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.
Diana had to shield her eyes from the sudden burst of light coming out of where the eyes used to be despite the world being as dim as it was. As much as she liked the sun and light she had her limits. That was seriously impressive though and made her pause to think again.
"Well...That explains a lot. I think."
If that's what they eyes actually were then them being a power source made some kind of sense. Maybe. This whole thing was starting to hurt her head. Maybe it was just for the best that they kill this thing as quickly as possible so she could examine its corpse instead of trying to figure out what the hell was going on right now. As impressive as the display of power it was showing before was, it looked like the thing was actually holding back for some reason. Possibly because it thought it was unnecessary and it did have limited energy to expend? Diana couldn't think of many other reasons to avoid going ham on a place.
Her eyes started darting around at all the buildings in the area and started making them more sturdy. Even if she could only amplify one thing at a time, it happened quickly enough that she'd be able to hit a pretty big chunk of the city pretty quickly. Even more so if she could get a good vantage point. She tapped her might-as-well-be-a-horse on the shoulder to get her attention.
"Hey, can you get me to a high place? If I can see more of the city I can do more."
Regardless, it was time to see how hard this thing could hit when it was trying and how well her magic stood up to it. As fun as figuring out what it was and how it worked was, figuring out if her magic could stop it and what she could do against it was equally as fun. Plus, she already powered up Vieri, so his explosions were probably about as big as she could make them.
Post by Hikaru Yamanoue on Aug 10, 2018 21:33:07 GMT -7
As much as Hikaru wanted a second to finish coughing out the water in her lungs and to catch her breath, the moment that thing descended she activated her power. There wasn't anyone in her immediate vicinity, the closest being the others thrown into the water who she could could already withstand the entity's heat, so she didn't waste time ramping it up this time. The water nearby immediately turned to steam, and the sand under her turned into glass. From there, she used the nearby buildings to fling herself towards the entity, and then did the same thing to the two people she brought along last time. One of them took a bit longer to find because it seemed like in her own haste to get out of the water as quickly as possible because of her own difficulties swimming, that she failed to notice that he couldn't swim at all. Finding him late was better than finding him never she supposed. She'd have to keep an eye on him for a little while, but if he seemed to be getting better now that he was flying around again then that was the most she could hope for.
She was still at a loss for what to do. Nothing she did seemed to have much effect, and the cities were already burning so much that trying to tear apart the buildings to stop the burning would only make it so there were no buildings. Sighing, Hikaru flew up to the spots on the wings that seemed to be hurt, With any luck, enough heat and kicking would be enough to do something to it.
"If either of you want me to put you down just let me know! I figured you'd want to get close to it again! Just tell me if I'm bringing you too close!"
Post by Jennifer Kayne on Aug 10, 2018 21:37:27 GMT -7
What was this thing and what was it doing? No one else seemed interested in helping her figure out what the heck was going on, so she tried to breathe and figure it out herself. The breathing part didn't work so well, but she had some success in the figuring it out part. Everything was on fire and that thing was practically made of fire, so it only made sense that it was probably the one burning everything. There were some other mages fighting it that were also on fire, but they were way less big and way less burny. It was probably the big burny thing causing everything.
Jennifer stood back and waited, spawning limbs on the higher parts of the city. On roofs, in trees, on some of the flying mages, whatever got her closest to the entity. If it did so much as attack hundreds of arms would suddenly appear to help block it all. Her limbs may not be any stronger than her actual limbs, but what she lacked in power she made up for in numbers. They were completely expendable and she could spam them real fast. Its attacks wouldn't stand a chance at breaking through her fleshy barriers!
Post by Jack Mason on Aug 10, 2018 21:39:00 GMT -7
When Jack saw the entity's new mode of attack, he realized that his prior method of fighting this thing wasn't going to cut it. He turned and ran back into the nearest portal, then headed toward where the entity seemed to be set to appear next. It looked like it was Tenochtitlan. That suited him just fine.
This time, Jack would focus on helping the preparation. He merged with the stone pyramids and made a bunch of chest-high walls pop up like he was trying to design a cover shooter video game. Once that was done, he expanded the local buildings' foundations, anchoring them with pillars of stone into the ground so that they wouldn't be blown away so easily.
He was satisfied with how sturdy it seemed. In fact, when he was merged with the buildings, he felt somehow even more solid than normal. Maybe another mage's power was in effect. He wasn't sure whose it was, but he'd have to thank them after the fight.
Post by Rook Spellmeyer on Aug 11, 2018 1:24:04 GMT -7
It felt like she'd just found a comfortable spot to sit and watch the next round of the show before the show vaporized her nice spot. Rook dived and rolled off the red-tiled roof she'd put the effort into climbing just quickly enough to come short of being made one with the light as well. She didn't waste time getting farther away from the beams of death.
In her hasty wandering away, she was coming across familiar people. Several out fightinging the thing and making themselves very visible from a distance, but also many, many parts of a familiar person. After the arms and eyes had all vanished from Florence, she'd gotten rather worried. Not a lot of time to search down something then, but luckily for her, she was stumbling upon the person now. The bright colors really weren't hard to spot.
Rook picked up her run and made a large wave with her hand above her head. "Heya Sparkles!" She dropped her arm and down to a trot as she neared. A wide grin was spreading over her face, and she came to a stop by the woman's side. "Thank the glowing feather monsters above, you are alright. Thanks for the save earlier."
Thanks to Sparkle's handiwork, Rook could happily slide into her support role once again. With Sparkle's arms handling the elbow grease of holding off attacks, Rook needed only lend a hand in making sure whatever rubble fell in convenient places, like into the awaiting arms, not the streets or onto their fellow mages.
The light at the surface had gone from complete darkness to a blinding ray of flash, to the point where Karma had to force his arms to rush to cover his eyes before they'd go blind. Which was quite convenient for when he'd be pulled back out of the ocean, the pressure of the water not bothering him as much as it would've due to his arms shielding his face. Once he erupted out the water, his body-- slightly panicked by the sudden save-- started instantly working on upping its temperature and thus causing loud, thick steam to eject from his widely exposed torso.
Lowering his arms, Karma went into a small fits of coughs before he quickly regained his composure in concern that someone would witness him. In the time that he had rubbed his eyes, blinked to regain a non blurry vision and essentially calmed his breathing, the entity had already done the most. Once he finally set his eyes on it, a loud groan escaped him.
"Fuck, why's it so persistent? What's so interesting about earth anyway?" The man scratched his neck lazily, his eyes narrowing at whatever was possible to look at in the thing, before he nodded towards the saint. "Alright, throw me back at it. I need to feel some heavy heat again." And so, he pulled out his long sabre, the steam proceeding to let its out as he ignited on fire, his sword following suit and creating an extended blade of fire. He would do the same move, diving towards the wings of the entity, sword first.
Post by Tristan Carter on Aug 11, 2018 14:50:24 GMT -7
Even after the fires had ceased to be supernaturally fueled and started dying down a little, it took a bit for Tristan to reach a enough mental clarity to actually respond to what was going on outside of his head. He was aware of it - he saw the colorful girl with the unsettling powers running, looking like she had roasted in a bonfire - but had been a little too self absorbed to be able to do anything about it. As he regained his sense of self and was capable of focusing on something other than his pain, though, he noticed quite a few odd things.
First, the monster hadn't admitted defeat yet. It seemed to be preparing itself for round two, and if it followed any sort of boss monster logic, it was about to come back stronger and with a personal vendetta. He considered making a comment about it not even being its final form, but he was fairly certain the reference would fall flat, not to mention that Florence was a bit too much of a hellscape to lighten the mood much. Second, the weird girl was returning and acting like a new addition to the fight. Frowning, Tristan gave her a sideways look out of the corner of his eye. "No, you were here in time to help. You helped me get quite a few of the mundanes from all the cities into the school just a few minutes ago," he said slowly, as if waiting for a sudden realization that would explain what he had missed. "You alright, kid? Trip and hit your head or something?"
His concerns for his new friend were quickly put aside as the shadow constructs still standing in Lisbon started confirming that, yes, the joke about the multiple forms would have been in bad taste as it was actually true. He wasn't really surprised, nor was he shocked when this second form started firing lasers across the scene. He had known. The second he saw it, he knew there would be lasers. It was the Multiverse flipping him a giant, fiery, laser-shooting bird and signifying that it clearly had something against him personally. If there was ever anything tailor made exclusively for ruining his day, it was this thing. He studied it from every angle available to him, searching for weakness he could exploit, when something made itself clear to him. The lasers weren't just being created by the eyes, but were coming from within them. It had its own little light-based pocket dimension.
Tristan stepped out from the portal room and stared down the descending entity with his open eyes, contemplating the best course of action. The safest option would be to head back in and continue with evacuations, but anyone he hadn't already helped could be dealt with by someone else. It wasn't as though he was really in any more danger than the rest of the mages anyway, judging by how the lasers were treating the ocean. More importantly than that, the giant creature was sporting what seemed to be a fair approximation of the exact opposite of his powers. It needed to die, and quickly, but first Tristan needed to see how his powers fared against the beast for himself. If he was lucky, he'd be able to land the final blow for that extra bit of thematic impact.
Going anywhere near the lasers would be suicide, so he needed to focus more on actually applying pressure to the monster than wandering the city. The wings had been trying to protect the center before, so that was his best guess at what he needed to start stabbing. Unfortunately, it was still in the air, so he had to get creative. Shadowmen started flying through the air, catapulted by shadow pillars launching them as quickly as he could manage. It wasn't exactly precise, and there were only a couple dozen airborne, but it was intended more to see how his aim was and how the entity reacted. The next volley would be more serious.
Post by Maia Castelo on Aug 11, 2018 15:38:25 GMT -7
The enemy came back down for another beating. To be honest, Maia still felt a little control, but she knew that much. It just felt as though the whole world was spinning. Maybe the giant angel thing had evolved some new power…or she was literally being twirled around.
Maia’s guardian didn’t bother to wait around for the girl to stand up. Instead, they picked her and spun around a few times to build up momentum. Were they going—they were trying to toss her into all that chaos! She struggled for a bit, but whatever super strength she possessed earlier got turned off. “W-w-wait,” she started, “how about we talk about this fir—”
Once the guardian let go, Maia was sent flying through the air towards the monster. She tried to avoid flailing around and knocking herself off course. That didn’t stop her from screaming internally the entire time. She’d probably hit something on the way down.
As the mages below waited for the entity to descend, it took them by surprise. With an abrupt flap of its wings, it became a blur of motion, diving downward at supersonic speed. It seemed that while it was fully capable of levitating without the use of its wings, bringing its wings to bear allowed it to move even faster.
Hikaru was barely able to bring herself and a few other mages into a close orbit around the speeding entity. However, the results of their attacks were mixed. Hikaru herself found that the wings' new mode of operation wasn't any more vulnerable to her heat than before. Meanwhile, Karma and Maia landed some solid impacts against the wings, but they wasn't enough to stop the entity on their own. The entity continued to fly low and fast, making it impossible to land any precise hits on it.
Fortunately, precision wasn't the order of the day for the defending mages. There were plenty of rings and plenty of eyes to attack. Hayako's explosives landed a solid hit on one of the rings as the entity flew by. Vieri's lightning crackled off another's surface, leaving no visible signs of damage but knocking it slightly off-kilter all the same. Tristan's flung shadows didn't have any apparent effect, but at least his attempt at target practice seemed to be successful.
The entity's counterattack was sudden. The eyes emitted a bright omnidirectional blast of light, casting the city of Lisbon into stark contrast. Its intensity was immense, to the point that it could blind a victim even through one's closed eyelids. The mages above the rooftops were able to turn away at the last moment, but for Jennifer and Rook, even that was insufficient - the reflection of the light off the surfaces of the city was still bright enough to blind.
Using its blinding attack as cover, the entity teleported to Tenochtitlan. There, it refocused its light into narrow, intense beams. At first, the area hit by the beams was small enough that it wasn't much of a threat. But then the rings began spinning, causing each beam to carve out a disc of destruction stretching off into the horizon. It was like an inescapable wall of light that cut across the city.
The entity continued to fly at high speed, heading directly for the mages in order to corner and burn them. Its approach was so fast that Diana didn't have time to finish her enhancements to the city's structures, and Jack's preparations alone were insufficient to protect against an attack of this intensity. Both of them were caught up in the burning light.
Rising briefly into the air again, the entity seemed to gaze down at the city below. In a matter of moments, almost half the mages had been badly hurt, and they hadn't been able to put much pressure on the entity in turn. Its new form hadn't racked up much of a death toll against the mundanes just yet, but that would soon change. The entity carefully calculated its approach, then dove back down into the city.
Post by Serpentarius on Aug 11, 2018 16:45:33 GMT -7
Wings are using Maneuver (Field) for Faces at 100% Strength
Aggression (Disruption) by Hikaru Yamanoue against Wings results in FAILURE due to suppression by the target's equal-or-greater immunity, 5% base with HIDDEN POWER+IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x2) = 10% damage
Aggression (Force) by Karma against Wings results in SUCCESS, 30% (x1) damage
Aggression (Force) by Maia Castelo against Wings results in SUCCESS, 30% (x1) damage
Wings retain 30% success margin, Faces are SHIELDED by that amount!
---
Faces are using Prediction (Deduction) at 130% Strength
Faces retain 130% success margin, dissonance level is DECREASED by an extra point!
---
Eyes are using Interference (Illusion) against Lisbon at 100% Strength
Maneuver (Protection) by Jennifer Kayne triggered by Eyes results in SUCCESS, 15% (x1) damage
Maneuver (Protection) by Rook Spellmeyer triggered by Eyes results in SUCCESS, 15% (x1) damage
Eyes retain 70% success margin, Jennifer Kayne and Rook Spellmeyer are BLINDED, preventing them from hitting weaknesses for 2 turns!
---
Rings are using Interference (Obstruction) against Tenochtitlan at 100% Strength
Maneuver (Enhancement) by Diana triggered by Rings results in FAILURE due to suppression by the target's equal-or-greater immunity, 0% damage
Aggression (Disruption) by Hayako Yamanoue against Rings results in SUCCESS, 30% base with IMMUNITY-MATCHUP (x1) = 30% damage
Maneuver (Field) by Jack Mason triggered by Rings results in SUCCESS, 15% (x1) damage
Interference (Illusion) by Tristan Carter against Rings results in FAILURE due to suppression by the target's equal-or-greater immunity, 0% damage
Aggression (Force) by Vieri di Adatto Isabello against Rings results in FAILURE due to suppression by the target's equal-or-greater immunity, 5% (x1) damage
Rings retain 50% success margin, Diana and Jack Mason are BURNT, decreasing all their powers and immunities by 1 level for the duration of the battle!
---
Current conditions:
Diana is BURNT, decreasing all his 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!
Jennifer Kayne is BLINDED, preventing her from hitting weaknesses for 2 turns!
Rook Spellmeyer is BLINDED, preventing her from hitting weaknesses for 2 turns!
Current openings:
None
THREATENED CITIES: Tenochtitlan, Kyoto
DISSONANCE LEVEL: 7 Universal annihilation at dissonance 3
Even from high ground where she could see most of the battlefield, she wasn't nearly fast enough. As fast as she could use her power, she still had to stare at each building and do the weird magic stuff. Those half seconds added up real fast when she was trying to affect an entire city. She could see the difference in how each individual building was holding up, but it didn't matter when the thing's target was an entire city. This was definitely her defeat. Clicking her tongue she started trying to think of something else.
Diana couldn't move that well in her current state. Feeling in her hands were coming back, but that was the most she could say. That meant dodging was near impossible and the most she could muster was to maybe roll out of the way or maybe push herself away from her totally-a-horse and roll off the side of the building. Given how this thing made less sense than magic normally did, and that was saying something, she doubted that being in the kitten/horse's intangibility power would do much to stop the entity if it put its mind...minds...magic? to it. She settled with a kick to the kitten's gut to get her to let go, trying to maneuver at least a little to minimize the impact with the roof they were on, but she just couldn't move fast enough and got caught up in the flames. It was enough to get her to swear under her breath, but otherwise it was fine. It wasn't anything her power couldn't handle, but given the level of charred she was she figured it would take far too long to clear up. At this point, she needed to expect to have next to zero ability to move. As long as she could see she could still do something though, and it looked like her decision to separate from her horse stopped the entity from being able to burn her too.
So it was still overwhelming defeat, but not as bad is it could have been. Her voice was a bit pained, but she wasn't about to give up on a fight like this. When it came down to it, she was still having a blast.
"'Kay, I don't think I'm going to be able to move much after that. If you're that worried about me being dead weight, take me to the portals so I can at least roll between them and try to keep up that way."
She took one good look at the entity. There was still a lot she could do, and at this point she was pretty certain some kind of magical energies were holding it together. She was also pretty certain that the energy holding it together was coming from the eyes. Given it didn't go all out right away, it seemed likely that it didn't have an unlimited well of that energy even if she couldn't say that with as much certainty as the other two things. Diana increased the amount of energy its structure needed to not fall apart. In humans, doing something like this typically made them hungry or tired. In the entity, something like that seemed possible, but really she was just hoping it would melt like it was before.
Post by Hikaru Yamanoue on Aug 12, 2018 2:28:47 GMT -7
Nothing was getting through, not even in the injured areas. It seemed like if she could just take down the wings then it would have fewer means to defend itself from the rest of the mages, but that clearly wasn't possible. For her at least. They were clearly too heavy for her to affect the movement of at all. It was hard because everything about it looked hot and bright, so knowing where to hit was difficult. At least her limited utility was was helping a few mages land decisive attacks. Maybe that's what she needed to focus on. Her power may be heavily focused on attacking, but that didn't mean she had to use it that way. Hikaru may not have been able to move as fast as the entity, but it mattered less when her own maneuverability made it easy to keep up with it and it couldn't teleport away from her like it could other mages. She could do the same for the others. Look at where it was hurt, look at where they seemed to be most effective, and try to get them there in record time.
"Just focus on destroying it! Why it's attacking or how it can still attack isn't important right now!" she shouted at her mouthier passenger.
Hikaru figured she was one of the few people that could stand up to the full force of its heat, so she got as close to it as she could so she could see where the other mages were more easily. Staying above it might have worked too, but that was harder and at least here her heat might be able to disrupt some of what it was doing if she was lucky.