourse to accelerate their escape via the air.
"No, Johnny, we aren't fighting the Mangler; focus on the gunmen," Zane said, finding within himself a surprising calmness.
He stepped out of cover. He allowed the dark vines and silver brambles to manifest on his arms, their spikes digging into his wounds like a crown of thorns sipping on blood. All of them scratched past the colored-mineral scales that had sprouted from his skin and flesh, filling in the wounds as much as possible to slow bleeding, to avoid further injury. It was a reactive sort of power. He could feel a similar toughness inside of his chest, on second thought, where draconic flesh or scale had filled in the space of his ribs. It'd lead to more permanent damage if he allowed it to fester, but for now, he could survive with it there.
At this distance, the gunmen attacking them were specks of shapeless dark, flashing every couple of seconds as their muzzles released bright light and deafening noise. His eyes danced, drinking in their positions, as time itself slowed down to a narrow trickle of its usual flow, every second from his perspective being maybe a thousandth from theirs, his cognition accelerated with his newfound physique and his Invocations, letting him perceive the world in what could only be described as crawling lethargy. He could even see the bullets streaming past him, visibly distorting the airflow around them and leaving behind light, airy feelings as his jacket ruffled in their wake.
He didn't focus on any of that, not even as he jumped up into the air in order to obtain a better elevation, crossing thirty meters in maybe three seconds, and sixty meters in twelve, peaking up at around a hundred meters roughly twenty seconds later - all from his own perspective, of course. It must've been a blur for them, down below.
Instead, he focused as he formed several floating masses of clumped flower petals fed from his Knight Arm, like vivid balls of sun-kissed summer and warming spring, their mass fed from his Knight Arm: petals of crimson, scarlet, orange, golden, lemon, sapphire, and other colors far more difficult to describe in one word. All of the balls compressed mystically and sprouted thorns, sharp branches tougher than titanium and yet somehow less flexible than stone. All of those he also compressed, torn and crumpled up, and intermixed with the petals, to create destructive balls of floral matter, dead and living, writhing like there were snakes dancing on their surface.
He flung them at the cover of their foes, five spiraling globes of natural devastation, rage and unfairness poured into an attack. A few seconds later, the devastating flower shots reached their position and exploded into a whirl of cutting motion, each petal released as a flying cutting blade, and every thorn a skewering piece of shrapnel. Some wayward parts of those explosions reached the enemy helicopters, making sharp incisions on the rotors and tail, forcing the crafts to dive and maintain something resembling a stall in order to not crash, freeing up their hands.
A few seconds later, magically propelled by his own will, Zane dropped back down onto the rooftop of Mephistopheles' skyscraper, while the top floor of the other skyscraper collapsed in on itself, killing their attackers, and hopefully, not killing any civilians.
A hiss filled the air now, the rushing shockwave of air from his attack, ruffling clothes and hair, almost blowing Buddha's glasses off his face. As Zane walked over to the group, he demanifested his Knight Arm self-consciously. Poseidon and the Sun Wukong duo were staring at him. It was impossible to tell the expression of Mephistopheles, Spike, and Hephaestus under their helmets, but they were likely shocked as well - with the sheer power and decisiveness with which Zane had decimated their foes. Only Johnny Buddha seemed to, almost, take the events in stride, almost as if he'd expected such an extreme thing to happen.
"We need to move, now," he told the others.
"Most impressive, but I don't believe you'll be going anywhere."
All of them turned, Zane being first, to face their new opponent, who'd appeared out of nowhere, seemingly in between eyeblinks.
It was a woman in a sable dress, very formal and somewhat modest, revealing only the left leg where the dress had a long opening for it, and concealing the rest down to under her knees. Her arms were mostly free of clothing, aside from black leather gloves. Her neck had a choker on it. Her brown hair was styled into a hime cut.
And behind her, a small platoon of soldiers in armor. Rather than wearing helmets, each one had a mask similar to the one that Mr. Wisteria wore: eggshell-white with dark pits for the eyes and a third eye painted on in the middle of the forehead. A few of them had ordinary, high-grade automatic rifles with glowing red runes painted on, while others had weaponry that seemed to be outright stolen from the realm of science fiction - a team of two individuals, one wearing a huge battery backpack and bearing some kind of activation panel, while the other held a massive glass barrel running with a current of scarlet-red energy.
"You're with Olympus," Johnny surmised, taking the lead.
"She is. Her name is Queen Bitch," Mephistopheles said with an undercurrent of insulting humor.
"You may call me Elsa," she replied softly, not sparing the dying man a glance. "Zane Li Black, you've truly come a long way since entering our program. You are a success beyond our grandest imagining - not merely to become a bearer of cards, but to transcend them entirely? How very novel."
"What do you want?"
"We'll talk about that in just a moment," she replied, offering a smirk in place of an explanation.
A few moments passed, and there was a noise of breaking, shattering glass, and then ripping concrete and steel. A breath later, the Mangler climbed up to the top of the roof. He sniffed the air and his head snapped in Zane's direction. He was about to dash to continue their fight from before - when Elsa whistled: a long, drawn-out, shrill note.
It caused the Mangler to howl in what any listener would be able to testify sounded like utter agony, then whimper and bend over in pain, transformation decaying and reversing to leave him a man-wolf covered in fur once more, his coat and clothes manifesting seconds later.
The woman approached him with unhurried footsteps, whistling still, keeping him floored on the ground. He screamed when she changed her pitch for a moment, then screamed in a different tone when she came back to the previous one. She started to whistle out a merry tune, resembling nothing less than a classical piece, while the Mangler writhed on the floor of the roof, screaming and yelling incoherently in various garbled tones, fingernails ripping apart as he tried to rake through the roof hopelessly, leaving his fingers bleeding.
She finally reached him, and stabbed down into his back with her heel, stopping her whistle and leaving him - a crying, gibbering wreck.
"Bad dog," she chastised, as one might a misbehaving puppy. She kicked again, and a cloud of violet dust lanced out of her heel to cover his entire body. A few moments later, the cloud dispersed, to reveal a small wolf pup. She picked him up by the scruff, making him howl and move his feet in an attempted escape. "We'll be dealing with you later."
"So you were the ones to release the Mangler from wherever you'd chained him up," Mephistopheles said in simple words. "It seems like my theory was right. I must question, however - what purpose is there in killing Zane Li Black? If he is, as you said, a success?"
"A successful threat," Elsa answered, playing with the Mangler pup.
It nipped her in the finger with its small teeth, and she smacked her lips distastefully as she drew back the same hand and hit it over the head, prompting another whimper. Zane wasn't sure whether to move in and help - it was the fucking Mangler, but at the same time, she'd turned it into a fucking puppy.
Even if he wanted, there was a small team of people with magical rifles pointed at them standing behind her. It seemed like a safe bet they'd know about his speed and powers if they were here and so confident in keeping him at gunpoint.
"At any rate," Elsa said, tossing the Mangler puppy over to the soldiers like one might toss a phone or a wallet - one of them caught it in his arms. "It's rather simple, Zane. You've caused some problems for us, with your existence."
"I seem to do that with everyone that I meet, lady," Zane found himself saying, and before he could stop, like blood from a wound, he added, "All I ever wanted was to open a flower shop."
"Here are your options," she said, raising up three fingers, and then lowering one. "First, continue fighting against us, and probably die. As a consequence, most of your friends will also probably die. Even if you killed me and my men here, somehow, we have more where the Mangler came from."
He tensed slightly.
"Second, kill yourself."
He untensed. "Real mature."
"I am serious!" she added with something resembling faux offense at being taken for a jokester. "How could I not? It'd save everyone a lot of trouble. I wouldn't have to unleash that beastie Connor over here to cause more trouble for anyone, and we'd all be able to continue in peace."
"Right. And number three?"
"Also principally similar to suicide, but in a different way," she answered - suddenly prim, putting her hands together. A smile graced Elsa's features as she said, "We'll have you sign a contract and make you a company asset - a recruit employee."
He found himself blinking. "Are you serious?"
"Of course! As I said, you're a great success! And powerful to boot. We have a grrreat dental plan - poor Blake here already benefited from sharpening his cute little fangs," she said, reaching over and scratching the Mangler's chin with her fingers. It growled. "I do recommend it. Oh, and the food in the mess hall is nothing short of divine!"
He looked at the Mangler, and remembered Elsa's whistle. A control measure? He was likely kept in a cell most of the time, to have become so feral - his true form was that of a man, after all. "I find myself doubtful that I'll be allowed to eat with such esteemed personnel."
"Who knows?" Elsa shrugged. And then, deviously, she smirked. "I am but a humble messenger from the heavens, Zane Li Black, and you've impressed the Boss. If you maintain such a streak, I am sure you'd advance in the corporate ladder very fast. It'd open a new world for you - a world of opportunity. It'd let you leave behind this unsightly place and walk among the elites where you were meant to be. A flower shop? Oh, baby, forget it - a flower company, one that spans worlds, with you as the chairman. I can show you cultivars and species of flower beyond your wildest imagining. All day, you can do whatever you please. And you can bring your friends!"
---
As of right now, you have 2.9 Ambrosia.
As a result of a magnificent attack roll, Zane has spontaneously developed a battle technique/Invocation called, for the moment, Flower of Devastation. It bears similarity to its father technique, Flower Shot. The difference is that Zane pours out a larger portion (20%) of petalmass and accelerates it with spin to produce an explosion at the impact point, comparable in power to a minor cruise missile, easily devastating an entire building the size of a skyscraper if aimed properly. He can theoretically shoot multiple Flowers of Devastation per battle if he's willing to space his shots.
Would you like to re-name it?
[ ] No (+5% to Invocation damage, +15% to Invocation range.)
[ ] Devastation Blooms (+20% to Invocation radius.)
[ ] Write-in.
Which do you select from Elsa's offers?
[ ] The First: Fight - There is only a single flower worthy of your championship in this entire cosmos, and that is the Perfect Lotus.
*Requires you to fight the Mangler.
*And Elsa, whatever powers she has.
*And her goons, who are presumably equipped with Anti-You weaponry.
*As this is the start of a new Arc, access to Brawler of Midwood means you're likely to survive - but unlikely to win.
*It's likely that everyone aside from Zane and the Olympus staff on that rooftop will die. Are you prepared to sacrifice Spike and Johnny?
[ ] The Second: Death - You die.
*Ends the Quest.
*Pretty simple.
*Recommended for new players.
[ ] The Third: Employment - Become an employee of the Olympus Corporation, as one of the junior assets.
*An option unlocked by being an utterly tenacious bastard, good rolls, and picking an option that grants external (non-Godcard) powers.
*Continue the Quest as an Agent of Olympus.
*A lot of the Godcard plot gets left behind due to sheer irrelevancy. You'll still have to deal with the mess you've made (Hell invasion, Mangler effort ops, teenage dating,) but it'll all be on the back-burner for a lot of the time.
*Discover a lot of multiversal lore over time, including Olympus' origins, as well as its mother company...
*You get to see how the sausage gets made.
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