Shamitako

Raid group: Merlin - DPS/Leader Exile - DPS (Just shorthand for "shoot things") Sense - Spotter (You're the team's eyes. While they fight, you watch the enemy and relay what they're up to to the relevant groups) Bartek - Tanku Dream - Tanku Forge - Scouting/Guard (When shit gets too close to the DPS/Sense, you bop it for them. Else you try to spot upcoming threats) Fedora - Infiltrator Defs didn't make this role just for him Cheesecake - DPS Tallow - Guard Babysitting assignments: Ice - Rest Cheryn - Watch Caliber Anemone - Help Genie watch everyone else Charity - Rest/Genie IC should be up this afternoon/evening, but might be delayed until Tuesday

Charity Charity said nothing more herself. She couldn't agree with Anemone. Regardless of the things he had done, Charity simply couldn't stop seeing Ansuz as a broken child. And she was fairly certain Merlin still saw him as one too. Charity wasn't privy to the details of Merlin's relationship with the boy, but it wasn't hard for anyone to see that the eccentric mage treated him as her child. With how unknown Ansuz's background was, it wasn't entirely out of the question for Merlin to actually be his biological mother. What fate could be more cruel for a mother than to kill her own child? No matter how Charity tried, she could neither convince herself that Ansuz deserved death nor that Merlin was making a wise choice in his execution.

There's an entire (rather typical and thus sort of meh gender bender) manga all about it called Boku Girl. Maybe she can have Loki's outfit...

NPNP. Sorry you can't make it Current thoughts on names. Subject to change if more ideas pop up. Yes I did indeed copy Murdoc's list out of laziness

Merlin Merlin wasted no time, sprinting as fast as she could from the barracks to the infirmary. She tried the door but it wouldn't budge. She was too close now to be stopped by a mere plate of metal. She peered through the small window embedded in the door to ensure no one was inside to be injured. Spying a clear coast, she stepped back. Her arm raised up, light glowing within her extended palm. The door flew from its hinges. Blink Blink noticed Genie mumbling apprehensively at the mention of the infirmary and Tallow's sister. "What's wrong?" She asked. "I told you, I wouldn't want to let Caliber out." Genie replied. "That's you. Merlin's the one doing it. And she's one tough old hag." Blink assured her. "Caliber is extremely volatile. She possesses a powerful and versatile special ability and she's learned in a very short time to make full use of her talent. And she has the element of surprise." "Trust me, Merlin's the one who'll be doing the surprising." Blink smirked, "She's no slouch with witchery. But more than that, I'm pretty convinced she's stuffed with a metric fucking truckload of 24 karat luck. She won't let that kid scratch her." "I'll have to take your word for it I guess." Genie didn't sound convinced. She didn't have to. Merlin would be fine regardless of how the young scientist felt. Merlin Merlin peeled the door off. It clattered to the floor. There was a large hole smoking in its center. She didn't have to question the cause as a blast of glowing red energy tore through the air towards her. Merlin clutched her hat tightly as she dove under it, somersaulting gracelessly through the doorway and barely managing to regain her footing when the manuever completed. A third shot was already on the way to her head. She just barely managed to teleport a nudge to the side, allowing the attack to pass by her, whipping up a powerful air current millimeters from her ear. Half a breath later Merlin released a counter-attack in the form of three orbs of electricity aimed at the bed behind which her attacker had taken cover. Her foe popped up and countered with three shots of their own, each colliding with one of Merlin's and causing a small explosion of energy. Merlin observed that the opposing fire pierced into her attack but didn't pass through entirely, meaning that they were similar enough in power to cancel each other out. This fight would not be decided by firepower, but by speed and wit. Merlin's foe rose up to attack, granting Merlin her first decent look at her attacker. It was a young woman in a labcoat, and from the looks of things nothing else. Possibly an experiment subject then. She had jagged grey hair with a prominent streak of red through bangs that covered one of her eyes. The uncovered eye glowed red and was focused angrily on Merlin. The teen had shaped her fingers to form a sort of gun, middle and index fingers extended while the other three curled back to her palms. Both of these guns were held at arms length, palms down, and pointed at Merlin. Red energy glowed against the young woman's fingertips, instantly converting into the shape of a bullet and firing off. This repeated twice for each hand before she ducked back behind cover. Merlin countered each shot with a different element to see if any were somehow more effective, each yielded the same energy explosion the electrical ones had. "You're pretty good." A rough but fairly high-pitched female voice said. It almost certainly belonged to the rebel behind the bed. "I am known for my skills as a mage." Merlin replied, "You're not bad yourself." "I'm Ballista, most people know me as D279: Caliber. You?" "Mackenzie Cloud, call me Merlin. Any chance we've bonded and become friends now?" Merlin's reply was Caliber standing up and launching a magic missile that had formed next to her arm. "Guess not." Merlin grumbled as she peppered it with water blasts, causing it to explode in a bright red flash that filled the room. When the light cleared a barrage of energy bullets streamed towards Merlin, who countered with a storm of fireballs. The bullets kept coming, and Merlin found she was only just barely able to keep pace with the onslaught. She looked Caliber directly in the eye and pushed as hard as she could to match the girl's speed. Caliber's eye seemed to emit a red pulse. Merlin didn't know exactly what it did, but she knew it couldn't be good. She had no way to know what was coming and couldn't take any energy away from her fireball defense to cast a barrier. Suddenly she felt two bursts of pain, one in her stomach and one in her left breast. She doubled over in shock. Caliber dashed for the door but as she passed Merlin, the mage raised her arm and waved her hand next to Caliber's ear. Caliber lost her balance and felt to the floor. She moaned a few times while her head cleared. And when it did she felt the crackling static feel of electricity against her neck. "How'd you do that?" She asked. "A magician never reveals her secrets." Merlin answered, "And, uh, I forgot to mention it since I was having so much fun, but actually I'm here to rescue you." "I don't need rescuing from an exhibitionist." "Hey! These are my nice clothes!" After tying Caliber up to prevent her from escaping, Merlin immediately began scouring through the infirmary's medicine storage for anything useful.

Merlin Merlin was distracted from searching through a pile of sports equipment by Cheryn's message. It wasn't entirely clear, but Merlin got the jist of it. She couldn't handle a response herself so she piggybacked on Cheryn's signal, making sure to keep the message concise so as much got through as possible. "Two wounded. Looking infirmary. Stay. Send location Sense." She sent. She couldn't be sure Sense would be in the pair looking for Cheryn, but she didn't have time to list anyone else. Shortly after she finished with Cheryn, Bartek called. She quickly returned to the office room. "Good work." she said as she downloaded the map to her HUD, "Now let's stop wasting time." There was a room labelled "infirmary" but it had no teleporter. However, as Merlin had suspected, it was very close to the staff barracks, which did have them. She keyed in Barracks 2, the transporter taking her and Bartek across the facility towards the infirmary and the promise of medicine. Charity "But what if I would do it again?" Charity asked quietly, "Ansuz is a bad person but... he's also a confused child. I don't know how I'll live with myself now that Gypsy is dead because of me. But how could I live knowing I could have saved the life of a child, even- no, especially one as broken as that?" She broke down into tears again. Even knowing her choice would still result in a life being extinguished, if she had to relive that moment, Charity wasn't sure she could bring herself to let Merlin kill Ansuz. It hurt that Gypsy was gone. But the pain Merlin would feel from ending the life of the one she cherished most with her own hand would have been this a thousandfold. With Charity's own apprehension over whether Ansuz deserved to die added into the mix, there was simply no way she could let Ansuz die like that. Perhaps it was a selfish decision and perhaps it was simply wrong. She didn't care anymore. This pain was already too much to bear, she couldn't bear worse.

Alright. Mission briefing. Thanks to Genie's help, the Round Table crew has been able to pinpoint the location of another Carls facility, a possible destination for the vacated inhabitants of the Hexagon. This facility is hidden under the fiery ashes of Wrath and is apparently quite the maze. It was constructed specifically to serve as a fortress against intrusion from the Gods. There are likely many defenses, which have also likely been augmented by magic. It is unlikely that Ansuz or any of the top brass are hiding there, but there may be clues to their location. As well, there is likely an extremely volatile experiment involving energy from Wrath's sun being performed there. Due to a general lack of a communication setup in the wake Gypsy's unfortunate death, a stealth operation is infeasible. The facility will need to be taken head on. However, at least one mage oriented towards stealth will be needed to sneak inside and evacuate any children found within the compound If you have a preference for whether you're on raid duty or stay home babysitting, please post below. Also post name ideas pls EDIT: Oh, right, three more things Bear is outside in the same place he has been the entire time. He followed with his bees Pit is half a mile deep and according to TV the sides are probably made of crappy glass now since the sand/ash Sloth ground got superheated by a magic laser explosion. Also worth noting, ceiling is intact, the rune only lasered down ward Need a Bartek post so Merlin can finish up

Alright, prepare for info Chapter 1 ends Sunday regardless of where we're at with the wrap-up quest. Chapter 2 will have a raid kind of like this chapter, but not everyone will be going. Plan is Merlin, six PCs (out of ten total, assuming I counted right), and two kids on the raid. the other PCs stay at the Hexagon and babysit the rest of the kids. Also for the sake of these numbers, Charity will qualify as my PC. The not raid people will have a lot more freedom to interact but obviously won't get to participate in the sneakiness and action stuff. Raid details will pop up a bit later. I want to split the groups OOC so once I get details out go ahead and let me know which way you want to go. Final decision will be mine but I won't force people either way unless I have to. I'm mostly going to pick which kids to send myself, but if you have any requests after seeing raid details I'll take them into consideration The unintro'd charries will be around next chapter as well so you guys should pay attention and participate in the above as well I was gonna name the kids IC but then decided that was a hassle. So just throw name ideas at me OOC and whatever I like I'll use. Any left unnamed after Chapter 2 starts will just get whatever I come up with on my own I likely won't be available on Discord until Wednesday, so responses and questions should be directed to this thread Also, Murdoc/Huk/Emp, could one of you drop an @TFW to make sure everyone on Discord sees this? (If you can, IDR how I did permissions on that >_<)

Kevin "Well, there is all that." Kevin agreed, "My main objection is that you're not going to last in an extended fight. You can pull of a sneak attack fine, but what we really need is a meatshield. Even Assassin would likely last longer than you." Shiori pouted a little but agreed. "Fine. But I don't want to be left out." "You won't be." Kevin reassured her, "You'll be aiming to take out the enemy master. It fits your skillset much better." In truth, Kevin would rather not employ Shiori in battle at all. But since he couldn't pay her anything, he needed some way to keep her distracted.

SR vs. HUNTER The suppressing fire wasn't a big deal to Adam's heavy armor, although extended exposure to it would become an issue. For now he felt he could move freely. Spears were a bigger problem, if one got embedded in his hull he might not be able to get it out. He attempted to avoid the attack by rolling to the side, but the multitude of obstacles in the arena impeded him and one of them pierced his mech. He cursed and tried to dislodge it by spinning to the side like he'd done with the first sword, but it didn't come loose.

Blink "Well, we already woke some in here." Blink pointed out, "But the longer we wait on the others, the harder it will be to find them." "P011 won't be going anywhere." Genie reminded her. "Right, but the other two could potentially be moving about." Blink paused, listening for a moment. "Actually, wait, there hasn't been any fighting for a while. We should contact Merlin, maybe the rest of the gang can search while we get these kids outta here."

Charity Charity squeaked out a choked sob. She tried to stop it, but once one came out it was followed by several more. "I didn't want anyone to die." She cried, "Merlin, she looked so hurt. She didn't want to kill Ansuz. And he looked so helpless..." Tears rolled over her cheeks, dripping off of them to soak her chest. "I didn't mean for it to turn out like this. For so many people to be hurt because of me."

Charity Charity raised her head to look at Anemone. Her eyes were bloodshot and her dark cheeks glistened with tears. "I'm okay." She lied. She was a bad liar under the best circumstances, in these conditions there was no hope Anemone would believe her. But she couldn't bear to speak the truth of how she felt. After what she had done, such an obvious lie barely even felt like a sin.

Merlin Merlin decided it wasn't worth arguing with her master over the matter, so she simply accepted his plan and moved on. "Sure, I can do that." She said, Although I'm terrible at sneaking so if I start yelling for you to run you should probably assume we're being attacked." She immediately went off into the night, dramatically checking every corner and moving in a nonsensical pattern like she was in a television show. Despite this absurd performance, she managed to cover ground rather quickly. She kept her eyes peeled, making sure to look up the the buildings around her in case her opponent was watching from above. She also checked the sky occasionally, since the sound had reminded her of thunder. It was while checking the sky that she spotted what she assumed had to be the foe they were concerned about. Up in the sky was a large ship, she was pretty sure that ships didn't usually fly, so it was quite likely magic was involved. And seeing as there didn't appear to be any parades or parties, she had to assume it was another servant. She made her way back to James, this time much less concerned about being spotted from the ground as she was being seen from the sky. Merlin returned to her master winded. "There's a flying ship." She told him urgently, "Somebody has a flying ship." While she was clearly concerned about becoming this ship's target, she also sounded rather excited. And indeed she was, the idea of fighting atop a flying ship sounded totally awesome. She changed her mind about not wanting to fight yet. If she was taken out while fighting on that ship, she didn't care, because it would be so super cool to have an epic fight on it.

Kevin Kevin shrugged. He couldn't think of much more for Archer to say. "Like I said, I want to try to join up with another servant to augment our combat ability." He said. "I see..." Shiori seemed to be thinking something, "I could hunt for other servants that may or may not team up with us. But wouldn't it be easier if I just served that role directly?" "Oh no, absolutely not." Kevin said. Shiori pouted. "But why not, Nii?" She asked in a cute voice. Kevin rolled his eyes. He was more than wise to Shiori's facade. "I can think of plenty of reasons. But we'll leave it at the fact that you couldn't even hope to take out a servant." A blast of wind sent Archer's drones careening across the room. Shiori moved with blinding speed, her hand coming up to Archer's throat. Though nothing was visibly there, he felt the distinct pressure of a knife against his neck. "I can assume you're rather durable." Shiori cooed, "But surely a gash in your neck would still cause significant harm?" The pressure dissipated from Archer's neck and Shiori raised her hands in surrender. Her point had been made.

Merlin After moving in silence for a while, Merlin felt rather safe. Doesn't seem like there's going to be any resistance." she said, "If I had to guess, the infirmary will be near the staff lodging. And I don't see much to suggest this is where they sleep." They didn't have access to a map of any kind, so they were searching blindly. One side of the hall had been partially destroyed, opening up to rooms filled with severe damage. She assumed that was Ansuz's doing. Just past the destroyed rooms was an office room with several desks partitioned off from one another. Just inside the entrance was a transporter as well as a smaller desk with a data terminal on it. Merlin hooked her HUD up to the terminal. As she suspected, it was a log. It seemed it was used to track when subjects were performing testing in the "zero gravity chamber." Unfortunately, it made no mention beyond ins and outs. Merlin tried keying up the teleporter. Surprisingly, it had no form of protection whatsoever. Only problem was that there was no destination list, you had to input a chosen destination manually. She tried "infirmary," "emergency room," and "medicine storage." To no avail. She sighed and turned to Bartek. "If we can figure out the right place to transport to then we can go straight to the infirmary from here." She explained, "So we can get there quickly but we still need a map. Check those cubicles, see if they have computers with maps. I'll go check across the hall, see if there's anything useful there." (OOC: For the sake of speed, go ahead and find a map on one of the computers)

Libra vs. Strider The machine gun fire pelted against Temperance's armor to little effect, small dents and scratches that immediately balanced out. Her scales filled with more metal. The mech's main body began rotating, slowly at first but rapidly gaining speed. The arms raised into the air, the heavy weights in the scales dragging them outwards with a powerful force. The mech then began slowly advancing, pushing its way through rock and rubble in a slow and deliberate march towards Strider. The tension of this creeping attack diluted the crowd's excitement with anticipation.