Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Four: New Battleopolis!]
10-06-2011, 02:29 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Pluck really looked like a mess when he was human. Poor hygiene, anachronistic fashion statements and uncontrolled body hair growth looked fine in a lupine context, but during his brief regressions into homo sapiens he seemed to combine all the worst aesthetic elements of adolescence and middle age. He was standing in the back, and the crowd was yet to notice his change in appearance.
That might soon change. The audience was getting bored and restless; after a brief exciting period in the beginning of the fight (Jen had done a back-flip off of Greyve’s sword, which was a big crowd-pleaser at the time) the two combatants had settled into a predictable pattern of standing back and poking around for flaws in the others’ defenses. They were evenly matched, in a fruitless and impotent sort of way; Greyve’s style clearly revolved around his opponents being even stupider than he was, and the impression Pluck got from Jen was that she was used to winning swordfights through trickery and luck, both of which were in short supply in the Purple House’s arena. Well, the werewolf was no expert in the martial arts, but he had a vested interest in guessing what people were thinking, and some of these folks were thinking about leaving. The big, taciturn suit of armor that called itself the Sunset was sitting right in front of him, and it slowly turned its head…
Pluck made a split decision. He reached into the darkness of Jen’s thoughts and plucked something out.
* * * * *
This guy was big and scary and had the skill to back it up. Jen was outmatched. She was reminded of that guy from the first round…
Right. That guy standing right there. Weo.
”Aaaah! Where am I?” The newly-formed Rillian turned to Jen, hissed, ”You!” and then whipped around just in time to raise his warscythe in the path of Greyve’s blade…
* * * * *
That got the Sunset’s attention again. Pluck needed to get out; Huebert would be expecting him at the border. He began to skulk along the outer walls of the stadium, head low, letting his trademark hat conceal his features. The doors were all shut, or closely watched. He couldn’t get out.
Down below, he couldn’t see the battle, but he could hear the three-body problem taking effect; blasts of energy like H-Bomb’s fireworks emanated from the scythe that whatever-that-was was holding and ricocheted off the ceiling. It wouldn’t be long until one of the three died, and he couldn't perpetuate the battle by plucking the gladiators forever. He picked up the pace a little, knowing he wouldn’t find an unguarded exit. Because his senses were dulled in human floor, he had nearly made a complete circuit before he heard the sound following him.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
To his credit, when he did realize he was being followed, he didn’t immediately scream and break out into a run. To his detriment, after about ten seconds of terrified powerwalking he decided the best course of action would be to barrel into the crowd hat-first. He was stymied in this effort when a dainty pink hand picked up his hat and another lifted his chin.
”Hey there, handsome,” greeted Aph, smiling mischievously. Pluck’s noir instincts absurdly nearly compelled him to comment upon her eyes (the nymph had peepers like a bank vault, big and deep and full of green and completely impenetrable, but isn’t that always the way with dames—hey there, name’s Pluck) but he didn’t have any time to do anything more subtle than pointing at the audience and shouting “Hey! Look!” as he plucked twenty ninja out of Greyve’s thoughts.
Pluck pushed the nymph aside and ran back to the outskirts as the crowd went wild. The sound was still behind him.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—“You are in the way of the ethnic cleansing, please stand aside”—Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
A hallway that had been guarded when he’d passed by before was standing open, and Pluck took full advantage of the opportunity, darting into the depths of the Purple House. The whirring sound followed him every step of the way, but at least here he was free to break into a full run without attracting undue attention.
Shortly before his lamentably out-of-shape human physiology forced him to slow to a walk, Pluck stopped in his tracks. His sense of smell wasn’t as keen as it usually was, but years in wolf form had taught him to pay as much attention to his nose as to his eyes. Right now he smelled smoke.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Only a few seconds after he smelled the smoke, Pluck began to hear the crackling of the flames. A few seconds later, the fire rose up all around him, trapping him in an increasingly warm and uncomfortable place.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The figure had a very large sword and a very small smile and Pluck couldn’t decide which one he was more afraid of. On his shirt was branded a silver hand. He looked human. ”Hi,” said the stranger. ”I’m Alex.”
Alex walked right through the flames, setting his sword ablaze and pressing it up against Pluck’s neck. The flames licked at the werewolf’s wisp of a beard. ”I’m here to kill you all, but one in particular. Tell me where Jon Swift is or I’ll—“
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwhoooooooooooosh!
The fire all vanished as the flaming stretch of hallway experienced a distinct lack of air. Pluck and Alex turned with a comedic synchronicity to find themselves staring down the one entity in New Battleopolis you do not want to fuck with.
Eximo goddamn Pulvis.
The undead vacuum cleaner said, ”Your heritage is unacceptably filthy. Stand by for ethnic cleansing,” and Pluck nearly pissed his pants. The fire mage, not seeming to realize the gravity of his situation, simply raised his sword.
Pluck had barely started running before the screaming began.
* * * * *
Standing on three deep in ninja corpses, swinging a still-living Rillian around by the ankle, Greyve was beginning to look more and more like the cover to the DVD box set of a particularly trashy anime. Jen was losing this fight, and she was perturbed. The Rillian in question was still holding his warscythe, and sort of flailing with that, shooting off the occasional blast of God-knows-what. Jen was standing some feet away with a sword in each hand, debating whether she ought to drop one. Earth-shakingly loud industrial music blared out of the speakers on the walls and made it hard to think. She dropped the sword, suddenly struck by a better idea.
Hoping Weo could distract the half-Oni long enough for her to work a little magic, Jen ran the edge of her remaining sword (it was Uncle, of course) along her inner calf, collecting a trickle of blood on the blade. She held the sword out in front of her, focusing on the blood, and whispered a magic word.
Nothing happened.
Dammit, thought Jen. It’s not royal blood anymore. She wiped the blade clean and said the word again, backwards this time, just in case.
So instead she charged, because if her blood wasn’t worth anything anymore she might as well just get it spilled anyway over some fool’s errand. Greyve planted his greatsword in her path; Weo leveraged the shift in the demon’s weight and wrapped his legs around the other’s arm, bludgeoning the back of Greyve’s head with the flat of his scythe. Greyve staggered, giving Jen the opportunity to leap onto her opponent’s shoulder. Weo and Jen stood facing each other on Greyve’s back for a fraction of the second, as though unsure whether or not they wanted to attack each other, before the half-Oni reared up and swatted at them frantically. Jen was battered aside like an Ouroborite and tossed into the dead-ninja pigpile, and hazily saw Weo retain his footing by driving his scythe like a stake in between two of Greyve’s ribs. A lot of blood came out, and some of it got on her face. Rolling aside in case the half-demon should take a fall, Jen rose to her feet (facing the wrong direction shit dammit) in time to register the smell of burning corpses. Jen hated the smell of burning corpses—it usually signified that things were about to get bad.
Like a devil sent from heaven, someone distinctly human-looking lowered himself down from the ceiling, wearing a dumbass-looking hat and some dumbass-looking fingerless gloves. Behind her, Jen heard a noise like somebody really enjoying a lobster. The newcomer’s eyes were glowing red like he were either possessed by a demon or into some serious drugs, and Jen guessed the former.
The human landed on the ground and smiled. ”Hi,” he said with a voice like flypaper. ”I’m Trickster, and the following inferno comes courtesy of the Hand of Silver.”
With a snap of Trickster’s finger, the Purple House was repainted in the colors of flame and ash, and the music was drowned out by the sounds of a hundred species screaming all at once.
* * * * * *
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The flames weren’t helping Pluck try and find an exit, not that he thought he’d have any better luck escaping from Eximo outdoors. His only solace was that luck had carried him this far… although come to think of it, he had died. How had he died? He remembered… he remembered seeing himself being eaten by Ouroborous, but that was a different him. He was a different him, too…
None of this was doing much for his confidence. There were half-seen figures running gleefully through the halls, laughing (was that a woman?) as they tracked flames with every step. He could at least take solace in the fact that where the smoke was thickest, at least the vacuum wasn’t close enough to put out the flame.
Trying to run and have a coughing fit at the same time confused the werewolf’s hip muscles enough to make him fall over and skin his knees. It’s funny how you never get the little injuries when you have fur; even the bees stay away.
Whirrrrrrrrrrr He was inhaling more smoke than oxygen now and his brain was starting to go fuzzy. WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
”Eximo, stand down. Clear the fire.”
”Yes, master. Ceasing ethnic cleansing.”
With a whooooooosh, the hallway began to cool down. Pluck gulped down the slightly-more-palatable air, still coughing up lungfuls of black-and-purple ash. A moment after realizing he wasn’t going to die in a fire, the werewolf realized he wasn’t going to die by Eximo either. He chanced looking up. Standing over him was a hooded figure with a glowing eye. It gave him the chills.
“You… you’re Konka Rar, aren’t you? They talk about you.”
The hooded figure chuckled. ”Oh, come on. You really-- Eximo, shut down optics for a moment.” The vacuum sheepishly turned to face the wall, and Konka Rar’s face refashioned itself into the more familiar countenance of Huebert. ”My name’s Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.” The shapeshifter chuckled, morphing into H-Bomb. See, Tor and I are a lot alike,” said Bae. ”We don’t pay too much attention to appearances, which is how we see more than what’s right in front of us.” Bae turned back into Konka Rar and snapped his fingers; Eximo whipped back around, staring Pluck down greedily. ”You’re more than meets the eye, too, aren’t you, little Pluck? Well, since you clearly aren’t cut out for a career among the freaks, and your rescue plans have gone to the dogs, I’ll do you a favor and let you tag along with me on a little mission of mine. Eximo, you know what? You’re on fire duty. Get the House in working order and keep casualties to a minimum.” The vacuum saluted with one skeletal arm and hurried off, sucking the flames away as it moved. ”There’s a Konka Rar—maybe the Konka Rar, though sources differ—performing miracles among the unawakened. I’m going to see if I can’t add an element of uncertainty to that situation. Your talents may come in handy. What do you say, Pluck?”
Pluck growled as best he could in human form and grudgingly reached a hand out to the shapeshifter.
* * * * *
Greyve, dying, threw Weo, dead, right at the pyrokene, breaking Trickster’s concentration just long enough for Jen to move in without being incinerated.
Having dropped her sword the moment it went red-hot, the ex-monarch had no recourse but to go in with her fists, grabbing Trickster roughly by the wrists and trying to wrestle him to the ground. Trickster laughed, smashed his forehead into Jen’s nose (still not broken by some miracle of science) and deftly negotiated a foot around her ankle, knocking her to the ground.
Greyve still had enough of his vital organs left to bellow out an indignant roar and charge, but soon found his eyes on fire and threw himself to the sand in an attempt to put himself out. This at least gave Jen a second to throw her weight into Trickster’s knee, dropping him to the ground beside her. She put an elbow into his Adam’s apple and rolled over, straddling him. She put a fist in his nose and a finger in each red-glowing eye, and for her trouble found that her hair was on fire. She ignored that best she could.
Trickster brought one flaming hand up to each of her ears and knocked her hard enough that the roar of the burning building snapped into an indistinct whine. The firemage grabbed her by the collarbone and threw her aside, putting his powers of levitation to use to gain the high ground. Jen stood most of the way back up and caught a concussive fireball to the shoulder that knocked her to one side. Upon regaining her bearings she found herself uncomfortably close to Greyve’s still-breathing body, with Weo’s warscythe sticking out of it. She grabbed the rod of the scythe. Whatever it was made of had stayed cool despite the fire all around, but the weapon was lodged inside the half-Oni’s body. When Jen pulled at it, Greyve vomited and opened his eyes.
”Biiiiiiiiiiiiitch—“ but then Jen found a button on the side of the scythe and pressed it. She wasn’t sure exactly what it did, but bits of Greyve flew everywhere and the scythe came free. It was too late, of course—Trickster was already on her, planting his boot into the small of Jen’s back. Jen planted the scythe in front of her to break her fall, and kicked backwards, delivering a satisfying blow to her opponent’s solar plexus. Trickster roared in pain, but retained his faculties well enough to grab onto Jen’s ankle and send a jet of flame up the length of her leg. Jen screamed and lost her balance. She had officially lost count of how many times she’d been knocked to the ground in the last ten minutes.
Her vision was hazy; Jen watched disinterestedly as Trickster raised his hands above his head and produced a pretty final-looking fireball. She pressed the button on the scythe again, less out of any particular desire to live and more because she had a semiconscious inkling that it would make some pretty lights. And so it did, knocking the arsonist off his feet and straight over Jen’s head. Jen smiled and made herself bipedal again for what, regaining her senses only slowly, she figured would probably have to be the last time if she wanted to survive. There were large swaths of her body she couldn’t feel except for the pain. She had burns all over but the fire wouldn’t stick to her, perhaps because orange clashes with green. She didn’t even have the energy to walk over and snap Trickster’s neck while he was down, and he didn’t stay down for long, levitating to his feet looking barely the worse for wear, if you ignored all the bloodstains.
A humanoid silhouette wreathed entirely in flame rushed by Jen and tackled Trickster. The pyrokene shot jets of flame out of his hands at the newcomer, but nothing seemed to slow him down; Trickster took several consecutive punches to the face and then fell down. Jen took that as permission to drop to one knee. An arm bedecked with jingling bracelets grabbed Jen over one arm. ”Honey, stay with me,” came H-Bomb’s voice, as the elf turned Jen’s face to meet her own. ”Tengeri’s dead, but we’re gonna get you to TinTen, he should be able to fix you up.”
As Jen was helped to her feet, the flame-wreathed man laughed and spoke. The voice was recognizably Tor’s, but… different. ”Fire. Against me. Not your boss’s smartest move.”
Jen felt Red, the lobster, pick her up in the arms of his mech, as her consciousness began to fade. The last thing she heard was the lobster’s voice. ”It’s your lucky day, girl. The boss changed his mind about you. The orders are to keep you alive…”
And the last thing she saw was the flame subsiding and the face of Tor coming clearly into view. He looked different now, too. Still Tor, but more effeminate now, and… redder. Tor smiled at Jen and winked—
Pluck really looked like a mess when he was human. Poor hygiene, anachronistic fashion statements and uncontrolled body hair growth looked fine in a lupine context, but during his brief regressions into homo sapiens he seemed to combine all the worst aesthetic elements of adolescence and middle age. He was standing in the back, and the crowd was yet to notice his change in appearance.
That might soon change. The audience was getting bored and restless; after a brief exciting period in the beginning of the fight (Jen had done a back-flip off of Greyve’s sword, which was a big crowd-pleaser at the time) the two combatants had settled into a predictable pattern of standing back and poking around for flaws in the others’ defenses. They were evenly matched, in a fruitless and impotent sort of way; Greyve’s style clearly revolved around his opponents being even stupider than he was, and the impression Pluck got from Jen was that she was used to winning swordfights through trickery and luck, both of which were in short supply in the Purple House’s arena. Well, the werewolf was no expert in the martial arts, but he had a vested interest in guessing what people were thinking, and some of these folks were thinking about leaving. The big, taciturn suit of armor that called itself the Sunset was sitting right in front of him, and it slowly turned its head…
Pluck made a split decision. He reached into the darkness of Jen’s thoughts and plucked something out.
* * * * *
This guy was big and scary and had the skill to back it up. Jen was outmatched. She was reminded of that guy from the first round…
Right. That guy standing right there. Weo.
”Aaaah! Where am I?” The newly-formed Rillian turned to Jen, hissed, ”You!” and then whipped around just in time to raise his warscythe in the path of Greyve’s blade…
* * * * *
That got the Sunset’s attention again. Pluck needed to get out; Huebert would be expecting him at the border. He began to skulk along the outer walls of the stadium, head low, letting his trademark hat conceal his features. The doors were all shut, or closely watched. He couldn’t get out.
Down below, he couldn’t see the battle, but he could hear the three-body problem taking effect; blasts of energy like H-Bomb’s fireworks emanated from the scythe that whatever-that-was was holding and ricocheted off the ceiling. It wouldn’t be long until one of the three died, and he couldn't perpetuate the battle by plucking the gladiators forever. He picked up the pace a little, knowing he wouldn’t find an unguarded exit. Because his senses were dulled in human floor, he had nearly made a complete circuit before he heard the sound following him.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
To his credit, when he did realize he was being followed, he didn’t immediately scream and break out into a run. To his detriment, after about ten seconds of terrified powerwalking he decided the best course of action would be to barrel into the crowd hat-first. He was stymied in this effort when a dainty pink hand picked up his hat and another lifted his chin.
”Hey there, handsome,” greeted Aph, smiling mischievously. Pluck’s noir instincts absurdly nearly compelled him to comment upon her eyes (the nymph had peepers like a bank vault, big and deep and full of green and completely impenetrable, but isn’t that always the way with dames—hey there, name’s Pluck) but he didn’t have any time to do anything more subtle than pointing at the audience and shouting “Hey! Look!” as he plucked twenty ninja out of Greyve’s thoughts.
Pluck pushed the nymph aside and ran back to the outskirts as the crowd went wild. The sound was still behind him.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—“You are in the way of the ethnic cleansing, please stand aside”—Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
A hallway that had been guarded when he’d passed by before was standing open, and Pluck took full advantage of the opportunity, darting into the depths of the Purple House. The whirring sound followed him every step of the way, but at least here he was free to break into a full run without attracting undue attention.
Shortly before his lamentably out-of-shape human physiology forced him to slow to a walk, Pluck stopped in his tracks. His sense of smell wasn’t as keen as it usually was, but years in wolf form had taught him to pay as much attention to his nose as to his eyes. Right now he smelled smoke.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Only a few seconds after he smelled the smoke, Pluck began to hear the crackling of the flames. A few seconds later, the fire rose up all around him, trapping him in an increasingly warm and uncomfortable place.
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The figure had a very large sword and a very small smile and Pluck couldn’t decide which one he was more afraid of. On his shirt was branded a silver hand. He looked human. ”Hi,” said the stranger. ”I’m Alex.”
Alex walked right through the flames, setting his sword ablaze and pressing it up against Pluck’s neck. The flames licked at the werewolf’s wisp of a beard. ”I’m here to kill you all, but one in particular. Tell me where Jon Swift is or I’ll—“
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwhoooooooooooosh!
The fire all vanished as the flaming stretch of hallway experienced a distinct lack of air. Pluck and Alex turned with a comedic synchronicity to find themselves staring down the one entity in New Battleopolis you do not want to fuck with.
Eximo goddamn Pulvis.
The undead vacuum cleaner said, ”Your heritage is unacceptably filthy. Stand by for ethnic cleansing,” and Pluck nearly pissed his pants. The fire mage, not seeming to realize the gravity of his situation, simply raised his sword.
Pluck had barely started running before the screaming began.
* * * * *
Standing on three deep in ninja corpses, swinging a still-living Rillian around by the ankle, Greyve was beginning to look more and more like the cover to the DVD box set of a particularly trashy anime. Jen was losing this fight, and she was perturbed. The Rillian in question was still holding his warscythe, and sort of flailing with that, shooting off the occasional blast of God-knows-what. Jen was standing some feet away with a sword in each hand, debating whether she ought to drop one. Earth-shakingly loud industrial music blared out of the speakers on the walls and made it hard to think. She dropped the sword, suddenly struck by a better idea.
Hoping Weo could distract the half-Oni long enough for her to work a little magic, Jen ran the edge of her remaining sword (it was Uncle, of course) along her inner calf, collecting a trickle of blood on the blade. She held the sword out in front of her, focusing on the blood, and whispered a magic word.
Nothing happened.
Dammit, thought Jen. It’s not royal blood anymore. She wiped the blade clean and said the word again, backwards this time, just in case.
So instead she charged, because if her blood wasn’t worth anything anymore she might as well just get it spilled anyway over some fool’s errand. Greyve planted his greatsword in her path; Weo leveraged the shift in the demon’s weight and wrapped his legs around the other’s arm, bludgeoning the back of Greyve’s head with the flat of his scythe. Greyve staggered, giving Jen the opportunity to leap onto her opponent’s shoulder. Weo and Jen stood facing each other on Greyve’s back for a fraction of the second, as though unsure whether or not they wanted to attack each other, before the half-Oni reared up and swatted at them frantically. Jen was battered aside like an Ouroborite and tossed into the dead-ninja pigpile, and hazily saw Weo retain his footing by driving his scythe like a stake in between two of Greyve’s ribs. A lot of blood came out, and some of it got on her face. Rolling aside in case the half-demon should take a fall, Jen rose to her feet (facing the wrong direction shit dammit) in time to register the smell of burning corpses. Jen hated the smell of burning corpses—it usually signified that things were about to get bad.
Like a devil sent from heaven, someone distinctly human-looking lowered himself down from the ceiling, wearing a dumbass-looking hat and some dumbass-looking fingerless gloves. Behind her, Jen heard a noise like somebody really enjoying a lobster. The newcomer’s eyes were glowing red like he were either possessed by a demon or into some serious drugs, and Jen guessed the former.
The human landed on the ground and smiled. ”Hi,” he said with a voice like flypaper. ”I’m Trickster, and the following inferno comes courtesy of the Hand of Silver.”
With a snap of Trickster’s finger, the Purple House was repainted in the colors of flame and ash, and the music was drowned out by the sounds of a hundred species screaming all at once.
* * * * * *
Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
The flames weren’t helping Pluck try and find an exit, not that he thought he’d have any better luck escaping from Eximo outdoors. His only solace was that luck had carried him this far… although come to think of it, he had died. How had he died? He remembered… he remembered seeing himself being eaten by Ouroborous, but that was a different him. He was a different him, too…
None of this was doing much for his confidence. There were half-seen figures running gleefully through the halls, laughing (was that a woman?) as they tracked flames with every step. He could at least take solace in the fact that where the smoke was thickest, at least the vacuum wasn’t close enough to put out the flame.
Trying to run and have a coughing fit at the same time confused the werewolf’s hip muscles enough to make him fall over and skin his knees. It’s funny how you never get the little injuries when you have fur; even the bees stay away.
Whirrrrrrrrrrr He was inhaling more smoke than oxygen now and his brain was starting to go fuzzy. WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
”Eximo, stand down. Clear the fire.”
”Yes, master. Ceasing ethnic cleansing.”
With a whooooooosh, the hallway began to cool down. Pluck gulped down the slightly-more-palatable air, still coughing up lungfuls of black-and-purple ash. A moment after realizing he wasn’t going to die in a fire, the werewolf realized he wasn’t going to die by Eximo either. He chanced looking up. Standing over him was a hooded figure with a glowing eye. It gave him the chills.
“You… you’re Konka Rar, aren’t you? They talk about you.”
The hooded figure chuckled. ”Oh, come on. You really-- Eximo, shut down optics for a moment.” The vacuum sheepishly turned to face the wall, and Konka Rar’s face refashioned itself into the more familiar countenance of Huebert. ”My name’s Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.” The shapeshifter chuckled, morphing into H-Bomb. See, Tor and I are a lot alike,” said Bae. ”We don’t pay too much attention to appearances, which is how we see more than what’s right in front of us.” Bae turned back into Konka Rar and snapped his fingers; Eximo whipped back around, staring Pluck down greedily. ”You’re more than meets the eye, too, aren’t you, little Pluck? Well, since you clearly aren’t cut out for a career among the freaks, and your rescue plans have gone to the dogs, I’ll do you a favor and let you tag along with me on a little mission of mine. Eximo, you know what? You’re on fire duty. Get the House in working order and keep casualties to a minimum.” The vacuum saluted with one skeletal arm and hurried off, sucking the flames away as it moved. ”There’s a Konka Rar—maybe the Konka Rar, though sources differ—performing miracles among the unawakened. I’m going to see if I can’t add an element of uncertainty to that situation. Your talents may come in handy. What do you say, Pluck?”
Pluck growled as best he could in human form and grudgingly reached a hand out to the shapeshifter.
* * * * *
Greyve, dying, threw Weo, dead, right at the pyrokene, breaking Trickster’s concentration just long enough for Jen to move in without being incinerated.
Having dropped her sword the moment it went red-hot, the ex-monarch had no recourse but to go in with her fists, grabbing Trickster roughly by the wrists and trying to wrestle him to the ground. Trickster laughed, smashed his forehead into Jen’s nose (still not broken by some miracle of science) and deftly negotiated a foot around her ankle, knocking her to the ground.
Greyve still had enough of his vital organs left to bellow out an indignant roar and charge, but soon found his eyes on fire and threw himself to the sand in an attempt to put himself out. This at least gave Jen a second to throw her weight into Trickster’s knee, dropping him to the ground beside her. She put an elbow into his Adam’s apple and rolled over, straddling him. She put a fist in his nose and a finger in each red-glowing eye, and for her trouble found that her hair was on fire. She ignored that best she could.
Trickster brought one flaming hand up to each of her ears and knocked her hard enough that the roar of the burning building snapped into an indistinct whine. The firemage grabbed her by the collarbone and threw her aside, putting his powers of levitation to use to gain the high ground. Jen stood most of the way back up and caught a concussive fireball to the shoulder that knocked her to one side. Upon regaining her bearings she found herself uncomfortably close to Greyve’s still-breathing body, with Weo’s warscythe sticking out of it. She grabbed the rod of the scythe. Whatever it was made of had stayed cool despite the fire all around, but the weapon was lodged inside the half-Oni’s body. When Jen pulled at it, Greyve vomited and opened his eyes.
”Biiiiiiiiiiiiitch—“ but then Jen found a button on the side of the scythe and pressed it. She wasn’t sure exactly what it did, but bits of Greyve flew everywhere and the scythe came free. It was too late, of course—Trickster was already on her, planting his boot into the small of Jen’s back. Jen planted the scythe in front of her to break her fall, and kicked backwards, delivering a satisfying blow to her opponent’s solar plexus. Trickster roared in pain, but retained his faculties well enough to grab onto Jen’s ankle and send a jet of flame up the length of her leg. Jen screamed and lost her balance. She had officially lost count of how many times she’d been knocked to the ground in the last ten minutes.
Her vision was hazy; Jen watched disinterestedly as Trickster raised his hands above his head and produced a pretty final-looking fireball. She pressed the button on the scythe again, less out of any particular desire to live and more because she had a semiconscious inkling that it would make some pretty lights. And so it did, knocking the arsonist off his feet and straight over Jen’s head. Jen smiled and made herself bipedal again for what, regaining her senses only slowly, she figured would probably have to be the last time if she wanted to survive. There were large swaths of her body she couldn’t feel except for the pain. She had burns all over but the fire wouldn’t stick to her, perhaps because orange clashes with green. She didn’t even have the energy to walk over and snap Trickster’s neck while he was down, and he didn’t stay down for long, levitating to his feet looking barely the worse for wear, if you ignored all the bloodstains.
A humanoid silhouette wreathed entirely in flame rushed by Jen and tackled Trickster. The pyrokene shot jets of flame out of his hands at the newcomer, but nothing seemed to slow him down; Trickster took several consecutive punches to the face and then fell down. Jen took that as permission to drop to one knee. An arm bedecked with jingling bracelets grabbed Jen over one arm. ”Honey, stay with me,” came H-Bomb’s voice, as the elf turned Jen’s face to meet her own. ”Tengeri’s dead, but we’re gonna get you to TinTen, he should be able to fix you up.”
As Jen was helped to her feet, the flame-wreathed man laughed and spoke. The voice was recognizably Tor’s, but… different. ”Fire. Against me. Not your boss’s smartest move.”
Jen felt Red, the lobster, pick her up in the arms of his mech, as her consciousness began to fade. The last thing she heard was the lobster’s voice. ”It’s your lucky day, girl. The boss changed his mind about you. The orders are to keep you alive…”
And the last thing she saw was the flame subsiding and the face of Tor coming clearly into view. He looked different now, too. Still Tor, but more effeminate now, and… redder. Tor smiled at Jen and winked—