Shamitako

Cheryn "Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and say that blinking in there is a bad idea." she said finally, "So if I'm not back in thirty seconds, you should probably assume I was right about that." Her ring mech appeared around her and suddenly she was gone. A few moments later she reappeared. "Well, that place is spooky as fuck." she said, shivering, "There's literally zero sound at all, I bet it's pitch black too. Didn't find any doors, but there seemed to be a transporter. Also, um, shelves. I'd rather not think about what could be on them. Anyways, that map there show any teleporters nearby you can use to get in?" Those Guys Gypsy attempted to condense what everyone had asked into a manageable size. He then focused and created a telepathic link with Merlin. "Ran into Ansuz." He said, "Gave us a spook. No trace of Carls scientists. What's the situation for you? Have you met resistance? What do we do now?" Gypsy didn't let it show, but he was as concerned about the lack of information as the rest of them. Merlin hadn't been acting herself during this whole thing and he was worried about her. "Runes. No scientists. Children. Ansuz capture Fedora." Merlin said back, "Mission wrong, don't play the game." Gypsy took a moment to sort through this information before relaying it back to the rest of the team. "Apparently they haven't found any form of resistance. Ansuz has been busy though, he seems to have captured someone. They found some kids being experimented on." He said, "And we should probably hurry about and head for the center of the facility and try to meet up with Merlin. I don't think there's any resistance here at all, just Ansuz. and knowing him, he's got something big planned for when Merlin finds him. Get moving as fast as you can. Be careful if you see any strange markings on the walls or floor, but I'm pretty sure you won't find any." MSC "I have absolutely no idea what we're walking into at all." Merlin said, "Ansuz is far too unpredictable for that. But... he's got some big elaborate trap set up that's supposed to make you all turn against me. I'm sure of it. I'd appreciate if you didn't do that." she proceeded to demonstrate how to handle Ansuz's runes as she noticed some on the wall ahead of her. She fired off a chain of fireballs, incinerating the runes and a bit of wall around them. "If you spot any runes, destroy them before they have a chance to cast." she explained, "The best way to do that varies depending on what it's made of, but fire is a safe bet." The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, Merlin had to blow up a couple more rune traps, but it didn't seem like Ansuz was actually trying to stop her. Everyone but Cheryn Merlin walked into the atrium. The walls were lined with various instruments, but the center of the room was empty save for a metal table with some strange tools on it. By one of the walls was a metal and glass cylinder holding Feardorcha, who seemed quite captured. Shortly after Merlin and MSC had entered, Those Guys walked in through another doorway, Bear's bee swarm hovering just behind them. Walls of stone erupted from the doorways, blocking them off. Ansuz walked forward from behind the cylinder. "Merlin." He said as dramatically as his voice could manage (not very), "Have you come to play my game?" "Nope." Merlin replied, raising her arm. A barrage of various elemental orbs--fire, water, electricity, love, wind, stone, light, darkness, sound--flew from Merlin's extended palm. Ansuz threw down a few plastic runes and a barrier sprung up to deflect most of the assault, but several of the shots collided with him, knocking him backwards. He fell to his knees, his arms hanging limply at his sides. "What are you doing?" He asked, his voice filled with fear. "I'm not playing your game." Merlin said sternly, "We're fighting like real mages. I'll give you one chance to surrender before I put an end to this." Ansuz stared at Merlin, his face looked completely betrayed. It had never once crossed his mind that Merlin would be willing to fight him outright. Tears began to stream down his face, pooling on the floor around him. He raised his arms to cover his face and sobs began to tear across his body. Merlin was clearly taken aback, but she refused to back down. "Very well then." she said with a twinge of sadness. Ansuz continued sobbing. Merlin walked toward him, her arm outstretched. She stopped about two meters away from him and began speaking slowly and deliberately. "Natasha Trinity Child. Magus title: Ansuz. On my authority as the second Prince, I find you guilty of misconduct in the third degree." An orange light began to glow behind Merlin, forming into an oval with jagged eyes and mouth cut out. Her gloved palm glowed brightly in the same color. "You have become a threat not only to yourself and not only to others, but to the very world itself." Ansuz's sobs intensified. The light dimmed slightly, Merlin spoke as herself for a moment. "Ansuz," Merlin said softly, "You know... I called you a witch. I really did care." Ansuz didn't respond. The orange light grew brighter again. Merlin's eyes changed into orbs of glowing orange with those same jagged black faces on their surface. "The world has judged you." she continued, "Your sentence is death." Ansuz lay in the fetal position, a puddle of tears by his face as he clutched it tightly with his hands and cried.

Yay, more of these, whoo, excitement ^^ Looking forward to it

Bellona has been dropped, everyone else is still around. Currently in the process of contacting unintroduced people IMPORTANT I'm dropping rolls entirely. RNG was just a bad idea with the way I do stuff. If you're trying to do something too far beyond your capability I'll poke you about a possible catastrophic failure

Nessie Nessie heard LOTUS and considered unleashing Excalibur right there. Pulling out "some" of the stops would indicate doing this, but Nessie didn't feel comfortable with that course of action. Instead she pushed more energy into Excalibur. She didn't bother to voice her opinion on the whole morality thing, at this point it didn't matter. She couldn't help but feel a little disturbed by Assassin's presence, something about Nessie felt violated by her gaze. Nessie uses Shadow Lash

Audience Phase (OOC: I'm alloting precisely one week for this, we shouldn't need more than two or three posts to get through it. Also yes I'm dumping the weird mechanics here too, just RP normally) Splendorous. That was the only way to describe it. Queen's large throne room was painted gold with red tiled floors and purple tapestries hung about. Each wall had a pair of glass windows in them, although the light from outside was lessened by the rain which fell outside. To make up for this, a large chandelier hung in the center of the room, lighting it with two or three dozen wax candles, causing the light to flicker and glint against the golden walls. Queen's throne was primarily made of wrought iron inlaid with gold and had comfortable looking cushions made of purple fabric. Queen himself was a rather short young boy with dark skin and curly hair. He was dressed in a purple robe and wore a gold circlet on his head, clearly he was playing up the royalty bit. Yet even with such a display, it managed to avoid feeling overblown. Black Idol seemed rather happy as she stepped forward to begin the introductions. "My lord," she said, "allow me to introduce the competitors of the grand tournament." "My thanks," Queen said, "Welcome contestants, it's a pleasure to have you. I'm told that the Revenant and Libra won't be able to attend, which is unfortunate." He clapped his hands three times and a group of men and women dressed in white robes ran out. They carried silver trays with glasses of wine and small loaves of bread on them. "Introductions are in order, of course, but there's a long standing tradition in the Plane of Greed to have a toast when meeting a great warrior." He grabbed the glass presented to him and stood, holding it aloft. "To each of you individually and all of us together." He said. He took a sip of the wine and tore off a chunk of the bread with his teeth. He then sat back down and waited for the contestants to come forward and introduce themselves. Sully While everyone else was enjoying a little wine in a fancy room, Sully was in the dining hall on the train meeting Lord. When he arrived, she showed him a small, glowing orange rock. "This is called a starstone." she explained, "I'm going to activate it, it will then flash brightly and emit a signal that will call Arcturus." She closed her hand around the stone and held it at arm's length for about ten seconds before dropping it. There was a bright flash of light just before it hit the ground. Ỳ̵̷͜ớ̡͞͝u̶͠ ̵̧͢a̷̛̕r̸̀͟͟è̡̛͝͠ ̸̨͢w̴͜r҉҉̀͠ò̸̷̵͢ņ̸͡͝g͏́͡͡.͘͘ ̧͝͞Ś̸̨̧͘h̸̀͢͞e̶ ̶̶͡ņ́͞e̵͠͏̴̛ȩ͘ḑ̸͠ś̴̨ ̵̛̕͢h̸̨̀͘é́l̴̸͝p͜͜͝.̢̛͞ A moment later, Sully and Lord stood just as they had before the flash. Nothing seemed to have happened, but something was off. Lord quickly checked her HUD. "It worked." she said, "Twenty minutes have passed. Did it work?" Yet that wasn't it, something else was wrong. Sully realized what it was shortly. Asmodeus wasn't there, no matter how Sully tried, he couldn't get the AI to respond.

Blink After confirming as best she could that Hiroki would be fine, Blink left her and Kagari alone to work things out. She still had a little hope that Hiroki would consider her earlier offer, but she wasn't going to be upset if it didn't work out. Amelia was fairly certain none of this was going to work out, all these plans and schemes, it had gotten out of hand. Someone was bound to fuck up and then everything would go to hell. Unfortunately, Blink couldn't do anything about that. The only other god that didn't resent her was Bear, and he agreed with Seeker's plan. There was still a chance though, if Nil showed up in the middle of a tourney fight, Blink would be totally justified in beating the shit out of her. Sure if she lost it would be world ending, but Blink would simply refuse losing. It was a little risky, but Blink hadn't gotten this far without risk.

Nessie Nessie wasn't particularly effected by the location of the battle. As she always did, she began to channel energy into Excalibur. She could only do this one thing, but she would do it to the best of her ability. Nessie uses Monstruous Strength (OOC: Just a quick reminder that Nessie's flaw makes her take damage from allied AoE, so do be careful with that)

Nessie (ooc: idr if I gave Nessie a proper last name previously, but this be it now) Nessie held up her hand towards the spider, indicating that she would be a moment in responding. She first answered her superior. "I'm Artitha Corwell, better known as the Loch Ness Monster, or simply Nessie. I swing my sword and things die. Usually I focus energy into it before swinging it." she told LOTUS. She the proceeded to answer the spider in turn. "Well, I don't actually change." She said, "or rather I don't remember doing so before. That's one of the strange things since I got here. I feel like I actually could turn into a sea monster if I tried. It's a strange feeling. Usually I'm just an amphibious girl with a magic sword."

Merlin "So, uh, do you have a plan for if we find them?" Merlin asked as her master headed towards the sound's general direction. Really not Mich had changed from when they started our, now they had just confirmed that there was a powerful opponent to get killed by early on and prevent Merlin from having any fun. It still seemed to Merlin that James was too overconfident. She supposed that if she did get killed early it would get her out of failing to stop James from going crazy and/or becoming an overconfident, old, and smelly mage.

Nessie Nessie was slowly starting to catch up to what was happening. It seemed the spider lady was confused because Nessie appeared human but smelled like the loch. Since no one had bothered to question Nessie's appearance, probably because they weren't as sensitive to smells as the arachnid, she had been caught off-guard. "Well, uh, I'm not a psychic squid, but I might be kind of like those mer things? I'm not sure. I'm actually sort of a sea monster, or a submarine, depends on who you ask. Really I don't know what's different about me and humans except that I don't drown in water." She was able to explain now that she understood. "Does that answer your question?"

Nessie Nessie wasn't exactly expecting that response to her absurd question. "I don't understand." She said in confusion, "An illiwhat?" The spider was right that Nessie lived in water. Smell? What? It was just such an unexpected turn that she had no idea hoe to respond. "I'm Nessie, if that's what you want to know." she tried explaining. What was she? Nessie didn't know herself. She glanced down at Excalibur, the sword she had been born holding, it was a likely clue to her origin. Although it seemed like the spider was more interested in Nessie's place of residence than the circumstances behind her existence.

Nessie (ooc: oi strat you remember ages ago we talked about Aurora being able to smell that Nessie was fishy? I think that might actually matter finally) It didn't immediately register in Nessie's mind that bikini and cloak girl referred to her as LOTUS announced a need for her presence. But it tickled her subconscious enough to make her double check her outfit, causing her to realize she was being called on. Since nobody else named stood out in the slightest, she was left with the sole option of seeking the spider. She made her way over to where the arachnid woman was. She felt inclined to say something, so she spoke the first thing that came to mind. "Greetings, miss, what can I do for you today?" She asked, defaulting to her customer service mode. It made sense that she'd fall back on that when faced with a crowd of people and a strange woman she didn't know, but it was clear that it didn't fit the situation. Unsure of how to follow such an odd introduction, Nessie was frozen with a stupid grin on her face; even spider women deserved service with a smile.

Blink The train rattled slightly as Hiroki and Kagari talked. Suddenly a tiny goddess popped into existence and slammed into one of the walls of the room. She stumbled backwards, grabbing her nose as she fell to the floor on her back. A swarm of foul curses spewed forth from her. After a moment she seemed to recover, although she stayed on the ground clutching her nose. "Stupid asshole train can't handle a little bump." she said, apparently an attempt to explain what had just happened. She hadn't yet picked up on the fact that she was interrupting a rather emotional moment. She couldn't quite tell whether or not any molesting was happening with her ears ringing and her nose momentarily incapacitated, but she figured it would be pretty obvious if it was, probably. "Anyways, uh, nothing untoward going on here, right?" Blink realized a bit belatedly that she hadn't really figured out what she was going to do if Kagari didn't do anything to Hiroki. It felt rather awkward to show up, smash her face into a wall, and leave again.

The Cringe Twins "Oh, uh, hi." Artemis said, looking over her shoulder at her sister. Fowl picked up on how awkward she felt but made no move to assist. Artemis shot her a telepathic glare and then went back to talking to Aera. "So, uh, what's up?" she asked.

The Diviner (OOC: So I was gonna make this scene a bit longer, but, uh, we're done tomorrow and I didn't wanna force you guys to make some bleh posts to get on out by tomorrow, thus I'm masking a sort of bleh post where I just tell you what happened) The Diviner assisted each of those who wished to modify their mechs in performing the changes. They were all well experienced with the process, so he didn't need to do much, just point them to the computer where they could apply the blueprints and help them with the Favor extraction. all the while though, he seemed distracted. He finished quickly and altogether rather quietly, although he did respond when spoken to and was polite throughout. Once everyone's modifications were complete, he quickly ushered them back through the teleporter to their own rooms. Once they were gone, he powered down the device, preventing anyone else from visiting him. After ensuring he was safe from interruptions, he grabbed a device from atop a pile of computer wires and parts where it had been blending in. The device was a much more modern version of the one he had lent to Tai, which had been little more than an old prototype. He now knew how to access the soul much more efficiently, the fact that the older device had caused such a sharp pain proved how dated it was. Leonard placed the new device, a shiny metal triangle with red light emanating from circular gaps on the front near the points. On the back of the device was a thin needle around three centimeters in length, it was similar to the one used with the Divination System, although being slightly smaller and not being hooked up to any machinery made it a good bit less intimidating. Leonard held the needle's point against his chest for a moment, making sure it was aligned properly. The red glow turned blue when the device detected it was in the proper position and he pushed down on it, inserting it into his chest. The device began to emit a whirring sound and hot air blew out from the ventilation gaps, it quieted down again after a few seconds, shifting to its final color of white. With the Soul Reader fully synced, Leonard picked up a small video screen. The screen was linked to the Reader, he'd chosen a screen for this model so that it would be easier to use, the downside of this being that whatever was detected couldn't move about the room of its own accord. So far this was more of a downside than an upside, but Leonard had some ideas to improve the technology that would change that in the future. For now its sole user would have to suffer a little. He turned the screen on and it displayed an empty white room which was shortly populated by a young woman in a maid outfit. "Mr. Davidson." the girl said happily, "D-does this mean you b-believe me?" "I'm considering the possibility that you're right, nothing more." Leonard replied. "Well, th-thank you anyways." "Even if you are telling the truth, you're still wrong." "That's wh-what everyone keeps t-telling me. I'm considering the possibility that they're right." "They are." Leonard said firmly, "There's absolutely no way what you're doing won't cause a catastrophic imbalance. If you'd just slow down maybe we could work something out." "No!" Cardinal shrieked, "I've tried working things out, I've tried and tried and nobody wanted to listen. So I did things my way, and now that I finally have a way to fix things everybody suddenly wants to stop and 'work something out'." Leonard was taken aback by the girl's sudden harshness. "W-well..." He said, trying to think of a response. "Oh gosh, I-I'm sorry Mr. Davidson." She said, calming down quickly, "I didn't m-mean to shout. But I really have tried. I'm doing this and n-nobody can stop me. Not even the Devil." "It's not like he'd try in the first place. You know enough about him to know that he only serves his own interests." Leonard said, "But you know, he's not the only one who can try. And even if nothing manages to stop you, I'm certain the winner of the tournament will find a way to match you." "W-we'll see about t-that!" Cardinal said. She disappeared, leaving Leonard alone. He set the screen aside and went to work with another device, if he could find a way to finish it in time then maybe there was still some hope left for everyone to escape this madness.

Cardinal "But I-I am a normal human." Cardinal said, her typical meek manner seeming to have returned. She even sounded a little hurt. "I'm just using... er, I'm just, um, kind of looking through you. I-It's hard to explain." Cardinal was hiding something of course, she didn't seem to be a very good liar. "I've g-got something to do... I need to go." she said. Tai didn't actually have any way to know if she was really gone, but she seemed pretty quiet.