plot } the creatures descend.

[synergismus]

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.

Comments

[jysiri.livejournal.com]

Jysiri deeply regrets not having stayed home, today. He was out shopping, and now he's caught out in the middle of all this mess, and with only a little magic. A ring that produces a happy, whistling song really isn't going to be much of any help, here.

His bird form can fly, and his first plan was to book it on the wing, but peacocks aren't exactly the best long-distance flyers. Instead of hiding in his flat, he is now backed into a corner by a number of disgusting monkeys.

He isn't helpless, though. His bird form grows and wavers a bit, with a blue glow. Then, he's grown to the size of a dog. His fan of long, eyed feathers have diminished and flattened along his back, and an actual tail has grown, rigid and as long again as the rest of his body, with a smaller crest at the tip. Long, clawed fingers poke out from the feathers of his wings, and his head, still feathered, is saurian now, and his mouth is fanged. And the sharp, sickle claws on his feet will help him against his attackers, and maybe give him a chance to run for safety before he's overwhelmed.

He leaves one monkey dead, eviscerated, and leaps over another. He lands badly, one foot twisted, and he squeaks. He can run and leap and fight, but his legs are not good, and he will pay for this, later.

[scorpiontongue.livejournal.com]

Another bird cries overhead - a high, fierce falcon sound - and a third monkey, distracted with chasing after Jysiri, promptly erupts in cracking eldritch fire. Kriv is not far behind: teeth bared, armor bloodied, either half insane or having the time of his life or both. The first swing of the bladed polearm in his hands tears a fourth monkey in half.

Integra Hellsing wants the civilians alive. So be it then, and at least in this instance the directive results in exactly what Kriv would be doing anyway. If the little pests want to attack something, let them attack this!

"Little cousin!" he bellows at the strange saurian thing, feathered but unmistakeably, distantly familiar. Perhaps a hybrid drake of some sort? Though if he's chasing after someone's pet he's going to be ill-tempered...er, more ill-tempered about it. "Are you sentient?"

[jysiri.livejournal.com]

Jysiri lifts his head, a crest raising in reply, but he must snap at another monkey and dodge out of the way before he can speak. When he does, his mouth doesn't move with the words. His pupils are wide.

"Yes!" he says, frightened, and runs toward the humanoid dragon. That is possibly not the best decision, but he is a bit overwhelmed.

[scorpiontongue.livejournal.com]

Under normal circumstances it would indeed be a questionable decision, but for the moment these are anything but normal circumstances and that was all the answer Kriv needed. He opens his jaws again as he cuts a path through screeching flesh and a terrible tangle of syllables comes roaring out -

- behind the running Jysiri, in the midst of the vicious little mammals, a frog falls from the sky. It lands unharmed on a bare patch of sidewalk and croaks before a monkey leaps upon it, and then the monkey is screaming with three of its fingers half gone and blood on the ugly frog's wide mouth -

The frogs keep coming, and the monkeys grow louder.

"Do not look back!" Kriv has never been overly sensitive to the traumatic things he's occasionally caused innocent bystanders to witness, mind. It's more that he'd rather the frightened stranger stay focused on more helpful things, like running. Once they've reached one another he'll figure something else out.

[jysiri.livejournal.com]

Jysiri recognizes a spell being cast, and is also quick enough to recognize it as a summoning - he is definitely not about to look back. That would waste time in escaping.

He leaps again, and is beside Kriv, with his feathers all flat against his body, now, and hisses at their attackers. "They're not sentient," he says, halfway a question, and entirely miserable.

[scorpiontongue.livejournal.com]

"If they were, they would surrender!" Jysiri wins points for staying on task, as Kriv has little patience for the instinctive actions of people in a panic. (Especially the ones that inevitably look back and trip, which is just rage-inducing.)

The frogs do not move quickly, but the devastation wrought by their greedy pirahna-hunger is thorough. Those monkeys caught between Kriv and the thousand mouths soon find themselves forced to choose between two bad ends, and the rest driven back as best as may be done with the business end of his glaive. But such is the aggravation of fighting a large number of very small enemies: some always slip through.

[jysiri.livejournal.com]

That makes sense! None of this sits well with the currently-saurian peacock, but that makes it a little better. At least it's not people. He is going to avoid thinking about those birds, though.

He will hide behind Kriv. That is an excellent plan, and he can even hold a defensive stance and help keep some of the creatures away, while the frogs and the dragon do their good work.

Talking, really, can wait until they are not in so much danger.

[scorpiontongue.livejournal.com]

And that, at least, may not take too terribly long. The unnatural frogs flow to the left around them like an angry tide, cutting with terrible efficiency through another patch of the primate-swarm. Kriv whirls to the right, glaive-blade cutting down what he can while the strange 'little cousin' goes to work behind him and the thousand mouths guard both their backs.

It is too soon since his last battle (and the battle before that) for any more arcane dramatics in this fight. Thankfully it would seem that they may not be needed.

[jysiri.livejournal.com]

A lack of dramatic magic is good - that means Jysiri can stick close by. He can only hope that they're going to wade through this mess toward safety, but falls far too easily into following the dragon-man's lead. He would give just about anything right now to not have to deal with this, and letting someone else call the shots is the next best thing. Augh, horrible, horrible, terrible tasting monkeys!