Remove ads

Infernal Conundrum: [Exalted/Worm] - Part 2: Hell is Other Exalts

Reader mode
[X] They mostly come at night...Mostly.
--Whatever these alien sensations and things you keep feeling are, they must have something to do with your power. Make them help you.
 
Revlid said:
fascist and totalitarian, but ruthlessly fair
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is a perfect example. That sentence there describes to a T how Skitter's territory was run. She a had rules. You obeyed the rules. If you didn't, horrible things happened to you.


Revlid said:
Her violence is dispassionate and perversely pure, unmotivated by sadism and yet capable of systematically disassembling every obstacle in her path without the slightest remorse.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Skitter utterly took people apart. But it wasn't because she was a sadist. She didn't enjoy resorting to violence. She didn't knowingly over-do it (with the sole exception of with Tagg and Alexandria). But she also didn't stick to half-measures. She used the appropriate amount of force, to the best of her knowledge. For example, with Lung: she dispassionately and calculatedly cut out a man's eyes. Because it was the only appropriate step she could think of to keep him disabled. She'd been horrified to learn she'd rotted his junk off, because she hadn't intended to over-do it. On the other hand, when she took his eyes, she didn't even regret it...to the point that she freaked Sundancer, someone who had previously had to deal with having a team leader willing to sell one of her former friends to ACCORD, out.

During the bank job, she could have killed everyone there with her spiders (with the exception of Panacea). Instead she used the black widows as a deterrant, to keep people from getting hurt.

Honestly, the only thing which makes SWLiHN a less than perfect fit is the fact that Taylor starts out with Compassion-primary, Virtue-wise.
 
Last edited:
[X]Like Poison running through my veins.
--He wanted to hurt you? Fine. Let. Him. Try. He'd learn to be careful what he wished for.

Hands down, Spiteful Sea Tincture. It's just not Taylor without some kind of venom.
 
As a side-note, @Revlid : Earth-Bet has one unique factor going on that actually makes VEE an interesting charm, storywise. And she's already been mentioned in the thread. Even if she was invoked in jest.
 
Last edited:
[x]Like Poison running through my veins.
--He wanted to hurt you? Fine. Let. Him. Try. He'd learn to be careful what he wished for.

Regardless of the charm choice, irrespective of the rules, Taylor just needs to actually stand up to someone trying to hurt her; and smash their face in via glowing headbutt. She'll never not be a victim until she gets a chance to either move past or through an abuser. Infernal exaltation means never having to say you're sorry. (Except in certain courts). Smash his mask out between his shoulder blades, loot the knives and grenades, run like bastardy.
 
[X] Mind over matter.

I've never really liked the idea of having someone in Worm exalt and keep their Trigger power as well. Ignoring that exaltations are supposed to burn out everything else, the powers granted by exaltation are already more than enough. Adding an additional set of powers on top of that feels gratuitous to me. Hence, I'm not going to support the Cecylenian option that seems like it interacts with the Zion shard that Taylor apparently got.
 
Dark Abstraction said:
[X] Mind over matter.

I've never really liked the idea of having someone in Worm exalt and keep their Trigger power as well. Ignoring that exaltations are supposed to burn out everything else, the powers granted by exaltation are already more than enough. Adding an additional set of powers on top of that feels gratuitous to me. Hence, I'm not going to support the Cecylenian option that seems like it interacts with the Zion shard that Taylor apparently got.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's kind of ironic that you vote that way for that reason, since the QA Shard was part of the deciding factor in her being a Defiler rather than a Scourge. As for the extra powers...well, they won't be as straightforward as they'd otherwise be. Typically, a solar shard would excise imperfections from the target, which a Shard that doesn't reflect Solar themes would count as. But this shard is infused with the nature and Essence of SWLiHN. And the Queen Administrator shard resonates fairly well with those. It is about rendering disparate parts into a cohesive whole. It is about imposing Order and Hierarchy onto things.

Another example: Crawler's shard resonates well with the themes of either a Lunar or an Isidoros-infused Exaltation, with the self-indulgent focus and adaptive-survival oriented focus.

Coil? Coil's shard is sufficiently self-indulgent and cowardly in application that it'd be resonant with the essence of The Ebon Dragon (and it's in both of their natures to cheat to get what they want, anyway).



EDIT: It'd also depend on which came first. Any Exaltation with a sufficient Shaping defense could outright shut down the host's Trigger Event. On the other hand, if the shard is already in place when Exaltation happens...well, the conduit between the shard and the host is already there, and there isn't much the shard can do about the sudden and fundamental alteration to their host's nature (and potentially to their own nature, for that matter).
 
Last edited:
Well, I'm off to my weekly DnD game. I"ll go ahead and close the voting when I get back, unless it seems like enough people are still voting to merit extending it to tomorrow morning.
 
Conjured Blade said:
Are we talking Panopticon tier, Fate Hollow Fake/Hollow Order tier stunt suggestions or something less than that for future reference?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm not sure I get what you mean by that first reference. Could you clarify? I mean stunts as in stunts per the rules of Exalted. Because if we never stunt, Taylor's gonna be hurting a lot worse later on.
 
Thief of Words said:
I'm not sure I get what you mean by that first reference. Could you clarify? I mean stunts as in stunts per the rules of Exalted. Because if we never stunt, Taylor's gonna be hurting a lot worse later on.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The first reference is to a quest that has four of the best authors on the site following it and at least one of them giving a stunt for every single vote, which is a minimum of three paragraphs long.
 
Thief of Words said:
I'm not sure I get what you mean by that first reference. Could you clarify?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

MJ12's Panopticon Quest. It has some incredibly long stunts. Some of which actually introduce original characters or control characters besides the player character temporarily.

For comparison, here is Earthscorpion stunting a meeting with a marauder in Panopticon.

"Hey, Jane!" the Marauder says happily. "It's Stephanie! Had to go hush-hush, stop being a man for a while and become a woman again, you know how it is. It's good to see you. How's my favourite Interfector?"

Last time they'd been in contact, she'd been a him. Oh, and Jamelia had been called Jane Brahmastra, because a) NWO agents with boring first names and the surname of legendary weapons were practically a tradition, and b) the old white men assigning code names apparently couldn't tell someone from the Indian sub-continent apart from an Arab. Jamelia tucks a stray lock of hair back into her headscarf, and sits down. The heat of the Hong Kong sunshine streams in through the small windows of this anonymous apartment block, illuminating a petite blonde with a far too bright pink t-shirt with a few bloodstains on it.

"Stephanie," Jamelia says. "Things are going..." she shrugs. "As usual."

"Well, you've come to see me," the blonde squeals. "Jane, Jane, Jane, you only show up when you have good things for me! That's why we're bestest best friends So good! That means we're going to go off and kill people, torture them, all those fun things. And the explosives! I love your explosives! My contacts never get me anything as easy, so I have to make them myself. That, or summon a few spirits of nitroglycerin and tell them to make it for me. Boom! Ha ha ha. Man, I love how flexible the spirit arcanum can be. Spirit and life, that's me! You can keep your mind spells! They're hard!"

Like all Marauders, the individual currently calling herself Stephanie seemed to live in a different world from everyone else. Unlike most Marauders, Stephanie lived in a world which wasn't too different from the real one, and apart from the fact that she was a paranoid conspiracy maniac who had an uncanny talent for kidnapping and torturing people who knew real and useful information... Jamelia had been going somewhere with this thought, but got distracted by the fact that she was dealing with a paranoid mad-currently-woman.

Stephanie. Crazy. Useful. Has the devil's own luck. Hates Nephrandi. Entirely deniable as an asset. By Marauder standards basically lucid, and less crazy than some normal Tradition mages she's observed. Also seems to consider Jamelia her best friend, for reasons Jamelia hasn't quite been able to fathom. That was where she was going with it.

"Is the damn Paternoster Ministry again? The servants of the Father are dangerous, you know! You should be more careful. Found one of them three days ago. Heh. She told me everything I wanted to know, eventually. You'd be amazed what you can do with a bit of love and tender care. And about three litres of hydrochloric acid!" She reaches into her pocket, and dangles a gold necklace on a chain. "Got this symbol of the Father off her! Proved her allegiances like that."

Jamelia, who can recognise the icon for a Chorister symbol linked to their belief in 'the One', just nods along.

"Let's all have tequila!" Stephanie declares happily, pouring out a drink for Jamelia as well, who takes it. "And i can tell you about the conspiracy involving the Panopticon Ministry I found! Did you know they were the ones who killed JFK? They only needed one shooter, of course. People who claim there were two shooters have no idea what's going on. All they needed to do was make sure that space was warped so the bullets could come from wherever they liked, and that's easy, considering who they serve. Then they have people running around, looking for a conspiracy, when they're in plain view! The servants of the Eye are so fucking complicated they're simple. Did I ever tell you about their origins? They come from the Middle East, you know. Like you! Only you're not a cultist serving the usurper-god who claims dominion over all space."

Tequila came out of Jamelia's nose. "Wh-what?" she manages.

"Oh girl, don't you think I didn't warn you about the Panopticon Ministry before. They're one of the four cornerstones of the Iron Pyramid! They seek to keep humanity subjugated and unable to rise up again! Panopticon, Paternoster, Hegemon and Praetorian! Though Mammon is challenging Hegemon, as the Chancellor, lord of base matter, wars in the heavens against the Unity, who seeks to control all minds as one!" Stephanie shoots a suspicious glare at Jamelia. "Tell me Panopticon isn't tracking you!" she says somewhat urgently. "They have spies everywhere, you know. Principle of contagion, as above so below, you know, and they've carved the hidden names of the Eye on American spy satellites so they can look through them!"

The real problem with dealing with Stephanie, all things considered, Jamelia opines, is that often it's quite hard to tell her from a Traditionalist. Except she thinks there's an evil conspiracy of mages worshipping once-human gods controlling the world which she has to fight using the power of guns, explosives and torture, rather than the standard Traditionalist spiel complaining about the fact that there are people around who don't want reality deviants summoning dragons.

And her bloody annoying luck at finding out things and then interpreting them through the lens of her madness means she often knows names, and then uses them in completely the wrong context. It makes conversations with her a minefield.

"No, it's not Panopticon," Jamelia says, wiping her nose. "I've found evidence of a Nephrandic conspiracy. I'm pretty sure they're using local vampires in some kind of ploy to let some kind of extradimensional horror in."

"The Nefrandi? The Nameless? Jane, you have to be shitting me! Are they for-real Sceleti? Or a Reaper cult - Tremere of some kind? Or are they just some poor fuckers who've pissed off you and the rest of the Guardians? Please tell me they're Sceleti. If they are, we get to jump in through the door firing two pistols! Man, I love that bit!"

Jamelia thinks about how to phrase this in what she knows of Stephanie's madness. "They are Scelesti," she hazards. "They seek to destroy everything, you know. Not something anyone wants."

"Damn right! Fucking servants of the abyss! I hate all Nefrandi, but Scelesti are just the worst!" Stephanie bounces up and down happily. "I'll need to go out and get more hydrochloric acid! And guns! And explosives! And... ooh! Can I have one of your guns which shoot explosive bullets! Which shoot more bullets. That was just the best!"

After last time, Jamelia promised herself that she wouldn't let Stephanie - well, Stefan at the time - fire a Type-23 Cluster Missile again. She fears she may break this promise. "We'll see," she says.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Here is Cavalier stunting Rostam's response in Hollow Order to Romulus and representatives of Remus showing up asking him to choose a side.

You sigh, and bring your hand up to rub your temple. Being pressed to choose now was unfortunate. Remus was still mostly a cipher and Romulus… was right here, ready to target and destroy your band of Servants if you didn't submit. You weren't certain of Caesar's loyalty, and Spartacus would probably have to be put down if you chose to submit. There wasn't any way to avoid it, but…

"Very well," you concede. "I'll make a decision shortly. But let's establish certain facts here before I do."

"And what would those facts be, Magus?" Romulus sounds amused and indulgent.

"This… piece of history, for lack of a better phrase, exists off the Time Axis proper. I suspect you've felt that much, Lancer of Roma." You look over to the wolves. "And if Remus believes he was sent here by Gaia that's as much reason as any. The power of the Holy Grail, an artifact of Magecraft from the far future, has made this possible."

"Yes, we are standing in just one of many such singularities. Entire timelines cut off from Gaia's World Egg, free to conquer in the name of ROMA!" Romulus sweeps out his arms as if embracing the horizon. "It doesn't matter if such worlds are real or not real. They will become one, an empire of human will to create its own reality."

You shake your head grimly. "Not if our enemy crashes this singularity back into the Time Axis in place of the real history. The damage is already significant. If you go off conquering the world, hundreds of years after your… disappearance," you put it delicately, "Gaia won't be able to correct the discrepancy. You know what will happen then. Human history will cease to exist."

"Also, Gaia's Supreme Reality Marble will be damaged," you add for the benefit of the wolves. "True Demons will be free to enter and do whatever it is they want. Gaia won't be able to kick them out and re-establish her Reality Marble. If she's empowering the Fera team it's probably to avoid that fate."

"You aren't deceiving me," Romulus replied thoughtfully. "What madman would seek such destruction?"

"Well…" You look sheepishly over to Luvia, silently imploring her help. She gives you a thumb's up and a smug grin. So you pick back up after an awkward pause.

"We're from the future ourselves," you begin. "CHALDEA was set up because temporal forecasting with Magecraft detected the end of human existence within years. We were gathering an army of Masters and Heroic Spirits to fight whatever was responsible. And then one of our founders went rogue, killed all of our Masters save myself, and escaped off the Time Axis. We've encountered two false Grails in two different singularities. Professor Lev is our enemy and he announced his plans to destroy human history in a challenge to meet him in this singularity."

"So, would you and Remus be willing to set aside your quarrel until we deal with Professor Lev to insure the survival of humanity?"

Romulus looked at you, boring into you. You flinch, turning aside to the wolves. They look dubious.

"Or if not we'll make the choice now since neither of you want us to remain neutral. For perfectly understandable reasons," you add, "even if your well-justified private enmity really isn't any of our business. We'll go with…"​
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So when you mean stunts, do you mean anything in this ballpark? Or do you mean something less than this?

Edit: Oh. Just noticed your edit. Acceptable stunts by the rules of Exalted then is what you're looking for. Got it.
 
Last edited:
For clarification, standards for Stunting by Exalted rules according to Arianna Explains Stunts on RPGnetwiki:

A one die stunt is where you describe your action in a more interesting fashion than "I hit him with my mace" or "I use Socialise to seduce her", and you aren't repeating an earlier description. It doesn't need to be long, it doesn't need to be worthy of the Illiad or Crouching Tiger, it just has to add some colour to the game, preferably by appeal to the senses.
Why yes, roleplaying out a conversation would almost always count a 1 stunt, so long as the conversation was actually doing something (ie it incorporated a dice action). I'm glad you noticed.
A two dice stunt is just like a 1 stunt, only it incorporates the scenery, environment, or ongoing drama of the scene. "My goremaul whistles in with such force that blocked or not, the stones under his feet shatter!" or "I quickly snatch a white rose from Mnemon's hair as she's busy sneering at Cainan, and present it with a wordless yet eloquent smile to V'Neef, letting my kimono fall open just enough to catch her eye" are both fine 2 stunts.

Easy, right? Don't worry too much about whether the stunt is super-cool, if it fits the criteria above it deserves the award. The important thing is that everyone tries to contribute to the imagery of the game and don't repeat themselves - the core of what the stunt system is trying to achieve.
This makes it pretty easy for the GM. Haven't heard that exact stunt before? 1. Did it involve the environment? 2. This allows you to easily assess most stunts objectively and super-fast.

3 stunts are really hard, but don't worry about that, either. They tend to be spontaneous, someone doing just the right thing at just the right time without really trying for it, but it fits so well and is so cool that everybody at the table knows it's a 3. As GM, you'll probably have no trouble picking out a 3, but if in doubt, remember the actual reward isn't that big a deal (it's only another mote or two and a die), so don't be afraid to give it out - just don't do it so often that it loses its special status.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Conjured Blade said:
MJ12's Panopticon Quest. It has some incredibly long stunts. Some of which actually introduce original characters or control characters besides the player character temporarily.

For comparison, here is Earthscorpion stunting a meeting with a marauder in Panopticon.



Here is Cavalier stunting Rostam's response in Hollow Order to Romulus and representatives of Remus showing up asking him to choose a side.


So when you mean stunts, do you mean anything in this ballpark? Or do you mean something less than this?

Edit: Oh. Just noticed your edit. Acceptable stunts by the rules of Exalted then is what you're looking for. Got it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yes?

To give a non-Mathematician's answer: any of the above. I've gotten exactly one stunt suggestion in the quest so far. I just want people to stunt at all. It adds elements of user feedback to the quest, and I can think of several occaisions in the quests that inspired me to run this that a player stunt suggestion was the bets part of an update.
 
Remove ads
Thief of Words said:
Voting is now closed.

Still disappointed more people aren't offering stunt suggestions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So, uh, very basic idea for a stunt by a bad writer? Which is explicitly based on her having Mind Hand Manipulation?
"...'Oh god there's another grenade!' Taylor thought as she barely managed to knock it far enough from her to stop the explosion from reaching her as she got ready to force herself through another jump on her cut leg. 'How am I supposed to deal with this!? I could probably handle the throw rate of any one of these guys even with the replicating ammo, but I can't stop everything!' <Listen, Taylor.> Time seemed to slow down as the hallucination spoke up, it seeming more like she was drifting to the next rooftop than jumping. <Think about this logically, I know you can, your powers should help with it. I know you want to stay a 'good' person who's never done anything questionable, but most heroes can't manage that for long even when their opponents aren't trying to kill them. You can see the three grenades on his belt, and he's often in your range when he comes out of a teleport. Pull the pins on them. Attacking a minor with lethal intent like he's doing now would get him the death penalty anyway if he ever got caught and convicted, and self-defense excuses what you need to do. He might even survive anyway, you saw him get rid of the one he messed up with himself earlier.> As time sped back up, she only just noticed the knife coming in from another angle, barely managing to deflect it into a glancing blow that failed to pierce her new carapace.'But I can't just kill someone!' "
 
I have no idea how accurate my portrayal of Air conditioning units/refrigerants are here, but here's another approach to a mind-hand manipulation fight scene.
----------------------
As you begin looking for a means to defeat Oni Lee, you realize the spines on your arms have some degree of flexibility. You raise an arm in reflex to parry his strike, catching one of his blades in your spines. He teleports onto one of the air conditioning units before you manage a proper counterattack though.

You begin looking, watching for weaknesses, him doing the same, more serious-

Something gave you the feeling he was behind you. You do some kind of crouching pivot you'd never done before in your life, parrying him a second time.

<"Get Back!">

Click. Your backwards leap takes you onto another rooftop, but the ruins of the Air conditioning unit give you some ideas. Refrigerants. Exposed Wire. Sharp Metal. All of it on the other side as Oni Lee follows you across.

<"If you can't reach it build something that can. You bring order from chaos. Visualize something in your mind that can reach it. Quickly!">

You feel something new, like you just gave yourself a second heart, or something you don't quite have the words for. More importantly, you just parried Oni Lee's attack with some kind of glowing tentacle. Forced him to teleport, leaving another grenade. Grenades. You don't have to be touching him to interact with them now. It would be so easy. Surely you'd be able to claim self defense right?

You send a tentacle at where he keeps his grenades at the same time as you direct another one into a chunk of rubble for something to throw. Realizing what you're trying to do, he teleports, and just as he does, you send a chunk of rubble flying in his direction as you make your way towards the air conditioning unit.

Somehow holding the refrigerant from a leaking coil with your mind or coating one of the light tentacles in liquid or something, you sling the refrigerant in his direction, hitting his pin-pulling arm and forcing him to begin teleporting away as you hear an especially loud motorcyle approaching your building.
 
Last edited:
[ x] They mostly come at night...Mostly. ("Just another bug hunt.")
--Whatever these alien sensations and things you keep feeling are, they must have something to do with your power. Make them help you.
 
Chrysalis: 1.4
  • Threadmarks

    • [X] Mind over matter. (Pyrian approach)
    --You aren't a trained fighter. You don't have to be. You're smart, and you're observant. Somehow, you can turn that into a strength, find something to let you beat him.



    ooo

    For a moment, you crouch there, limbs tensed and coiled like springs, watching the crouching killer before you. You wait, watch, and listen for any sign of his next attack. in the distance you can hear the growing commotion of the gangs. The crack and pop of distant small arms fire No doubt the explosions will draw further attention to your position. You focus on Oni Lee so intently, that when the sign you waited for finally came, you nearly missed it. There is the barest scrape of a foot on the rooftop, before you are jarred from your thoughts by a scream from your in-head houseguest.

    <MOVE!>

    Not pausing to ask where, you throw yourself into a forward roll, even as the first flakes of grey ash begin to drift down from the Oni Lee ahead of you. Again you're hit with the realization that you can't keep up what you're doing right now. You don't have his skill, and his ability to teleport means he's striking at you with an extreme efficiency, where you have to expend far more effort to dodge and weave around his attacks. You quickly consider simply charging him, but dismiss the idea as reckless and stupid. You aren't a trained fighter. He is. But, you realize, you don't have to be. You're smarter than he is. Sure, he has more experience at this than you have. He has this down to a near-science. Unfortunately for him, science is predictable, and you're very observant. Somehow, you can turn that into a strength. If you can find the pattern to his attacks, something in it will let you beat him.

    You don't stop moving as you contemplate this, merely allowing your roll to unfold into a run. As you move, you make a beeline straight for the nearest of the cooling units, again using your new-found flexibility to send yourself sailing over it just as the tink of another grenade's metal casing bouncing off the rooftop reaches you. Throwing yourself into a sailing leap, you let the unit shield you from the spray of shrapnel the grenade emits, even as you land into a sudden juke, a clatter of thrown knives rattling against the spot you'd have been in, had you not altered course.

    Keep warning me about his attacks, okay? I'm going to try and get a read on the pattern to them. If he was smart about using his power, he'd have killed Lung and taken over the ABB already.

    Launching yourself across the gap between buildings yet again, striving to shake the pursuit, you coil your legs in anticipation, just before another Oni Lee appears ahead of you, intent on taking advantage of your aerial state to force you into a predictable arc of motion. Grimacing as one of his thrown knives scores a searing cut alongside one arm, you lash out against him with a two-legged drop kick, using the new momentum and a swiftly snatched handhold to haul yourself down and alongside the edge of the new landing site's edifice. Releasing your grip on the roof, you fall down to hook a hold on the barred window below, just as your assailant above bursts into a bloom of flame and ashes. Your heart hammering hard against your chest, you try to ignore the way your sweat makes the frigid January air freeze harder. Getting a hold onto the side of the roof no normal person would have the flexibility to manage (and for that matter most professional gymnasts couldn't crack), you vault up onto the roof again.

    Left, down, up, back. Your delusion/mind-guest/soul-parasite continues to warn you about your enemy's actions. As the shift of combat continues to play out, your mind races, finally finding a snag to start to unravel. Before you manage to capitalize it, however, you find yourself again harried by the hateful assassin's attacks.

    Oh God, another grenade! you think, barely managing to bat it back far enough from yourself to stop the shrapnel from reaching you as you get ready to force yourself through another jump on your knife-nicked leg.

    How am I supposed to deal with this!? I could probably handle the rate he's going at, but I can't stop everything forever, and he's barely having to make the slightest effort!

    <Listen, Taylor.>     Time seemed to slow down as your head-crab hallucination spoke up, it seeming more like you drift to the next rooftop than soar like the leaps you've made thus far. <Continue to think about this logically. I know you can, and your power can help with it. You can see the three explosives on his bandolier, yes? Surely you've noticed he's often in your range when he closes in for a killing stab. Pull the pins on them.>

    But that's murder!

    <Yes, and?>     The mental voice holds a chilling lack of concern about that fact. <He is trying to murder you. I am merely advocating that we beat him to the punch, as it were.>

    But...but I'm a hero! Or...or I'm going to be! Heroes don't murder people.

    <...> The voice in your mind is conspicuous in its silence as you notice a knife darting in from the edge of your peripheral vision. Hopping back, you manage to throw off his aim by hooking the blunt edge of the knife on one of your arm's spines and pulling it out of line before you jump back to get out of range of the inevitable detonation.

    <Your world clearly has a very different definition of heroes than mine does. Very well. He's still a murderer. And you've seen how he managed to rid himself of the one grenado he took with him before. He might well still survive the experience.>

    As you begin looking for another means to defeat Oni Lee, you realize the spines on your arms have some degree of flexibility. You raise an arm in reflex to parry his strike, catching another of his blades between the spines. He teleports onto one of the air conditioning units before you manage a proper counterattack though.

    You begin looking, watching for weaknesses, him doing the same, more serious-

    Something gave you the feeling he was behind you. You do some kind of crouching pivot you'd never done before in your life, parrying him a second time.

    <Get Back!>

    Click. Your backwards leap takes you onto a previous rooftop, where the ruins of the air conditioning unit which took a grenade for you give an idea. Refrigerants. Exposed Wire. Sharp Metal. All of it on the other side as Oni Lee follows you across. You could use the sparking wire or the shorn metal, but if you're remembering an OSHA presentation you had to sit in on with your dad correctly, trying to grab them would involve poisoning yourself by inhaling the leaking refrigerant gas.

    Dipping into that pool of power you felt before as you admit you can't think of another way, you again feel that synaptic acceleration as your processing speed hurtles forward at a racing pace. Parrying again, you manage to wrest the knife from the gang-member's hand, and a heavy kick to his chest knocks him back before he crumples into ash again. You forced him to teleport, leaving another grenade. The grenades. The self-professed shoulder devil isn't wrong. It would be easy. It'd be an efficient way to end the fight. And surely you'd be able to claim self defense. Right?

    The next he teleports in at you you're whirling about the moment the mental warning for your mind-guest starts, lashing out with an arm to hook one of your overlong fingers through the pins of all three grenades on his belt before launching yourself over him, and starting to run. The figure behind you detonates in a wet, meaty spray of body parts, several of which slap and patter against you, soaking you in blood and less definable offal much to your horror. You stumble and fall, your empty stomach dry heaving.

    Oh God. I just killed man. I just killed a man. I'm...I'm,     you don't manage to finish the thought as the slap and clatter of a knife-laden bandolier hitting an adjacent rooftop shakes you from your self-loathing shock long enough to see another set of grenades, left there by the real Oni Lee, explode in the distance. Just as you're managing to stagger to your feet and the caked on gore from the burst duplicant evaporates to a heavy coating of ash all over your back and shoulders, you see the a golden-hued streak smash into the rooftop where Oni Lee had retreated to, cratering the place the now-vanished killer had just been. As a golden-hued figure flies up from the hole she'd just put into the rooftop, you can't help but feel a staggering awe at the radiant perfection of her form...until the terrified screaming of your hallucination gets your attention.

    <NOPE. NO. NOPE, NOPENOPENOPE. THEY'RE ALL SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD! WE ARE LEAVING NOW! GET US OUT OF HERE BEFORE SHE MURDERS US BOTH!>

    You blink. Why would Glory Girl murder you?

    The demon ceases its surprisingly shrill screaming, clearly poring over the memories the awe-inspiring young heroine called to mind, before lamely managing a quiet, <Oh. Sorry. I thought she...you know what, it doesn't matter. Clearly irrational of me. Carry on.>

    As Glory Girl looks around for sign of the vanished assassin, your ears make out the sound of an especially loud motorcyle approaching your building. If you remember rightly, Armsmaster uses a motorcycle when he needs to get around the city quickly.

    Surely one of the heroes can help you out of this mess.

    ooo

    [Flaw: Enemy-Oni Lee] Gained!
    [Unwoven Coadjutor 5: Joyous Uncertainty, Sanguine Tomescu] Gained!
    [First She Who Lives in Her Name Excellency (x3)] Gained!

    [ ]Glory, Glory Halleluia
    --Attempt to get Glory Girl's attention. After all, her whole family are heroes, and maybe her sister can do something about the freakish changes that happened to you between getting stuffed in your locker and now.

    [ ] A Call to Arms
    --Armsmaster is the leader of the local Protectorate. He's a Hero. He's a big damn deal, and if anyone can help you make sense of all this, they can.

    [ ] Get While the Getting's Good
    --That girl from before was trying to help you. And you were just covered in blood from before. You...maybe being the tall and freakish monster girl isn't the safest thing to be in the middle of the fight between the city's major gangs. Maybe it'd be safer to escape and lie low, at least until you're unlikely to be mistaken for a villain and arrested or attacked by the good guys.

    [ ] Write In
    --Do something not listed here.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • [X]Glory, Glory Halleluia
    --Attempt to get Glory Girl's attention. After all, her whole family are heroes, and maybe her sister can do something about the freakish changes that happened to you between getting stuffed in your locker and now.
     
    Last edited:
    [X]Glory, Glory Halleluia
    --Attempt to get Glory Girl's attention. After all, her whole family are heroes, and maybe her sister can do something about the freakish changes that happened to you between getting stuffed in your locker and now.
     
    [X] Get While the Getting's Good
    --That girl from before was trying to help you. And you were just covered in blood from before. You...maybe being the tall and freakish monster girl isn't the safest thing to be in the middle of the fight between the city's major gangs. Maybe it'd be safer to escape and lie low, at least until you're unlikely to be mistaken for a villain and arrested or attacked by the good guys.
     
    [X] A Call to Arms
    --Armsmaster is the leader of the local Protectorate. He's a Hero. He's a big damn deal, and if anyone can help you make sense of all this, they can.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top