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.
Karma went anywhere Hikaru went, it was starting to grow on him. The headache, that is. It was pretty sweet, he barely needed to maneuver much or put his mind to where the monster went or teleported, as it seemed to do frequently. It did more than teleport and destroy though. It targetted and attacked Karma in a relentless way that he found oddly satisfying. The shots of energy were fierce and frankly a mess. Had his own energy failed to strengthen the surface of his skin, his body would've teared similarly to his button up shirt. Instead, waiting for the machine gun to finish loading on him, some smoke curled out from his mouth. So, when he got enough of whatever attention he received from the entity, he was more than satisfied to strike back at him with a smirk on his face.
"Worried about me?" With a small snicker, the redhead glanced at the saint, the same cocky smirk spreading across his face. He watched as she used the same telekinesis powers to carry some rubble nearby, essentially to throw it at the entity. It looked like small fire orbs with the way they burned and thus, the man got an idea. Raising his arms, he gripped his fists tightly, another wave of fire brushing along his knuckles. Quickly, his fists lit on fire as the heat started projecting from his arms to his palms. Focusing his attention on the entity, he joined his arms together to form a large ball of fire at his hands before hurling one large fireball at the creature. And then another. And then some more before he broke in a series of fireballs, all aimed at the entity.
Post by Rook Spellmeyer on Aug 9, 2018 14:36:15 GMT -7
And just like that, the thing was gone again. Another deep breath, another sprint back to the academy portal so she could pop out in a different corner of the world. There were a considerable number of downsides to Florence being reduced to a fine coating of building dust, but it did make it a lot quicker to make it back to the portal. Hopefully this would be the last easy run home; the people of other cities here couldn't take the hit like Florence had.
From there, Rook just stuck her head out of portals until she found one with the hovering, glowing war beast of death in the sky. One step out, she got to work. That was, standing a little to the side of the portal and hoping her powers did something useful.
The others had blowing the thing to bits covered. The ones on fire or making fire or glowing like fire had nothing on them were circling around the thing like vultures, blowing away at it in a lightshow unlike anything she'd ever seen before. It was literally a little painful to watch, and glorious at the same time. They'd make it dead; they were strong, they were hacking off bits of it with every orbit. She'd just try to make sure they all came home safe.
Tenochtitlan was made of a lot of stone, and surrounded by a lot of water. It gave ample opportunities to screw with the fire; all those winds might kick up some nice waves, or a stone building might get in the way of a raging inferno headed someone's way. She'd be counting on the rest of them to finish the job and knock this thing out of the sky.
Post by Vieri di Adatto Isabello on Aug 9, 2018 14:58:28 GMT -7
First the bastard hurt Diana, then it destroyed his city. Whatever this unwanted mass of feathers though it was going to get up and do this morning, it'd be going to bed as soon as he could plant more explosives through its dumb unblinking eyes. Some might say it felt good to melt another eye off of the floating hunk of metal, but he just wanted it dead and gone and never attacking anyone ever again.
The orbit caused by Comet gave him plenty of time to build up static. It wasn't just in his hands, he let the charge form and gather up his arms, in towards his chest, around his back, until he was practically glowing with arcs of blue and purple. He was buzzing louder than he was screaming, and when he came flying back around, he was ready.
He drew in a breath and gathered his awareness of all the electricity around him, using it not for a calm, collected exhale but for shouting at the top of his lungs, "Just fucking die!" Vieri let lose all of the electricity at once, sparking it into a massive explosion with himself at the center.
While not even close to as large as the ones Diana and him could accomplish together, the area around him lit up with an explosion the size of a small nuke. Blinding white flashed across the sky for just an instant, giving way to a deafening boom and a trailing beam of light straight up above him.
Post by Hayako Yamanoue on Aug 9, 2018 15:20:28 GMT -7
"Half of that was your fault?!" She sounded breathy as she sent a startled look over her shoulder. It was a strong reminder that she knew very little of what this woman's powers were. What mages were capable of, even. At least they mostly only ever let lose when something like this happened, the only time she could think of when they didn't being Shanghai. It was making her realize that half of that, too, was likely Diana's fault.
Hayako flinched as the being teleported yet again. Not fearing the heat and needing to get to the fires, she'd gotten close enough to be brought along again. New footing needed to be found quickly as the ruins of a building she was jumping to was no longer there.
"Not- not that I've seen." She sputters, landing on the stone street harder than she intended to. Her right foot sunk into the ground and had to be yanked out before it threw her off balance. "I've been with it for a- a lot of the fight, but there were a few points when it teleported and I needed to find it again. You think it's attacking only the portal cities, right?" She was taking off at a sprint again, heading towards the spreading fires. "What- what confuses me is if it wanted to attack the academy, why is it hurting the cities and not attacking through the portals?"
The fires were smaller, and she planned on keeping them that way. Loud booms echoed through the streets behind her as she carefully selected and dropped her last few remaining bombs. If it wasn't destroyed soon, she'd... have to come up with some other strategy.
The entity released another wave of flames upon Tenochtitlan, seeking to put the mages on the defensive. But by this point, they had gotten plenty of practice fighting its fires, and they began pushing back immediately.
The combined efforts of Hikaru and Hayako continued to be effective, with Hikaru pulling up the sources of the flames and Hayako using her power to safely get in and snuff them out with explosives. Karma's fireballs made an effective firebreak, creating a zone where there was no flammable material left to burn.
The entity's wings folded in to try to protect the flames, but the mages weren't about to let it form another impenetrable wall. Tristan's shadows baited the wings into pulling back and protecting their center, which gave Jack ample opportunity to wedge a stone pillar in between them. The firefighting mages were easily able to get through.
Meanwhile, Diana's power was doing something to the wings, though it was hard to say exactly what. The wings were moving as easily as ever, but they were twitching and thrashing as if to shake off the effects of her magic. The effect was too small to be noticed from afar, but apparently the entity itself registered it as a serious threat. In any case, Vieri was able to dive between the thrashing wings to deliver another electrical strike.
The bright flash of light was the same as before, but with the damage piling up, the effects were more dramatic than ever. The ruined eye began dissolving into brightly-colored flames which then dissipated without a trace. With the eye gone, the neighboring parts of the golden ring began melting in earnest. And as soon as there was a gap in the ring, something seemed to snap. With the flow of energy disrupted, the other eyes in the ring also began to dissolve away into flame, and the broken ring fell down onto the city below, forming an enormous golden monument that steamed as it began to cool.
The entity's remaining eyes fired off a salvo of brilliant beams of light, streaking randomly throughout Tenochtitlan. But with Rook's power in effect, and with Jennifer's lingering guidance putting the mages in safe spots, none of those beams found their mark. The entity teleported away, bringing only a meager amount of flame with it.
When it arrived in Lisbon, those flames descended upon the city, but Maia's spirits had already attached themselves to the docks. Whenever a fire would take hold, it would then grow smaller and smaller before finally disappearing as the protective spirit reversed its effects. The entity's attack had been completely blocked.
With a mighty gust of wind from its wings, the entity shook off the mages orbiting it and dumped them into the water. Then, it rose back into the sky. For a moment, it looked like it might be returning to whence it came. But once it got so high up that it began to blend in among the stars, it stopped.
The entity folded its wings completely around itself... and waited. Whatever it was preparing, it was clear that it hadn't given up its attack. But at least the mages would have some time to regroup.
Post by Serpentarius on Aug 9, 2018 16:35:38 GMT -7
Wings are using Maneuver (Protection) for Fires at 100% Strength...
Interference (Illusion) by Diana against Wings results in SUCCESS, 10% base with WEAKNESS HIT+MATCHUP (x5) = 50% damage
Interference (Obstruction) by Jack Mason against Wings results in SUCCESS, 10% base with MATCHUP (x4) = 40% damage
Interference (Illusion) by Tristan Carter against Wings results in SUCCESS, 10% base with HIDDEN POWER+CRITICAL HIT+HIGH LEVEL+MATCHUP (x8) = 80% damage
Wings reduced to 0% success margin, Fires are NOT SHIELDED from attacks!
---
Eyes are using Interference (Corruption) against Tenochtitlan at 100% Strength...
Prediction (Sense) by Jennifer Kayne triggered by Eyes results in FAILURE due to suppression by the target's equal-or-greater immunity, 5% base with MATCHUP (x2) = 10% damage
Maneuver (Protection) by Rook Spellmeyer triggered by Eyes results in SUCCESS, 15% base with CRITICAL HIT+HIGH LEVEL (x4) = 60% damage
Aggression (Force) by Vieri di Adatto Isabello against Eyes results in SUCCESS, 30% base with CRITICAL HIT+HIGH LEVEL+IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x4) = 120% damage
Eyes reduced to 0% success margin, mages are NOT HIT by negative effects!
---
Fires are using Interference (Obstruction) against Lisbon at 100% Strength...
Aggression (Disruption) by Hayako Yamanoue against Fires results in SUCCESS, 30% base with IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x1) = 30% damage
Aggression (Disruption) by Hikaru Yamanoue against Fires results in SUCCESS, 30% base with HIDDEN POWER+HIGH LEVEL+HIGH IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x4) = 120% damage
Aggression (Disruption) by Karma against Fires results in SUCCESS, 30% (x1) damage
Maneuver (Protection) by Maia Castelo triggered by Fires results in SUCCESS, 15% base with CRITICAL HIT+HIGH LEVEL (x4) = 60% damage
Fires reduced to 0% success margin, mages are NOT HIT by negative effects!
---
CRITICAL HIT on all components successful! The first phase has been defeated! All marked cities are saved!
Characters with the Respite trait may use it now by posting in the thread. Characters with the Unpredictable trait may change their flexible powers and immunities by PMing the admins. The final phase begins in 24 hours!
Current effects:
Jennifer Kayne is BURNT, decreasing all her powers and immunities by 1 level for the duration of the battle!
"'My fault?'" Diana raised an eyebrow. "Vieri and I were the only ones doing anything to it for awhile. The hell are you complaining about? You want it to live?"
Saying she was annoyed was over-stating it, she just didn't understand what she was complaining about. It didn't matter though, trying to figure this out took precedence and was way more interesting than some random mage being petty. Diana rubbed her chin and stared at the girl's shoulder while she tried to piece all this together. If it really was staying in the portal cities then that was really weird wasn't it?
"Naw, I don't think it cares about us. I don't think it even noticed we were here until Vieri started making it melt. I mean, it seemed to be moving differently before and after that. Us getting caught up in the attacks before then seemed incidental, but after that, I think it went directly after mages sometimes. It's weird though, 'cause I saw it looking directly at the portals a few times early on. I think it knew they were there, it just didn't care. Eh whatever," Diana sighed. "I can't say 'winged abomination' is high on my list of animals I know a lot about. A lot of this is just speculation in the end. I can't imagine what something like this would want with a city, but why else would it even be here? Is it how it eats? Was it bored? Given it uses magic to hold itself together, this seems like an incredibly inefficient use of energy..."
Her voice trailed off as she continued to think. It was really hard to piece all this together on so little information, but the most annoying part was getting more information was going to be really hard. The result of her attempts to interfere with it just made her turn her head even more. She had intended to try to make it a little harder to move, she didn't expect full on muscle spasms. Those kinds of movements were a sign of fatigue, dehydration, vitamin deficiency, and potentially some very rare neurological conditions. With the exception of maybe fatigue, none of those should have made something like this happen. Was it tired? It seemed like the more she poked at it the less she understood. There was one thing she understood though and that's if she wanted something, Vieri was going to have to watch those explosions.
"Hey Vieri careful!" she shouted to try to get his attention. "Come on don't just break the eyes, I need those!"
Post by Hikaru Yamanoue on Aug 9, 2018 20:25:53 GMT -7
"Yes!" she shouted back at Karma with an unusual touch of exasperation. "This creature is dangerous!"
It wasn't easy to shake her off once she was orbiting something like that. She could still be pushed or pulled, but her power would still insure that she kept going in a circle around it. Somehow, the entity managed to knock her far enough away that catching up to it would be hard, and on top of that it managed to knock the wind out of her so she couldn't correct this easily. By the time she managed to pull herself back together enough to realize she was even sinking into the ocean, the entity was already high in the sky.
The water around her turned to steam immediately on contact. The water itself didn't seem to bother her any, her power hot enough to not have to worry about any body of mundane water being able to take enough heat from her flames to put them out. Though the cloud of rising steam made her jolt back to her senses once she realized what was going on. Given the other orbiters were all able to handle the entity's heat, which was far greater than anything she could produce, reflex still made her shut off her power immediately in fear that she might burn someone. It took her a moment to swim back to shore, her sore body from the fight and the sudden impact from hitting the ground making it difficult to move. Once there, she flopped onto the beach and started coughing, hoping she'd be able to get her breath back soon.
A single look into the sky made it clear that even after all that they weren't done yet. Hikaru was willing to take this moment to catch her breath, but the moment that thing moved she was going to dive right back at it.
Post by Maia Castelo on Aug 10, 2018 12:32:33 GMT -7
Was it over? This whole time, Maia assumed that the monster’s body would fade away or something after they all defeated it. The thing appeared out of nowhere, so maybe it would leave just the same. Guess not. One of the other faculty members might have to clean this up, probably drag the body back to the Academy. She didn’t need to worry about that part of the process. The nurse’s office would have plenty of work waiting for her.
Maia considered trying to help out some of the other mages, see if they had more immediate injuries, but she needed a moment to herself first. The nurse sat down on the ground, took a deep breah, and tried to calm her rapidly beating heart. The adrenaline rush from all that combat should have faded. Expending so much energy to fuel her magic was exhausting. Under normal circumstances, she probably should have passed out by now. Instead she felt like running an entire lap around the earth—maybe going backwards, using only her hands. She started panting as more ridiculous fantasies played out in her mind.
Her guardian floated closer, and put a hand on the girl’s forehead. It was normal for the body’s temperature to rise as they recovered enough energy to remain functional the rest of the day, but this was too much. They might have gone overboard trying to drain all of those fires. Now she was too excited.
Well, as long as Maia didn’t do anything crazy in the next minute or two, things will work out okay.
Post by Jack Mason on Aug 10, 2018 13:28:24 GMT -7
Jack's power had several benefits, but one of the more subtle ones was the endurance it lent him. While merged with a building, he didn't grow tired, hungry, or exhausted. He didn't even age. If the building was destroyed, it would disorient him, but that passed relatively quickly. Even though this had already been a long fight, he was still as full of energy as ever.
Unfortunately, it seemed that not everyone could say the same. He directed a concerned look at Hikaru as he saw her crawl out of the ocean. When he caught her gaze, he tried to play it cool by giving her a wave and quickly turning his attention back to the entity in the sky.
Jack wanted to keep attacking it, but it was awfully high up. The things he could make were limited by the material properties of whatever he merged with, and a stone pillar that tall would just collapse under its own weight. He had read about materials that might be able to manage it in some of his engineering studies, but unless someone in Lisbon had made a house out of carbon nanotubes, that wasn't going to help him much here.
"Come on," Jack muttered. "Come back down here so we can beat you."
Post by Vieri di Adatto Isabello on Aug 10, 2018 14:39:55 GMT -7
Vieri hit the water in a cloud of electrical sparks. The current cut off as he slammed into the water, but it took him several moments of floating limply back up to the surface to get his bearings and his head up above the water’s surface. Gasping, treading water, he looked hurriedly around for the bastard who’d knocked him out of the sky.
It was still up there, just higher up and all withdrawn in on itself. What, had they hurt its feelings? Poor bastard.
As soon as his lungs had enough air in them to be operational, Vieri started paddling back to shore. He flopped on the shore, his lungs and every scrape not yet healed from Diana’s regeneration burning from the exertion and water. His shirt was nothing but a singed ring of cloth wrapped around his waist. His pants were decorated with large burnt holes and gashes. Nearly every inch of his skin was a light shade of red, burns waiting for the regeneration to catch up. As resistant to heat as he was, he seemed to cap out at about where his own explosions stopped; this thing, it was such a concentrated mass of heat his skin just couldn’t keep up. Jerk hunk of feathers, he’d show it for one-upping him.
Vieri pulled himself to his feet with a heavy grunt, getting the momentum back into him and the electricity back into his limbs. He didn’t know what it was doing, but he didn’t like it, and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to go try to make it stop. A slow run carried him a couple of blocks until he was suitably close enough to the thing.
Don’t break the eyes? He’d try not to crack every one of them open like an egg, but a few more wouldn’t be too much of a loss. Diana could probably pawn some off the ring that toppled down, too. Vieri raised his arm up towards the thing and began trying to shoot long arcs of electricity at it at the uneven rate of whenever he could muster up enough spark to attempt to make the distance again.
“Stop hiding and get down here and fight us you coward!”
Post by Jennifer Kayne on Aug 10, 2018 15:31:04 GMT -7
It was amazing what getting away from the obvious danger could do for someone's composure. Being alone in a small space helped too. Maybe not as much as a hug would have, but given how badly she was burnt it was probably for the best. It was bad enough that, between the burns themselves and the adrenaline running through her system, she couldn't even feel them. So, because part of her body could believe she wasn't actually hurt and because no raging infernos or winged monsters were in the area, her breathing gradually returned to normal. Once she was able to breathe, she started dozing off, her body and mind exhausted from all the excitement outside.
There were other advantages to having a brain like hers. There was already something wrong with her memory. Her short term memory was so bad she couldn't always remember someone she spoke to less than an hour ago. Those memory problems coupled with the brain's tendency to suppress traumatic memories meant that as she calmed down she started to barely even remember what was going on. When she woke up from her small nap, even though it couldn't have been more than five minutes, she wondered what was going on with all the sirens and alarms and the monotone voice over the intercom. Slowly and shakily, she rose to her feet and started running towards the portal to Florence, running face first into the bathroom stall due to forgetting to open it. Fortunately, she managed to avoid tripping over her feet again given how short the distance between the portals and this bathroom were.
When she emerged in Florence, her body was just like it was before the fight started: perfectly uninjured. It was like nothing even happened. Her jaw dropped immediately. From there, she took a moment to rub her eyes and pinch herself just to make sure she wasn't seeing things or dreaming, but whatever that floaty eyeball thing was, it was really there. Jennifer found herself frozen in front of the portal, not sure how to handle a situation like this at all. The only movement she could muster was flapping her arms around like she was trying to fly.
"Wh-What is that? What's it doing here? Wh-What do we do?!"
The bright light of the floaty eyeball monster got her attention first because of how bright and noticeable it was, but then she got a good look at the city proper. Her heart sank and her breath got caught in her throat. Her wide eyes only grew wider as she tried to make sense of what was even going on.
Karma's smile faltered when the saint mentioned the dangers of this creature, and quite frankly, she wasn't wrong. Karma knew there were other mages fighting this thing as he happened to catch the glimpse of some, it was not news that with all their powers combined, their damage ended up to be fruitless compared to that of the entity's. Yet, it wasn't so bad in his eyes. He barely spared the other mages a glance, yet he felt like he had it under control. Even when he shut his eyes in the moment he was struck over and over by the entity, he still felt powerful, not fazed by the sharp headache it was giving him. So then why was everyone reacting so dramatically?
"Not rea--" So much time for a confident response before his entire body was thrown into water, the temperature of his body weakening in an alarming state. He was short on time, his eyes only blinking once he realized what situation he was in. Of course, there was not much panic on the outside. But on the inside, the man was freaking out. It was cold. He couldn't generate his heat. He couldn't swim. Fuck this entity thing. I take it all back. Even so, he didn't dare cause a scene or display a show for the saint to watch. He wasn't planning on having her-- or anyone else for that matter-- know he was useless when it came to basic floating. He wasn't particularly afraid of the water, he was just plain useless in it, his powers refusing to work most of the time he found himself underwater. Never had it proved to be an issue until now.
Thus, he silently watched the surface of the world slip away from him, his vision darkening more by the second. He had read somewhere that moving around drained more oxygen, so he made sure his body stayed as relaxed as possible, his eyes lazily gazing at the small light in the distance. His sword was still attached to his belt, a small but essential relief. Now, he would either wait for unconsciousness or for the saint to bring him back to the surface. Well, he prayed internally that she was even capable of doing so.
As the mages caught their breath, the entity, too, was recuperating. Its attacks had been effective at first, but once the mages had begun to figure out its capabilities, they had been able to counter it decisively. The entity ignored Vieri's sporadic lightning bolts glancing off its folded wings as it prepared something new.
The first sign of the entity's change was that the sky grew lighter. The distant entity, which at first had appeared barely brighter than the stars in the background, began to glow more and more intensely. Its wings had been damaged enough that there were small gaps through which the core was visible, and brilliant shafts of light shone through, illuminating the night.
Then, the entity unfolded its wings, revealing the source of that light. It had lost one of its rings, but the others had been transformed. The eyes were no longer recognizable as such. Each one was like a window into a dimension of overwhelming light. The golden surfaces of the rings pulsed with energy - but whereas that energy had previously been directed internally, now it was being allowed to spill out in all directions.
The entity slowly began to descend again, its rings' rotation slowly raking the beams of light across Lisbon. Buildings were vaporized and the ocean was turned to steam wherever the light touched. In a few moments, it would once again be within range of the mages' attacks. It would fall to them to stop the entity from unleashing a level of destruction even greater than before.