Masks 2

"YA'LL MIGHT SACRIFICE ME, BUT IT WON'T BRING BACK YER GOD-DAMNED OIL!"

Sam thrashed about wildly. For him, he was between the illusion and the truth. The church LOOKED like a nice old church, but the details were... Off. Jesus in the stained glass had a squid face. The top corners of the pews were carved like crabclaws. The nice old granny holding the harpoon had serrated barracuda teeth and gaping gills. Prior to this, he had been totally under the illusion altogether, and he had hazy drunken memories of fighting off what SEEMED like a nice old man who had incredible strength and something on his sleeves that cut Sam's arm.

Maria bristled, and started the rapid-fire, pointing somewhat-discreetly as she did. "Runes, glowing, blood, shot up, rune circle, people coming in, turning into- into- monsters? Armed fish things, grass is flooded- can you guys hear this shit?"

"Wizard types, can I wash the blood runes away without it all just- getting out?"

She fumbled, and when she saw Blackstar, she grabbed the headband out of her jacket, and shoved it into Aura Green's hand. Something about getting things places, right? Maybe? Something like that, better in her hands.

Sacrifice? Blood runes? Yeah. Yeah, no, appearances aside, things were definitely rough.

Nimue draws her blade and begins walking forward, side by side with Jim. She's ready to act.

Ken is going to ask the Demon if she had another "anti-fish-mindcontrol" bandanna they could give to Sam.

"That... mosaic is a focal point for something otherworldly. We should definitely get him out of there." Theraea considers the situation. "...I could try to blink in and grab him if you all set up a distraction."

Esen sees Sam and decides to act. She grips the headband tightly and shoots her hookshot at the church, propelling herself towards him! As soon as Esen gets to him, she ties the headband around his head.

She's gonna try to grab him and then pull him out of the crowd by shooting herself up. She'll also split her tendril and use the other end to slash at anyone who gets close.

"...That works too!" Theraea will support Esen in her possibly-hasty action by using telekinesis to fuck with whoever tries to grab her or attack her or whichever. You know, knock 'em over or restrain 'em or whichever of those is needed.

"I don't know," the Demon said to Maria. "The magic here isn't Arcane, Vampiric, or Fae in origin and those are the types I'm most familiar with."

Then she looked to Ken.

"I could make more," the Demon told him. "But Coyote has a spare."

Then she looked as Maria handed the bandanna to the free runner. Esen raised her arm and hookshot in, pulling herself through the air and acting using her incredible reflexes. She grabbed Sam as she zoomed by the cultists, kicking one of the people holding him in the process. She slashed a few cultists back with her hookshot midair, then shot herself back to the group. Once there, she tied the bandanna to Sam's head, freeing him of the immense mental pressure he'd been under.

Jim began throwing knives and dismembering cultists with extreme levels of speed and precision, causing many of them to retreat back down various streets and alleys before Finn could get a proper chop in. At the same time, Lady Light zoomed into the air and fired at the fish soldiers. They fired back with their guns and harpoons, but she was currently beneath the sun's rays. Simple projectiles would do nothing to her, and they too decided to fall back. Coupled with Theraea's telekinesis, they didn't really have a chance...

They were retreating! Perhaps this would be easier than initially thought?

Except not...

The ground began to shake near the cathedral as cracks tore through the ground around it. Dust began to rise up, choking and blinding a number of them as the building seemed to rise. Giant appendages and legs began to rise from the Earth as deep, crablike chirps emanated from the building. As the dust began to clear, they all began to see what was truly before them: a giant beast resembling a hermit crab, with the cathedral forming its shell. Covered in hypnotic purple runes, they gave headaches to anybody whose gaze lingered upon them. Its body was a dark, bruised red, covered in hard chitinous plates and it possessed three powerful clawed arms: two smaller and sharper pincers on the left and one giant, wrecking ball of an pincer on the right. On the sides, hundreds of legs scuttled it back and forth, hitting the paving stones hard enough to crack them. It had at least a dozen eyes dotting its face, and its mandibles were giant, dangerous, and toothy.

"Holy shit," remarked the Demon.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAoof!"

Sam groaned, trying to recover from his sudden unexpected Esen ride.

"What'd you tie on my- What? A bandana? Aw shit, this ain't fashionable, here, at least let's-"

He fashions it into a bandit mask, seeing if it still has its intended effect.

Ken is just going to open fire on the Giant Enemy Crab because it seems like a good idea to do and honestly, he wanted to go home. The sooner this Texas mess is over, the quicker he can go home and watch crappy shows on Future Netflix.

"...Reminds me of home! Except we also have the weapons to deal with this kind of thing at home."

Theraea took to the skies, and started lifting up debris with telekinesis to yeet it into the crab's eyes. Blinding the thing seemed like a useful thing to do until she could notice some more significant weakness.

Oh, hell yeah! Big old guy that can be hurt, Zil's specialty. She takes the shirt around her head and loosens it. Y'know, so maybe it won't totally fall off when she turns into her second giant form. Which. She does. There's a burst of warm light as her bones grow and shift, and then she's a big ass alien. Standing at only a few inches under seven feet tall, Zil hops from foot to foot, rolling her shoulders for a moment to hype herself up.

Then, she takes a deep breath. Time to start running at this shitty crab as she holds the breath in her lungs, then charge to shoot fire from her hands - as well as exhaling a jet of flame at this thing! Boiled crab? Yummy. Maybe Tim would like it.

! ! !

OK! Giant on the field, Blackstar in safe hands, shots firing, moth in the sky, HUGE! CRAB! MONSTER! They could deal with this they could TOTALLY deal with this-

Maria un-flooded the damn lawn. For shits, you know. She was going to try and knock projectiles out of the air if non-invulnerable people got fired at, because they just. Couldn't see them, probably. God she really needed to add a hammer to her regular arsenal. It had to be time for property damage, right? Since the property was where the runes were? And maybe if they took the runes off it would fall apart or something? Screw it, she was going to pull a dang gun out of her bag and start trying to blow the runes off the building while she tried to wash MORE runes off the bloodrune circle- Rune City, was what this place should have been called. Runes everywhere.

BIG! CRAB! BIG! CRAB!

Finn would usually charge in, but she's learned some spells recently!! Gotta SOFTEN THIS BIG BOY UP before the choppin' starts! Zil has the right idea of things - fire is best. She raises her hand and fires off a bursting ball of bright, hot flame STRAIGHT AT IT. Gotta boil it in its own shell. Then, once it starts to pop, THEN she can stab!

Sam draws his guns and-

Aggressively finger guns at the crab.

"Aw dang, that's right, they stole my shit."

He scrambles around for anything that remotely looks like a gun, and yes, the player writes this knowing how the GM can play that.

The Demon drew her two pistols and threw them (and some extra ammo) to Sam, opting to focus on magical ranged attacks instead. She'd then begin throwing magical lightning at the creature, a longsword materializing in her hand. On that note, tying the mask around his face like a bandit mask DID work, though it was a torn up shirt so it didn't look too cowboy.

Ken shot at the crab, but the crab's thick, runed shell caused the bullets to bounce right off! He COULD feel the internet still running through this damp, swampy place, though. If he wanted to start netrunning around looking for a better vantage point.

Theraea took to the skies, throwing chunks of debris into the crab's eyes as she zoomed around. The crab didn't seem to like that much, but it also didn't seem to slow it down.

Zil ran up to the crab, now in her alien form, and unleashed a giant torrent of flame from multiple orifices right into the crab's face. When the smoke cleared, the crab was undamaged, and continued its rampage. Its thick runic skin was deflecting most attacks.

Maria threw up water barriers to slow down (and thus neutralize) the bullets from the cultists. Then she drew her gun and started firing into the church. The bullets that hit the walls didn't seem to bug it much, since the walls seemed supernaturally reinforced, but the bullets that went through the windows into the building seemed to actually cause it pain.

Finn's fire blast, unfortunately, didn't seem to do much to its thick skin!

Jim ran up to stand under its legs, chopping and slashing as he danced around its limbs. He moved with a lot of precision, but his attacks similarly didn't seem to be accomplishing much. Nocturne dedicated himself to fighting the fish cultists, figuring that his attacks wouldn't do much to the crab either. He punched, kicked, shocked, and slashed his way through both cultist and fishman alongside his wife.

Finally, Lady Light kept to the skies as she flew around the crab, firing concussive blasts of sunlight into its face to try to disorient it.

It didn't work.

One of the swifter, smaller claws managed to catch her out of the sky, squeezing the incredibly durable hero as hard as it could. She grunted and yelled out as she was slammed repeatedly into the ground. At the same time, it rushed along the ground, devouring cultists and fishmen alike with its giant mandibles. Nocturne and La Chat only barely managed to get out of the way.

It didn't seem to care much for friendly fire.

Ken is kind of glad even rapture by the Crab God or Sirenthulhu or whatever didn't stopped the internet. Yet.

Ken teleports to a higher vantage point so he can be a better shot. He will have his drone pick up any heroes if they wanted to picked up to a higher vantage point. If no one wants to, he'll just scoop up a bunch of cultists and dump them in a safer spot.

Little did the GM know that torn-up shirt bandanas were, in 2050s fashion, MAXIMUM COWBOY.

Sam frowned as a few of his shots ricocheted off the crab's shell.

"Yeah... That ain't workin'..."

He looked around wildly for something explosive! Maybe... A helium tank or... A propane canister... Hell, even a grenade.

Okay, so clearly debris in the eyes wasn't really the way to go. That made sense, it had too many eyes for that to really bother it. Fortunately, Theraea had more than one tool in her arsenal! Or, well, the same tool, but used differently.

Theraea turned her amplifier up, then tried her damnedest to grip the crab's claw and pry it open enough for Lady Light to escape. Even amplified, would she be strong enough to do that? Who knows, but she'd feel just awful if she didn't try.

Ok... CathedraCrab didn't like the windows thing... Maybe they could- where the fuck did Hackerman go- get inside? Maybe something fleshy was in there? Maria's discarded board began to lift with the start of a wave, and then dropped, because AAAAAAA NONONONONONONO NOT LADY LIGHT NOT LADY LIGHT!

It lifted again, and Maria surfed up to this damn claw, hopping down with her sword drawn to try to??? Like, wedge her sword under the joint of the claw and tear up the claw tendons??? Maybe??? If Lady Light and Theraea couldn't open that claw, SHE certainly wasn't going to contribute much. Better use of Regular Human Stronkness. The water floated right back up to bullet-walls whenever she wasn't surfing.

Esen grabs onto the nearest non-crab building and launches herself into the air. From there, she slashes at cultists and attempts to break the runes on the crab's shell by chipping at them with precision strikes.

RIGHT. OKAY. WINDOWS. RUNES ON THE CHURCH WALLS. FIRE WASN'T WORKING HERE, BUT GODDAMN, FINN WAS GONNA FOLLOW COYOTE'S LEAD.

She LUNGES toward the nearest wall, finds the window nearest to it, and smashes it. Once there, she looks for some sorta weak spot in the windows - a separation between the inner and outer wall, perhaps, *something* that she could slide a sword into-- and does just that, if she can!!

Ken managed to teleport up to a seventh story apartment window nearby, popping out of a discarded phone on a nightstand and rushing to a window. Luckily, corporate antivirus was pretty lax in Rainwalk at the moment, what with the massive fish-led uprising and the overall interference in the grid. Nobody seemed to want to be picked up at the moment...except...

Finn ran up to the crab, but the windows were lifted about fifteen feet up by the crab's enormous legs. Finn was tall, but not that tall! Fortunately, Polybius the drone came on down and helpfully offered to carry her. Finn grabbed on and the drone lifted her up, allowing her to climb through one of the church windows.

Inside, she saw pulsating mounds of sickly-looking dark, veiny flesh throughout the inside of the cracked and ruined cathedral now serving as the crab's shell.

Meanwhile, Esen launched herself into the air, slashing down cultists and fishmen with her hookshot before unloading a barrage of strikes on the shell. Sadly, these strikes did nothing!

Sam looked around for an explosive tank, fortunately finding a propane tank in a nearby alley. How opportune!

Theraea zoomed in and Maria surfed in, both closing in on Lady Light's location. Theraea dodged a clawstrike from the crab before applying her telekinesis to the claw, slowly pulling it apart! Maria similarly began slashing and stabbing at the claw, giving Lady Light enough leverage to pull her arms down and shove the claw apart herself. Unfortunately, in this moment of freedom the claw thrashed its claw around, knocking Maria off her surfboard and Theraea off through the air. Fortunately, Maria was goddess of water and slowed her descent with water before Lady Light caught her (and her surfboard) out of the air. Theraea managed to steady herself with her wings.

Maria was placed down on the ground with a quiet "thankyousorry" and her surfboard before Lady Light took back off to continue the fight. She also flashed a thumbs up to Theraea as she did so.

Jim continued slicing at the legs, accomplishing nothing. The Demon ceased her lightning assault, seeing how ineffective it was, and began looking for alternative weak points. Nocturne and La Chat kept battling the cultists and fishmen, trying to keep them from attacking the heroes.

Finally, the crab was pissed. It started swinging its many claws around, smashing down nearby buildings and sending smoke and dust into the air. Rubble and debris began to fly down as it surged around the square, devouring everything in its path.

This was quite a mess wasent it? There’s crabs and guns and fights and spells! Did Zil turn into an alien? No time to dwell on that!

Out of the corner of her eye she sees a conch shell and grabs at it.

“Looks like you’re going to be.. A bit SHELLshocked!” She says before blowing into the conch and aiming a powerful sonic blast to the head area of the crab to stun it before it can do more harm while it’s pissed off.

Maria quickly looked over this definitely-stranger to make sure she wasn't hurt, and then nodded, "Be careful!" Before surfing off toward the shell.

She managed to catch the one-liner Cadence delivered, and she felt a little faith in these younguns...

Which was a little funny of a thing to gain as she jumped through what probably used to be a beautiful stained glass sdepiction of a saint or something.