multiversallogs | plot } the creatures descend.

plot } the creatures descend.

Who: Everyone!
What: Creatures descend!
Where: All across the city, although attacks will be most fervent at its heart.
When: Friday/Veerdi evening and into the week.
Notes: Slow and back-tagging is, as always, permitted. If you are confused, look at these two posts for more information.
Warnings: Violence, creepiness, swearing knowing these characters.

On Veerdi, the presence of the creatures reaches a fever pitch. Something has provoked them into launching an all-out assault, though it is one that begins slowly. The pipe-crawlers, generally harmless though they may be, are seen across homes in Baedal, sneaking up through the pipes and into bathtub drains or sinks. They come by the dozens, and their keening makes most homeowners nauseated--but it's their appearance that leads to a number of distressed Network calls.

This is just the distraction for the rest.

The call of the crawlers draws in the armored, sickly creatures with the tiny primates carried inside of it. They are inelegantly lumbering, but much faster than one might expect, and certainly hostile. They trudge across the city, barreling over anyone who gets in their path and leaving them half-crushed in the street. They're certainly unsettling in their obvious unhealthiness, and the disease-ridden animals they carry are downright vicious, especially once they escape (messily, bloodily) from their fleshy cage.

It's the birds that are the worst, though; the cleverest, and the cruelest.

These strange black birds are resistant to typical attacks and flying in large groups. They descend on pedestrians, picking at their eyes and faces, ready to rapidly tear flesh from bone until there's nothing left but skeletal remains. They fly out of range when they can, only to divebomb anyone who might think they've escaped.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, this is familiar.

In some contexts, these are the sort of creatures Sonja would enjoy--even command. Since they've been tampered with (like her), she's not so inclined to keep them around, especially when they attack her, though she's thus far had better luck than some with going down the streets. Theoretically, she supposes, she could summon the full force of her presence and bypass them entirely.

But that wouldn't be as fun.

She has her bow for the flying creatures, her sword for anything low-hanging--but she's observed that the birds respond best (or at least die easiest by) to magic. Since she's not so keen on outing herself to the general population, she's trying to work either with Ilde, who knows, or by herself, but run-ins are inevitable. She nets three of the birds with crushing telekinetic influence, invisible, but pinning them to the ground. One of them breaks free from the side and makes a desperate lunge toward the sky, one of its fuzzy barely-real wings sticking out at an angle, the other dribbling strange pearlescent black beads.

Interesting. She pauses in her assault to advance and examine this more closely, toeing her booted foot at one of the dying birds.

"Well done," Ianto comments, slipping out of the shadows. His gun is drawn, but lowered, as he too looks curiously at the dying crow. "I've been avoiding the birds, myself. Guns just seem to piss them off."

If he finds anything strange or uncomfortable about Sonja's powers, he doesn't say so, or make any other indication of the sort.

Sonja doesn't pause because she doesn't really have time to do so--things are different here, or so she tells herself, but she's used to carrying such secrecy with her abilities.

But they're useful, and she needs them right now.

"They're a little Hitchcock, aren't they?" Her tone is light, despite the surroundings. "Only seen the birds and monkeys, so far."

So she's missed the pipe-crawlers. They do tend to be less aggressive.

Max has caught on very, very quickly that her preferred form of combat isn't going to do much against this crowd. So in lieu of guns, which she refuses to use, and magic, which she can't use, she's started using whatever makes a handy makeshift weapon. She's currently using a crowbar that she's picked up somewhere along the way and is using it on the monkeys whenever they come close. She hasn't bothered much with the birds yet, just runs like hell whenever they come close (because the crowbar's the most effective weapon she's found, and she doesn't want it snatched out of her hands before they start pecking her to death).

She comes across Sonja as she's examining a bird she's apparently shot down herself, and her eyebrows raise as she notices the bow. Archery was something they studied briefly back at Manticore, but bow and arrows weren't nearly as effective as guns, and so they hadn't gone too in depth with them.

"Nice shot," she says - not that she actually saw it, but the birds don't go down easy.

Sonja has guns on her (the blessed Magdalena, the gun only women are allowed to touch, and her microgun), but she's inclined to prefer the crossbow for its silence, the fact that it can pierce body armor, and most importantly, the fact that it's much easier to find a crsosbow bolt than a bullet in Baedal. She glances over at Max.

"Thanks."

She crouches down and picks up one of the pearlescent beads that came from the other bird's body.

"Have a look. This is what becomes of them when they die."

As weirdness goes, that's pretty up there.

Since the bird's already dead, Max feels comfortable enough to take a few steps closer to see what Sonja's talking about. She frowns as she gets a better look at what she's holding - it looks almost like a pearl, or maybe a bead. This is what's been terrorizing the city the past few days?

"How is that possible?" she wonders aloud, looking back at the woman. In her experience, whenever things get killed, they leave an actual body behind.

"Magic, I'd guess. This place acknowledges it as a daily part of reality." She turns the bead over in her hands, and hears a scream from down the street--looks like more company should be arriving soon. Sonja doesn't rise just yet, but now she knows that she won't be able to stop for long. That's fine. Part of the game.

She glances at Max over her shoulder.

"Sounds like more on the way. You look game." To kill shit, yes.

Monkeys or birds, that's the big question. Too fucking zoological for her tastes; she half-misses mutated cannibals.

By now, Max has heard about magic existing and has even seen it performed in front of her, but it still strikes her as pretty unreal, even considering all the things she's seen in her life. She nods to Sonja, hands tightening around the crowbar, and turns in the direction the scream came from.

She'd prefer to handle the monkeys, if she has a choice.

Monkeys it is! About two dozen come racing down the street, their high-pitched intermittent screeches serving as a decent warning system. They're fast, though, and not above trying to scratch bystanders as they head toward Max and Sonja's location.

Sonja looks pretty relaxed, for the time being, but that's deceptive.

Max, in contrast, tenses up, her spine going straight as she crouches into a fighting position. She doesn't start off running, there's no need, they're already fast on their way. She glances at Sonja again, very briefly, before one of them gets close enough for her to strike hard over the head.

"Batter up," Sonja says, and there's a tone like she could have smiled or the sentiment is there, but her expression stays calm.

With that many targets advancing that quickly, the sword's her best bet.

Augmented with a little magic, but she'll use that discreetly. The first wave hits, and Sonja ends up decapitating the nearest primate to her, which is messy, and sends its tiny head flying. Oops.

Kriv, meanwhile, has no concern whatsoever for whether or not the whole world knows what he is. Let them know it! Let them know it and run! In the chaos of the invasion his voice thunders in the streets, cracking glass and tearing bird and primate asunder. But it's the big beasts he wants - like armored ogres they are, a respectable enough prize to bring down.

He comes across two together and is on them at once, but one beast is distracted by a young man who picked a rather bad time to flee the nearest building. By the time the first corpse and its passengers lie in flames, that second beast has charged off again and is gone. Kriv finds this outcome unacceptable.

Fly, mine arrow! We shall have it yet! and the little falcon tears off like her namesake, evading a few remaing crows with dizzying agility as she cuts through alleys and over rooftops ahead of her master on foot. It is not long after that Erthesvent's keen eyes pick out an armed woman below as she zips past, and with a high hunting cry calls for Kriv's attention. The falcon doesn't stop; Kriv rounds the corner a moment later and does stop, for a moment, mouth gaping with exertion like an overheated crocodile. "You! Where is the armor-beast?"

Not 'excuse me, have you seen an armored monster go this way' or 'please pardon the interruption, but I seem to have misplaced my abomination' or 'didn't we meet the other day?' or even 'are you alright?' Truly Kriv remains gifted in the art of making a good impression on people.

Oh, she remembers this guy.

Sonja has classified Kriv in her head as a brawler, a size guy--extremely good in an old-fashioned battle, probably less so with anything that's just about killing as efficiently as possible. She's willing to be proven wrong, but she's used to making snap judgments and relying on them.

So she's almost not surprised about this confrontation. She gives him a wry once-over look.

"If I knew where it was, I would be killing it." But on cue, over the horizon trundles the oversized, sickly armadillo. "Ah. There's your ride."

It is not a bad assumption, all things considered. One who resorts to brute force by choice is not always easily told apart from one who resorts to brute force because he cannot think of anything else.

Kriv bristles visibly at her first declaration with a look on his face that could not be any more blatantly get your own damned prey, I saw it first! if he were holding a giant sign in place of a weapon. But when his quarry stumbles back into view his mood (such as it is) visibly improves.

"You waste your time prodding at corpses!" he calls out, vanishing and then reappearing on the thing's back in a whirl of smoke to slip the glaive-blade between heavy armored plates. "'tis the living that are worthwhile!"

Because if examining the crows is all he saw her doing when he showed up, clearly that's what she's up to in this chaos. Perhaps a new warlock spell is in order: Caiphon's Leap to Conclusions.

Sonja's reaction (if Kriv cares to notice) is one of general amusement, despite her blood-splattered appearance; the smoke-whirl is a neat trick, but she's swiftly distracted. A flock of the dire crows reappear to the east, blackening the sky and eying the two individuals on the street.

She raises her eyebrows at Kriv, otherwise unmoving. What you gonna do with 30 half-invincible crows, expert?

Nazca's been weaving in and out of the city. At first, she simply wanted to get home, but now she's out for the creature's blood. (If there is anger she hasn't addressed, well, it doesn't show on her face.) The ravens, however, are the worst problem, considering she has no magical propensity at all.

She happens to see Sonja net the birds, and pauses, a knife balanced in her hand. Nazca's not inclined to get too close, but on the other hand, she has respect for Sonja after their first encounter and she wants to see what she'll do.

The telekinetic force behind the birds crushes them until nothing but wet wings and broken bones remains--and then the birds continue to course into Baedalite beads, disappearing with a gentle puff of magical energy.

Sonja watches, impassive. When she speaks, it's clearly directed toward Nazca, though she doesn't turn her head.

"There will be more coming."

"Of course there will." Her own tone is even and conversational. "Are you heading somewhere, or just trying to weed them out?"

"Just taking them as they come, mostly." And collecting information--she won't be appeased with simply killing them all. She wants to know why they're here.

She indicates the beads with a tilt of her head.

"Seen those?"

"I have. I thought they might be something of whoever or whatever created or controls them." Meaning she hasn't touched any of them with a ten foot pole.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

plot } the creatures descend.

( all across town. )

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Time has no meaning, yay?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject