Masks 2

"Sure!" Nick said, getting up. Elizabeth followed along too, and they went back into the restaurant where Darkmagic was still eating her damn nachos.

***

"Think they're going to fight each other," the Red Reaper said, getting up and walking over to watch.

***

"More Maria's thing than mine," Tlaloc told Lex, looking towards the ground. "Emily, you got a sword that won't kill Lux?"

After a few moments, a dulled replica of Tlaloc's own sword came out of the ground. He picked it up, tested its weight, and nodded.

"All right. I'm ready," he told Lux.

Most of the party had gathered around to watch the fight. Seemed like a good time, afterall.

Tlaloc closed in on Lux and performed a few probing jabs with his sword, which Lux managed to deflect with her own hardlight sword.

Then, rather unexpectedly, he dropped his sword mid-swordlock, dodged around Lux with surprising swiftness, wrapped his arms around her, and threw her off the platform into the pool. It was all done in one quick motion with surprising strength from the old god.

Just like that, Lux got fucking dunked.

"Hey Darkmagic? Sorry to interrupt again, but can you show us your magic gun thing again? These are friends of mine who'd love to see it."

She spluttered as she surfaced. "Oh, OH-HO HO!" She started, in a lightly, happily outraged sort of way. "Don't think the round's over with that!"

So saying, great golden wings of light burst from her back, and she launched herself back into the battle--but this time, she was making use of her aerial tactics to harry, dodge, and all in all wreck this guy...!

The first step up from no powers. Wings!

Darkmagic turned around on her stool, drew her pistol again, and fired off another shield. Once they were done gawking at it, she disipated the shield with her gun and went back to nachos.

"Huh. Haven't seen that one yet," Nick told Desmond.

The Demon was just staring, face unseen behind her mask.

"Can you guys stop being weird?" Darkmagic asked them.

***

Tlaloc easily deflected Lex's aerial attacks with his sword, his speed impressive, strength stalwart, and movements fluid and precise. He didn't even use his firepowers, striking back against Lux constantly as she performed flying attacks and very often hitting her. During one lull in the bout, he requested dulled knives from Emily to replace his sharp knives, and even started throwing those at the flying Lux. His aim was impeccable.

"See thats the thing." Raven said rubbing the back of his neck. "I don't know how to tell you this but you can probably do more magic than just... guns."

Lex was becoming impressed with AU Tlaloc's skill....so she stepped it up another small notch!

She started adding in a few small distortions. staggering her live visual off to one side, or delayed by a few moments, or a color-shifted doppelganger that was still distinguishable from the real Lux.

And, for the benefit of any ghosts--and guests--she started building up an illusory landscape around, but not obscuring, the fight. Ghostly terrain underfoot, fluttering auroras above, shifting scenery draped below the stage like curtains of light...

"Oh, well, short version is that I'm from a place outside of the universe, and I came here to investigate some weird interdimensional activity. Long version... I mean, if you want it, I can give it to you someti-"

Theraea trailed off as a fight suddenly broke out. Theraea wasn't exactly big on fighting, but it seemed... friendly enough? She just sort of stared at it all. And, like, got ready to interfere if anyone inadvertently ended up in serious danger.

"What are you talking about?" Darkmagic asked, turning around with her nachos to eye Desmond.

***

Tlaloc took a moment to notice the illusions, getting struck a few times in the process.

"Illusions?" he asked. "Smart."

And then, against Lux's expectations, he began launching fire at her. He also began causing the heat in the air around them to fluctuate, causing Lux's flying to become a lot less intuitive. The random mixtures of cool and very hot air was not lending well to flying finesse. And with the presence of heat came a lot more accuracy from Tlaloc's throwing knives.

Like Maria with water, he could sense where fire and heat was. This, of course, meant that he could also sense where it wasn't.

***

"If it becomes unfriendly, they are both going in timeout," Emily said to Theraea as she watched the fight.

"It looks pretty unfriendly already, but..." Theraea thought to herself. "Is that just a god thing? Throwing fireballs at each other? It seems really dangerous."

"Well..." Desmond held up a fist and spoke the spell to cast a shield around it as an example. If Darkmagic paid even the remotest attention to detail she'd see what the gathered wizards probably meant. "You're a wizard, Darkmagic."

"Fire!?" She called back, sounding surprised. "That's REALLY different!" She dove down, skimming through the water to refresh her water barrier, then pulling up to land on the stage. It was harder to fly in the wilder winds he was calling up!

It was on to the full spectacle portion of the fight! "Alright, let's take it to the next step, then~" She alternated between invisiblity and doppelgangers. Silent fireworks exploded around them, though none with blinding intensity. Didn't want to blind the spectators!

At one point, she wrapped his head in darkness, and set off a blinding light inside it (spectator safe), then rained hardlight marbles down on him from above to disorient his other senses.

Some holds barred, but not many! If she couldn't take him like this, she wouldn't be able to take him in a friendly match.

Oh- well- alright, Bye, Aura. Umm. Rude but she guessed she was taking talking to people lessons...

Right, well, that conversation abruptly ended and not being able to ignore Lex THAT well, Maria just left. Off to her room so she wouldn’t get in the way of anything.

Maria had left to her room before the fight started! She was probably resting like a RESPONSIBLE ADULT.

***

"Oh no, they're having fun," Emily assured Theraea.

***

"Oh," Darkmagic said to Desmond. "What the hell do you mean by wizard?"

***

Tlaloc closed his eyes and knelt down to avoid the effects of Lex's illusions, focusing on navigating entirely by heat sense.

And he proceeded to bathe the entire stage in fire, causing Lex to take off into the sky! The heat made this unreliable, and constant bursts of fire threatened to send her out of the sky. Eventually, a large orb of fire came in to surround her, and she was eventually forced to call the fight! Tlaloc (like Lex) was pulling a whole lot of punches with his fire in favor of spectacle and safety. This was friendly afterall.

Fire was fucking dangerous!

With the match over, Tlaloc made all the fire dissipate, leaving only the very scorched platform. He smiled, blackened a bit by soot.

"Good fight!" he shouted to her.

"As in you're like us, kid." Raven said. "You can cast fireballs, create rituals, enchant shit that you can make do other shit, make potions that heal you and other nifty shit. Your magic is exactly like ours, the only thing really odd about you is you've somehow managed to figure out how to make magic bullets that don't cause your gun to literally fall apart or explode. That shouldn't be possible."

"Like and subscribe, ghosts," she chuckled, mostly to herself and any dead audience--including the one in her head.

Lex dipped down to the pool once more to cool off before winging back up, letting the illusions and hardlight vanish. She put out her hand for shaking! "That was intense!" She enthused. "That trick with the mini-cyclone? Amazing!"

As Darkmagic got inducted into the magic nerd society, Sam watched the fight while sipping his Red Bull (Hyper Ultra), and whistled.

"Well, I'm feelin' a bit underpowered all the sudden."

He considered showing off, but he didn't have his guns on him (a rarity, but you can't swim with pistols), and he also didn't care enough.

"Hell. I'm gonna change and then I feel like dancin'. This feels like a dancin' shindig. Sure SOMEONE here knows how to two-step."

Sam finished the energy drink and did a two-pointer with it into the nearest trash receptacle. He'd leave to change unless someone interrupted him.

Orla also felt a bit underpowered. Old heroes were nuts! Man, the whole soul-eating thing to get other powers would have been cool if it wasn't so evil, but thinking that was the first step down the evil road so, bummer.

"That was pretty cool. Little worrying sometimes. But cool! The fire dude did good!"

She went and got herself some apple juice and another cup of whatever Reaper drank.

The Red Reaper drank some fruity cocktail (which Emily delivered right to the Red Reaper). Orla received her apple juice.

***

"I can already do all of that with bullets. I shoot my friends with healing bullets all the time," Darkmagic told the wizards.

Nick, meanwhile, got distracted by the fight and ran off to watch that.

***

"It was a good fight," Tlaloc agreed, shaking Lex's hand. "Thanks for that."

In short order Sam either ran back in wearing his clean clothes if Emily's laundry service was amazing, or a simpler version of his outfit, plus his boots. His jeans were now tucked into his boot to show the designs on the side- red-dyed leather with black stars, with metal-tipped toes. They were, surprisingly well kept.

"Alright, uh, Emily, ma'am," Sam talked to a houseplant, "Is there like a dance floor you can roll out or somethin'? Maybe play some bluegrass? I'd like some honky-tonk but that's an acquired taste."

Oh fuck! There was a fight!! Shit!!! It was so cool!!!! Finn claps, and while applauding notices there’s a kid here. She taps Orla on the shoulder!

“Hey - uh... mind if I ask what brings ye here, lil’ one?”

"Yes but now you know you can do this when you run out of bullets too. Dont get me wrong, I'd kill to figure out how got magic to work with any kind of technology without it falling apart, especially guns, that allows you options few wizards have access to."

"Hold on," the Demon said. "Mages don't have healing spells. We have healing potions, and those don't work on normal people. You're using bullets that spells don't exist for."

"So...maybe I'm NOT a wizard," Darkmagic shrugged, shoving some nachos in her mouth.

***

Emily's laundry services WERE amazing. Sam came out in his ordinary clothes, and Emily created a dance floor almost instantly from the nanites that made up the floor. Some bluegrass began playing.

"Feel free to make requests," Emily's voice said from the dance floor speakers.

Sam used his Good Times Sense to pick out a member of the crowd who'd be most likely to entertain some country dancing.

Raven thought about it.

"Tell me, when you hear this-" Desmond spoke in magetongue summoning a little ball of blue light. "-Do you feel as if you can almost understand it? Apart from the weird English variations of the words that echo in your ear I mean."

"It was a lot of fun! Was not expecting fire, or--well, you seem very different from the 'you' I knew! Multiverse is pretty vast, I guess!" And maybe she didn't need to police ALL of it. ...Just the ones she could get to! Yeah. Fighting helped! "If you're sticking around for a while--or, I guess, can just...go back and forth?--love to learn from you sometime."

"But I should get changed and let you get back to your A.U. daughter before she explodes again. Catch you around?" She smiled cheerfully, looking forward to their next friendly bout!