In the year 2012, a mysterious illness began to sweep the globe. In its wake, those who survived it were left with immensely powerful supernatural abilities.
As the number of people capable of wielding magic powers increased, they began to organize and seize control of the course of history. Using their powers to travel between parallel universes, these mages forge empires of a scale never before seen. And at the center of it all is the Academy, a neutral institution founded for mages to share their knowledge with each other.
Mages struggle against each other to impose their will upon the multiverse, but there is one threat that unites them all together. In recent months, mysterious entities have appeared. These entities wield power far greater than any one mage, and they seem determined to annihilate all of humanity. The mages will have to set aside their differences in order to beat them. The fate of the multiverse depends on it.
The drop was abrupt, not only catching the redhead off guard but also sending his last fireball flying into the sky. He only tensed his muscles once he felt his back hit the ground, an irritated groan escaping him.
The saint had let go of him and essentially dropped him, just like he had feared would happen. Yet, when he stirred his head to the side to complain to her, he only found the electrical kid, presumably also affected by the fall. His eyes narrowed, his brain not exactly processing the state of events they were in. His attention had been pressed to the entity and that only failing to notice where Hikaru ran off to as a result. Even when he watched the thing go down into the molten rocks of the earth, he failed to catch the glimpse of a Hikaru trapped within its wings before it completely vanished to a different city.
His body didn't quite fail him once he attempted to get up on his feet, it only took him off balance a bit finding the gravity slightly uncomfortable which in turn made him sway a bit. He clicked his tongue, assuming he would have to wait for her to come back and pick him up.
Or perhaps not. Maybe she was waiting for him in the other place? Karma nodded to himself in content before he set off to find a portal. He still had plenty of fight in him and a little bit of traveling from city to city wasn't going to stop him. He would hopefully find the saint on the other side and proceed things as they were, maybe giving her a bit of his mind first. Though that would never come to happen.
Rira watched, her expression stoic, as the entity dived into a pit of its own destruction, a single mage following suit. Better yet, getting trapped in the process. It all seemed too slow not to notice the enormous wings of the thing wrap itself around her before reveling in the molten rock that it created.
She stayed floating in the sky, the blood beneath her giving her a good view of the show, but not for too long. The entity had moved on to a different city and there was no time to waste lingering around. The platform she stood on started moving, it floated to the nearest portal, her creatures sending her a vibration of messages of where the entity had arrived. Florence.
Her arrival to Florence was as similar to her previous one. Quickly, she produced and hopped on yet another disc of liquid before she hovered over to the sky. This time, she found the entity high in the sky. Wasting no time, she rose to bring herself unto its level but not close enough to actually grab it's attention.
Her arms extended in the air, drops of blood forming along her fingertips before she recoiled them to throw them back out, a line of spikes building out of thin air and firing onto the entity's eyes.
Post by Maia Castelo on Aug 15, 2018 14:24:14 GMT -7
“Ah!” Maia immediately regretted her last decision. Once her power got a taste of this monster’s energy, it latched on and started devouring everything like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet. She didn’t have any control over the process. More energy continued to pour in until she felt sick. Attempting to move forward required too much concentration for her overestimated brain to follow. She tripped over her own leg and collapsed with a loud thud.
. . .Was the world always this out of focus, or did the fall give her a concussion? Rubbing her eyes didn’t stop everything from looking super blurry. After the initial confusion, Maia seemed less concerned about the sudden blindness. She’d recover from this condition soon enough. Her power always fixed everything.
The more important issue was surviving long enough for have enough time to heal. She crawled around in order to reach wherever her guardian had floated off to. The spirit helped Maia get to her feet, and pointed off in some direction. They seemed to have trouble seeing as well, but they didn’t need eyes to find the target. It’s still the largest source of energy around, that all the smaller things are aiming toward.
Restoring her vision could wait until after the two of them beat up those wings some more. At least, it felt like they were hitting the wings. Hopefully there wasn’t a mage with bird powers that got in the way.
Post by Jack Mason on Aug 15, 2018 15:31:50 GMT -7
Even if Jack hadn't been blinded, he was still in no state to notice Hikaru's absence. The damage to his lungs meant he had been running on an oxygen deficit for awhile, now, and the way that he was having to rush from portal to portal in order to keep up with the fight wasn't helping matters any. Every moment in his own body was spent painfully wheezing. He hurried to merge with the nearest building in Florence to minimize that time as much as possible.
He was running short on tricks, too. He had ended up merging with a solid metal structure built with Information Age tech, but it was too far from the entity to extend a pillar to it before its next teleportation. Instead, Jack decided to try creating a very smooth metal surface angled at the entity - a mirror, to reflect its light back at it.
As the mages got better and better at countering the entity's abilities, they were able to take the initiative more and more. The entity had barely arrived in Florence before being swarmed by counterattacks. It was forced to close several of its eyes to protect them from Rira's volley of shots, and by the time it began to glow with another burst of light, Abigail and Vieri had already guided the defending mages to safe spots around the city. With Jack reflecting the light back at the entity, the entity's attack seemed to accomplish nothing but overheating itself.
That meant that the entity didn't even get a moment's respite before it came under more direct attack. It was impossible to tell at a glance which parts of the wings held the most delicate organs (especially while blind), but with Rook's power in effect, every single one of Maia's attacks was hitting something critical. And Diana's power amplified the effect even further, ensuring that the wings wouldn't be able to do anything useful.
The entity was trying to rotate its rings to defend itself, but they, too, were under attack. Karma's fireballs were hitting the weakened material, melting it and blasting pieces off. Hayako was also able to use her power to phase big chunks away, and Jennifer spawned more masses of limbs to throw those chunks right back at the more sensitive parts of the entity, using its own heat against it.
All of this meant that the entity had no defenses whatsoever to stop Tristan from hitting the faces with another mass of freezing shadow. It roared as it teleported away, arriving in Tenochtitlan.
The city had largely been abandoned, leaving it and the surrounding lands blanketed by flame. The entity drew the flames into a single ball of light, but by this point, the amount of flame in Tenochtitlan was far, far greater than in Florence. The entity fed its own energy into the ball as well, producing a light so bright that even the mages in the other cities could see it over the horizon, like a second sunrise.
Then, the entity teleported away, leaving the energy to be released all at once. The portals in Tenochtitlan disappeared just an instant before the blast hit - which was fortunate, because if they had still been there, the wave of destruction would have easily spread through the portals to annihilate the Academy and every single portal city across all the universes.
Instead, the blast was focused purely on Tenochtitlan. The entire Earth shook with a seismic wave unlike anything ever experienced in the age of humanity. Everything within several hundred miles was completely annihilated. A huge black cloud of debris was propelled into the upper atmosphere, blackening the sky. North and South America had been completely separated - the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean now met in the spot where Tenochtitlan had been.
The entity arrived in Kyoto, hovering silently as it recuperated from its attack. It was drawing on every last bit of its destructive power, now. If the mages didn't destroy it immediately, this universe would not survive.
Post by Serpentarius on Aug 15, 2018 17:16:05 GMT -7
Eyes are using Interference (Illusion) against Florence at 100% Strength
Prediction (Sense) by Abigail Massey triggered by Eyes results in SUCCESS, 20% base with CRITICAL HIT+HIGH LEVEL+MATCHUP (x5) = 100% damage
Interference (Corruption) by Jack Mason against Eyes results in SUCCESS, 10% base with MATCHUP, 30% damage
Aggression (Disruption) by Rira against Eyes results in SUCCESS, 30% (x1) damage
Prediction (Sense) by Vieri di Adatto Isabello triggered by Eyes results in SUCCESS, 20% base with CRITICAL HIT+HIGH LEVEL+HIGH IMMUNITY+MATCHUP (x7) = 140% damage
Eyes reduced to 0% success margin, mages are NOT HIT by negative effects!
---
Rings are using Maneuver (Protection) for Faces at 100% Strength
Aggression (Disruption) by Hayako Yamanoue against Rings results in SUCCESS, 30% base with HIGH IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x2) = 60% damage
Interference (Corruption) by Jennifer Kayne against Rings results in SUCCESS, 10% base with WEAKNESS HIT+MATCHUP (x5) = 50% damage
Aggression (Disruption) by Karma against Rings results in SUCCESS, 30% base with HIGH LEVEL+IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x2) = 60% damage
Rings reduced to 0% success margin, Faces are NOT SHIELDED from attacks!
---
Faces are using Aggression (Subdual) against Kyoto at 100% Strength
Aggression (Disruption) by Tristan Carter against Faces results in SUCCESS, 30% base with CRITICAL HIT+HIDDEN POWER+HIGH LEVEL-MATCHUP (x4) = 120% damage
Faces reduced to 0% success margin, Kyoto is NOT MARKED for destruction!
---
Wings are using Prediction (Sense) at 100% Strength
Aggression (Subdual) by Diana against Wings results in SUCCESS, 30% base with WEAKNESS HIT (x2) = 60% damage
Aggression (Force) by Maia Castelo against Wings results in SUCCESS, 30% base with HIGH LEVEL (x2) = 60% damage
Interference (Corruption) by Rook Spellmeyer against Wings results in SUCCESS, 10% base with WEAKNESS HIT+IMMUNITY+MATCHUP (x4) = 40% damage
Wings reduced to 0% success margin, dissonance level is NOT DECREASED beyond the base amount!
---
Current conditions:
Diana is BURNT, decreasing all her powers and immunities by 1 level for the duration of the battle!
Jack Mason is BURNT, decreasing all his powers and immunities by 1 level for the duration of the battle!
Maia Castelo is BLINDED, preventing her from hitting weaknesses until the end of the turn!
Faces are DISRUPTED, giving them an artificial weakness to Aggression (Force)!
Current openings:
Tristan Carter can DISRUPT Faces by giving up his action this turn, adding a weakness of his choice to the component! This weakness will come into effect at the end of the round and will not have an associated opening.
Abigail Massey and Vieri di Adatto Isabello automatically READ the entity's actions, providing the following targeting information about next turn: Eyes target Kyoto, Faces target Cairo, Rings do not target a city, Wings do not target a city.
THREATENED CITIES: Kyoto, Cairo
Tenochtitlan has been DESTROYED, wiping it off the map!
DISSONANCE LEVEL: 3 Universal annihilation at dissonance 3 - CERTAIN ANNIHILATION IMMINENT
"'Kay," she nodded at her horse. "It should be fine. My power heals burns pretty quickly and well I can't get that much more burnt than I already am." She poked at the horse's burns with the remains of one of her fingers. "Looks like the ones from the last round will be mostly gone by the time we get back up there even."
She was considering what to do next in the mean time. The obvious one was to make her horse faster and more nimble, but that tended to have harsh side-effects on the body, mostly in the muscles. When she did it to herself they typically ended up pulled or torn by the end of the fight and it was difficult to mitigate; bodies just weren't meant to move like that. She did it to Vieri sometimes because his power made him unusually tough somehow, but given this mage burned when she got close to the entity, she doubted that she was as tough as Vieri. Thus, Diana kept considering other options.
It wasn't until she saw the light from the horizon that she decided that maybe it was okay if her horse got hurt a bit. Her power would heal her to help offset some of the damage, and if the entity was doing something like that now then it was probably for the best that they try to kill it quickly. A lot of the other options she had were volatile and were therefore just as likely to backfire in terrible ways. A few pulled muscles didn't seem so bad in comparison. Thus her horse would suddenly find it far easier to move and her movements would be much faster and climbing back up would take less than half the time. Her power was still ravaging the wings just fine, so with any luck they wouldn't have too much trouble getting to something they could hit.
Though her horse's comments just made her burst into laughter. "You're adorable you know that?"
It was fine. Pissing people off was a legitimate battle tactic and a damn good one at that in her experience. If her horse dropped her off the edge of a cliff at the end of all this for it, it'd still be worth it. Diana'd probably survive, and this thing'd be dead. Very much worth it.
Post by Jennifer Kayne on Aug 15, 2018 19:54:43 GMT -7
Jennifer was almost surprised that just randomly making it rain legs was actually proving to be effective. Sometimes, just going with her gut instinct really was the way to go! It was working, she was making sure to dismiss any constructs that looked like they might hurt someone, so there wasn't any reason to stop. She continued to try to push the rings into its wings and faces.
The bright light on the horizon made her blink. It wasn't super bright like before, so it didn't hurt her eyes, but she had no idea what caused it or why it was suddenly there. It was there and gone in like a couple of seconds, so it didn't seem like the sun was actually coming up. Curious, she tilted her head and tried to figure out what was going on. Nothing came to mind, so she just admired how pretty it looked and went back to focusing on the fight. It looked like the entity was on its last legs, so they had to be getting close!
Post by Hayako Yamanoue on Aug 16, 2018 3:56:35 GMT -7
Dropping her is exactly what Hayako did. Back in the portal room, just a little away from the Kyoto portal. In view of the floating entity, and if she didn't roll through the portal as she'd previously threatened, out of harm's way.
Evidently, of all the people who could be the healer behind her closing burns, it was Diana. This was her begrudging way of saying thanks.
She kept her eyes to the sky as she ran towards the entity hovering above, newfound speed carrying her fast enough the burns barely had time to get out of her way. Still she couldn't make out the glowing light of Hikaru... odd, given she wasn't difficult to miss. She'd find her later, though, and ask what happened. For now, there was a mission to complete.
The cooling masses of rock left by the magma provided her way up. Kyoto wasn't her home city, but this was her home country. Whatever that glowing light over in the distance had been, she wasn't about to let this thing do it here. Again Hayako leaped at a ring, braced herself for the burns, and attempted to draw in as much of the golden metal as she could.
Post by Vieri di Adatto Isabello on Aug 16, 2018 4:52:26 GMT -7
The light was bigger than anything he had ever created. That thing over the horizon - it had to be. Vieri had no clue what the hell the flying bastard was doing, but he didn't like it.
Showed up with fire and light, destroyed his city, nearly attacked his sister, did attack Diana... The laundry list of reasons to rip every one of this wannabe black hole's faces off was growing with every passing city it decided to grace with its presence. Thing wasn't even smart enough to pick one that didn't have a portal in it so the mages couldn't jump out and smash its eyes in. And he thought his classmates were dumb.
The light fading in the distance was his que to get up and get going. Swallowing his fatigue and telling the effects of bloodloss to just suck up and deal, he picked himself up and headed back through the portals. Guess Kyoto was where they were going to pound this thing's giant winged ass into the ground.
He shot through the portal in a blaze of sparks, yelling loudly. If the entity had done one nice thing, it was make space for a good running start. Vieri lept from the ground, as much static as he'd been able to build up arcing around his hand. It wasn't much, but he was going to give it every last ounce he had. There was a final spark, a flash of light, and an explosion ripped out beneath the wings.
Post by Tristan Carter on Aug 16, 2018 9:27:34 GMT -7
With it clearly being on the ropes, Tristan was tempted to follow the creature though to Tenochtitlan right up until he saw the flames gathering together. He knew what they said about cornered animals; hell, he doubted any mage present wasn't an example of the same thing. Call him a coward, but there was a difference between "stupid, crazy, and potentially suicidal" and "well, maybe I could get a hit in before I'm vaporized". He and the giant shadowbeast stayed behind in Florence and immediately appreciated the decision as the flash of light appeared and the ground started to quake.
Unfortunately, the mega construct was not capable of getting through the Academy's portals, or at least any that Tristan had seen for this universe, so it's usefulness in the fight was over. "Sorry, Shades, but I'm afraid we've reached the end of the ride," he said as the construct started dissolving. "It's been fun, and I'll catch you some time after the thing is dead, yeah?" He didn't wait long for an answer, though, before falling into his shadow and making his way to wherever the monster had went after nuking the Aztecs. Besides, immediately after the fight, he was needing to track down Sparks so that the angry mage could assure him that the disappearing Comet was fine.
He was in the Academy only long enough to figure out the entity's location and start running towards it. There wasn't enough time to make things easy and build another giant, but Tristan would've been lying if he had said that that wasn't mostly just for show anyway. It was beyond time for acting on flair, though, effective as it turned out to be. One way or another, the battle was about to end. It was time for the climactic finale, and Tristan was determined to give his everything to pull off a win.
Tristan launched himself the same way he had the smaller constructs earlier, a giant pillar of pure dark rapidly exploding from the ground and sending him flying directly towards the faces. The impact was a far cry from pleasant, but a single broken body was practically unnoticeable in comparison to what he had experienced earlier in the fight. He grinned as he started rapidly spreading physical shadow as quickly as he could manage across the creature's core, enveloping his own arms in the freezing, dark mass to ensure that he wouldn't fall off.
The darkness snaked its way across the faces, worming its way into the fractures created by the attacks of the other mages, going as far as possible as quickly as possible. Tristan estimated that he'd have the whole thing covered within a few minutes, though the fight would certainly end before then. Within moments, though, he was acutely aware of the cold as ice crystals started to form from the inky black.
"Feel the cold touch of Death, you bastard," he cackled, dangling limply from the monster. Even if the mages couldn't manage to kill it in time to save everything, he was certain that the fucking thing wouldn't be around to appreciate its victory.