Mosaic City, located along China's coast, is quite large city sometimes called the Crossroads Between Nations due to its diverse population. While it was once a large tourist spot, the city was placed under a blockade as the military appeared claiming there was a radiation leak. The true hazard, however, is much more sinister.
Slime rained down from sky, sticking to Brynhild's clothes and body. It helped glue the sand into uncomfortable places that made it difficult to move. Some of the others probably felt the same, but luckily no other spells targeted the group. Instead the demons focused on the girl who healed earlier. The robot girl's metaphorical heart wished that she had been targeted instead, but it's not like she got away without any injuries.
After one of the clones attacked the blonde it latched on to Bryn's legs. She tried to pull herself free, but taking even a step was impossible. A warning message indicated that the slime had damaged the area it covered. Before the burning sensation could fully kick in the wounds disappeared. That healer girl was alright.
Okay then, another round of attacking. The dizziness that signaled her body was overheating had only just begun. She could keep at it for a little while longer. Now's not the time for a break, even if she's barely been contributing here. It doesn't matter how weak it is compared to the others, as long as she does better than last time. For the fourth time in a row her slashed at the monster girl in charge of ruining their night.
Post by Ariane Ivers on May 18, 2014 20:44:08 GMT -5
She should have known all those snazzy buffs were too good to last. Just as she was starting to get used to them, that ugly bird did… something to make them go away. Her eyes went up to scowl angrily at it, just to be met with globs of goo at her face. Lovely. Oh, gods, she hoped they weren’t actually parts of that woman-shadow, ew. Trying to purge that image from her mind, she frantically tried clawing the grime off of her face. Temporarily blinded, she didn’t see so much as hear the attack that followed the globulous downpour.
Squinting through the grime, she noticed the nice blonde girl--the one providing them with healing--was under attack. Gritting her teeth, she pushed off, ignoring the slime squishing through her toes to run over, but quickly noticed the slime around her feet was doing more than giving her goosebumps. Her feet struggled to push through it, and Anne quickly gave up trying to run over--it was no use, she wouldn’t get there in time to help. As it stood she doubted she would be able to even dodge an attack if it headed her way. Luckily, it looked like she made it through okay, and healed herself and everyone else back up. Good.
Still, what a terrible situation. The aggravation of it, though, just fueled her frustration. Whipping back to face the big bad as best she could, she cracked her knuckles. Even if it hurt her core when the Cerynitian Hind attacked, it was productive, and the heals that woman gave helped tremendously. Anne liked productive. “Hit that slimy sucker, Cery!” Anne mimicked throwing a blade at the slime lady, while the Hind actually did so--throwing both glowing weapons again. Action: Twin Shot on Erubetie
Physical attacks did little to the bird-brain, but the light attacks continued to keep coming. His physical state was already pretty crap, much worse from what he went through during that fight in the floating castle with the statues and all that. Feathers fell from his battered self, but mysteriously, he was still able to fly. Weird. Probably some mystic voodoo-stuffs.
Next move... what was the next move...? There was someone who could get rid of the Silence that he could inflict upon all of them, so that would be for naught if she did it again. There was also the other girl who had that one light spell that broke him up the most. Oh, and monsieur and mademoiselle almighties- hold on.
Was that... Isolde? Glorious timing to notice. She was one of those things, those whatzzit-casters with the weird people accompanying them and all that. The opportunity to break her has finally come to pass. Such was impossible as well. So many impossible moves. Hey. Hey. Let's fire out a shot of pure energy ourselves. That would be a wicked-good idea, not to mention the most viable idea that he had at the moment.
The halo that previously got rid of their buffs floated in front of the creature's open mouth. Hao flew up into the sky and charged an immense power into the space between his jaws. Blackness, whiteness, everythingness pierced the clouds in an amazing blast. His method of executing the attack was spectacular... but, it in itself wasn't anything special. The bird floated back down onto the ground to recuperate himself, beside the slimegirl and her slimegirlclones.
Post by Boss-sama Desu on May 19, 2014 10:45:43 GMT -5
The target had not perished. Her clones were batted away with the carpet-bombing magic and blades. Certainly, things were looking to be quite bothersome. Or, at the very least, they had been up until the new Almighty attacks surged at her. With the second, her core quivered and glowed. The third, however? It caused her entire figure to pulsate, the azure glow from before stronger than ever. Her clones shared that glow at that point. It was time to put forth everything she possibly could.
Erubetie raised an arm, before quickly drawing a sigil in the the air. The trail of her fingers glowed before finally fading. From beneath the sands, another large-scale rune appeared! However, far above, another rune, identical to the one below, appeared. From above, a torrential blast of water dropped, smashing into the crowd! The humans would suffer major Almighty damage!
Erubetie Beta sludged back to its source. The clone rejoined with Erubetie, restoring some of Erubetie's strength!
Erubetie Gamma sludged back to its source. The clone rejoined with Erubetie, restoring some of Erubetie's strength!
Now one again, the slime had plenty of spare life force to allow the discharge of her core's built up energy. The Almighty attacks from before had charged her, and, now, she could finally make use of that power. Her core pulsated violently, visibly disrupting Erubetie's shape before the core slipped through the slime's chest, held afloat by slimy tendrils. Erubetie's body folded backward as the core shuddered and began to split in the front. Pure energy peered through the split. There was nothing peaceful or reassuring about that light. No, that light had one purpose only.
”Disappear.” It was the second word since her encounter with the humans began and, she hoped, the closing note on their meeting. The core opened! The power to destroy anything surged forth, spreading over the battlefield in a blast of light! The party would suffer severe Almighty damage!
As the blast of energy died down, and Erubetie's core patched itself up, the red core retracted to the mass of slime, allowing Erubetie's shape to restore itself. The slime slowly rose, her body squelching and squishing, as she took a look over the battlefield. Just how effective was her core's blast?
Post by Anna Myers on May 19, 2014 20:09:30 GMT -5
As her tornado faded and dissipated, Anna noticed that the last of several almighty-aligned attacks against the slime lady were somehow charging her up. But she only had a short time to puzzle out whether she was actually absorbing the attacks or just gaining some amount of strength from them as she was damaged. After that, a blast of water came crashing down on all of them, the two clones re-combined with the original, and the slime lady's body peeled away to expose the core.
"Shit," Anna said. That could be nothing but a sign that an incredibly strong blast, probably magical in nature, was coming. After two heavy attacks from the water and the blast the shadow had produced, they were going to have a hard time withstanding the blast. She probably could, as could Alisa (or at least, she had reason enough to believe so) and anyone else at her level. But the two most-likely newbies? Not a chance. Anna glanced between them and chose the one she was most likely to get to in time, the girl wielding a pair of wooden swords. "Thunderbird, give me a lift," Anna called, willing the bird low enough that she could grab onto one of its talons. "You," she then said, pointing to the blonde healer and the red-haired girl who had tried to assist her when the slimes ganged up on her. "One of you, cover her if you can." She pointed to the other newbie, who had also moved towards the healer but failed to reach her. Those two would be the best positioned to help her. That just left the question of whether or not they'd be capable of pulling it off.
As for her, she grabbed onto one of Thunderbird's legs and gestured for it to pull her up, out of the slime-covered sand, and drop her in front of the wooden sword wielder. She landed gracelessly, but recovered in time to situate herself and open the canopy of her umbrella gun in front of her. Thunderbird touched down in front of her as well, folding its wings in front of it to create a shield. It wouldn't block the hit, and in fact for her trouble she took even more damage as the core blast finally washed over the battlefield. But the shield was never meant for her, and instead to absorb it before it could reach the girl behind her. That, at least, seemed to have succeeded, but not without cost.
"Heh...well, this is embarrassing," Anna managed to get out before her legs gave way. In front of her, Thunderbird's form flickered and distorted, but managed to stabilize itself after several seconds. She pushed herself back to her feet. Her body felt like it would give out at any second. In fact, it felt like it should have already given out, and she was running on sheer willpower. But that was necessary. She was the most experienced User here, and now that the situation had turned dire, she needed to own that.
"Alright," she said. Her voice was strained, but still audible enough that everyone was still conscious and not screaming should have been able to hear her. "Who's still with me? ...Don't answer, just listen. We're going to have to organize more if we want to beat these two. To that end...anyone who has defensive abilities and isn't better suited to attacking, use them. Don't worry about offense or agility, just defense," she said. The shadow would likely try to wipe them, but that was fine. Any time it tried to wipe buffs was a missed chance to attack. And if it decided to attack instead, they would be more easily able to take those attacks. She didn't want everyone doing that, of course, but someone less offensively capable could do it, there would be very little difference. "Anyone with light attacks, especially ones that can hit multiple opponents, use them. If not, keep focusing on slime gal. If you have fire, use that. Don't use ice or almighty. If you don't have anything else, focus on the shadow instead." That was probably about it, except..."You," she looked towards the healer again, "No, you're fine, keep doing what you're doing." She seemed like she had the sense to know to keep healing, at least.
Now that was everything. All that was left was for Anna to wait for healing, and to start charging up for another devastating attack.
[Action: Tank the hit for Setsuna and Mind Charge]
Last Edit: May 19, 2014 21:49:05 GMT -5 by Anna Myers
If felt odd, watching attacks aimed in her direction not do any damage. Every instinct warned that they were really trying to her. If the mini slime everyone tried to hurt wasn't holding Bryn's legs in place, she would have tried to avoid out of reflex. The lesser monster let go and joined back with its mother. Moving around was now an option again.
Not that it changed much, if anything. Her joints were still too still to allow any of the earlier dodging. The massive bird unleashed a giant beam of pure energy across the entire group. Brynhild had just enough time to notice it coming, and only took one step to get out of the way. That wasn't enough. She ended up getting knocked back several feet, but remained standing.
Of course, the slime queen still needed to have her turn to fight back. She sent out two waves of her own; more non-elemental damage to take them all down at once. Somehow both of the enemies coordinated their attacks without even communicating. They must be getting desperate, wanting this to end before one of them gets exhausted.
Whatever these two were planning, their goal of defeated the dozen or so Persona users seemed more realistic now. For Brynhild, she took the rest of the blasts directly, dropping to one knee. The fact that she wasn't incapacitated completely didn't have time to be appreciated. As she attempted to summon Berserker, until her self-preservation program blocked it off. Her body began to shut off all non-essential operations, preferring to focus on staying alive even if it meant not contributing. The system wanted to help her escape the present danger, no matter how much she refused to run away.
Brynhild tried to clench both fists in anger, but the best she could manage were a few twitches of a hand. That's right, the wiring must have been damaged at some point. Even with enough power she could hardly move. No way she could get out of range before the next enemy attack. Not in this condition. She needed to recover some health before trying to retreat, which wouldn't be an issue if her spells were still working. The android began to redirect any wasted power away from her damaged limbs and towards the Persona. Trying to work around the automatic shut down certainly slowed things down. It'd take a while to get back online,
Post by Ringo Shiro on May 19, 2014 22:12:49 GMT -5
Ringo smiled as he managed to help free those who were bound by the clones...however, that was only a minor victory. The bird started to unleash a gigantic purple blast. He couldn't find a way to dodge it. Ringo winced in pain as he was launched away by the force of the explosion.
The messy haired boy crashed on to the sand. He weakly got up to look up at the slime. A large rune appeared above the group. Soon a gigantic blast of water slammed him back down on to the ground. Ringo is going to feel this one in the morning that he was sure off. He weakly got up just in time to hear the slime woman speak.
”Disappear.” The red core opened itself. Ringo's eyes widened as he saw the power it was charging. Ringo forced his body up and started to run as fast as he could. It was bad enough getting slammed by the earlier attack. He quickly got in front of Holly. As a result Ringo is going to wind up taking the brunt of the blast but that wasn't a concern for him at the moment.
Action: Protecting Holly or at least attempting too...
Last Edit: May 20, 2014 15:41:11 GMT -5 by Ringo Shiro
Post by Amane Mana on May 19, 2014 22:53:17 GMT -5
Amane endured the blast from the gigantic bird. Amane really hoped someone would take care of that seeing as how it was being a really big hassle. However, the blast from the bird was only the first of many troubles that is going to be barraging her. She looked up to see a seal forming in the sky.
"Oh shi...!" Amane was slammed into the ground by the large torrent of water. This has been a wonderful night. As if crawling out of the sand was bad enough. She crawled back up to her feet...just in time to see its core open up for a wonderful surprise for her. Amane hissed. She had nothing to defend herself.
"Viviane!!" Viviane seeped from her body and sent a blast of wind into the ground to create a ditch. Amane jumped on in...only to realize how poorly thought out this plan was before Amane was caught up in the blast, albeit indirectly. ...time to crawl out of the sand again...while my entire body is screaming... Amane thought to herself.
Aleister never thought karma existed until now. His large attacked was returned...multiple fold. Aleister was blasted by the the gigantic bird like shadow. If that wasn't enough, it appears the slime lady just sent a large drizzle...and that was putting the phenomenon forced upon him lightly.
"There goes the bill for dry cleaning." Aleister said as he got up from the torrential like almighty attack. He looked up just in time to see the gigantic attack the core is charging. "Well woopy dey fucking doo..." This might be the first time in a long while where Aleister has felt...annoyance...and having a sense of trouble and regret coming here. Aleister quickly summoned Agares again. This time the crocodile opened its mouth and started to try to vacuum life from the gigantic creature. Aleister then braced himself for the attack...okay Aleister has no shields or anything and really the protection of an enforced lab coat isn't going to do much but hey...
Post by Ariane Ivers on May 20, 2014 0:07:16 GMT -5
It looked like they were in for a lot of trouble. The one who spoke before that definitely seemed to know how to keep them organized best sensed it too. Anne frowned, feeling terrible for making people have to watch out for her. In a way, she felt like they shouldn’t worry about it--all she had after all was one halfway decent attack--her ice was useless, she couldn’t punch water, and from what she saw the slime-lady wasn’t phased by debuffs. Just as she was about to tell them not to worry about it, she was surprised by a flash of red cutting her off. A masked persona other than her own followed suit, and before she could register what was happening, the attacks came.
Anne could feel the halo of light and rain hit her, but it wasn’t nearly as severe as if they had hit her full force. The explosion came soon after, buffeting her but otherwise going past her as the red blur took most of the hit.
It was Isolde, the girl from the greenhouse. Anne knew she was here and was surprised by it, but never expected her to do something like that for her. “Isolde! Why would you do that?” She looked at the other redhead with panic on her face and holding her arms out to her, hoping she would manage to be okay after that attack. Gritting her teeth, she just barely registered that the one commanding their little rag-tag group told them to continue focusing on the slime-bitch if they couldn’t bolster their defenses. Didn’t have to tell her twice after what it did to her new friend.
Scowling up at the giant woman she nodded towards her, Anne's own death glare reflected in the Cerynitian Hind’s eyes. Red eyes furious, the Hind clenched her daggers in her hands before throwing them sharply at the slime. Action: Defended by Isolde, then Twin Shot on Erubetie
Post by Ayakura Alisa on May 20, 2014 2:48:35 GMT -5
Looks like the flappy bird had enough, and that halo on its head started whirring up. To complicate matters, our allies who had been doing nothing but utilizing bannou-class spells (I noted down the explosive, nova energy spells that some noted as 'Megido' under that specific class, almighty so to speak), while dealing damage to the slime demoness, ended up enraging her and charging up her core. The flappy bird shot its own explosive bannou-class Megidolaon at us, I fell back into the goo-stained sand and felt some of it stick to me. Getting up, I was finding myself panting and running out of energy.
Three spells. Noted.
The slime lady raised an arm and drew a sigil into the air, and as I observed the ground there was yet another rune, but I did not recognize it. I looked up at the sky. Another rune positioned above the one below my feet. Oh. Shit. Tidal wave! Water fell from the rune above, the pressure was probably enough to shatter bones of anyone lacking the will and fortitude to own a Persona, but fortunately it would take more than that to truly take me down. Gasping and panting to catch my breath, now soaked in water, I stood up and shook myself off, though I wobbled a little.
The two slime clones trudged back to the main lady herself, and it looks like she regained some of her strength after collecting the material. The core in her center pulsated. Oh. Shit. Three spells was all it took to aggravate that thing? Oh no. Oh no... The orb was thrust out into the atmosphere, suspended by slimy tendrils. It glowed.
I groaned as the core opened up and released a surge of energy that I could only classify as "supernova-level," or at least close to it. A flash, it was just like in the cartoons, when you had the protagonist charge up a super-big laser beam that just nuked the hell out of things out of orbit. Except the enemy was using it, and the target was: Us. By the time the light had died down, my vision was blurred and my ears were ringing. I found myself kneeling and wobbling a little. I felt my head. Drew blood. No good. I stood up and coughed. I looked at the bracelet I wore. It was glowing. Hmm.
One of the strangers seemed aghast by Isolde's decision to protect her from getting wrecked by the attacks. I sighed as she seemed to aim her anger at the slime girl for hurting what I assume must be her friend. I guess Isolde had made more friends while I wasn't looking. Amane decided to tornado herself into a ditch for some reason. I'll ask her about that later. For now, I had to focus on the greater mission at hand. I have no supportive skills that would help in this situation, so I'll just focus on doing what I do best.
My body was battered and basically in ruins (cuts didn't help, so in my action-hero attire I looked more cut and bloodied than anything), but I was probably in better condition than some of the others. "Sorry, I lack any means of healing and support. I'll just continue my salvo of attacks. Forgive me," I simply said, and eventually I sighed and shook as I stood strong this time, Vasuki appeared behind me again as we slowly began to charge lasers. Once again, we directed them at the flappy bird and the slime lady. Four beams of light seared through them each. "Ringo is down, and someone over there is no longer in fighting condition. Be careful, everyone!"
After I had casted the spell, I coughed into my hand. Looking into my hand, I had coughed blood. Well, that's hardly good.
Grrrr... they were still standing. The damages were almost minimal in his eyes. This wasn't enough to appease his bloodlust. More blood. More blood! However, speaking of blood, his body was bleeding all over. The latest light spell brought him down, but this time he wasn't going to be casually flying around as usual. That strength was going to be saved for when he had to flee. Fleeing was inevitable. Such was life; self-preservation is embraced by all members of the animal kingdom.
Not yet, however. There was still more that he could do. Hao drew his head up, gathering up more energy to use against his foes. As long as he could take a few more hits, he'd be fine. Their fighting force was dwindling. Therefore, there would be less rocks being thrown at his face. Not-very-flappy bird launched yet another attack upon them all. He would laugh, but having mouth full of energy made that impossible. Darn.
A call came to protect one of the other combatants, but Pyxis was beaten to it by someone else entirely. That just left her bracing herself against the oncoming blast of core energy. Despite her armor's resilience, several damage warnings popped up in the wake of the blast. And the pain, too. Couldn't forget that. As if the noisy alerts ringing through her head and popping up on the surface of her eyes weren't enough, she hurt like hell as well. But she was still standing. Still moving. Still functioning. Still poised and ready to attack. That wasn't an opportunity she was going to let go to waste.
"Bring the rain," Pyxis called out. A dazzling light shown from the cylindrical box at her Persona's feet, and from it a stream of solid white shot into the sky. It was only when it reached its peak could anyone tell that it wasn't a solid beam of light, but rather a dense cluster of bolts that spread apart to focus on the two remaining targets and rained back down on the battlefield. The bolts would lance through both targets on impact, dealing tremendous damage. Hopefully, that would turn the tables a little more. After the last salvo of attacks aimed at them, they desperately needed it.
Post by Holly Mason on May 20, 2014 15:59:17 GMT -5
The mini-monsters were dealt with quickly once again, but everything still wasn't going as smoothly as she would have liked. The two enemies had strong attacks, and it looked like they intended to use them in full force. Holly braced herself for the hit since it was basically impossible to move on this slime covered ground. What happened...she honestly couldn't say whether it was expected or unexpected.
When she first saw Ringo running towards her she assumed he was running towards someone else. The only problem was that there wasn't anyone else over here, and the weaker users weren't even in this direction. He wasn't really...? It didn't take long for her to realize, that yes, he totally was. Her eyebrow twitched as he dove in front of her. He took the first attack for her, but that was all he was getting. Without a moment's hesitation, she grabbed the collar of his shirt once he was in range, and called forth her summoning card just off to her left. She used the force of his dive to help her move him, spinning on her toes and forcefully ramming his body into her summoning card to call forth Lakshmi. He shouldn't feel it fortunately, it was just a very convenient to destroy the card so she could actually heal everyone.
Unfortunately, this meant that he was directly behind her when the not shadow's attacks came, forcing her to take the damage for both her and Ringo. Normally, she would have set him down more gently, but the sudden force from the attack made her lose her grip (and most of the feeling in her arms for that matter), thus sending him flying further behind her, away from her and the not shadow. It was fortunate that he was far away now and that neither of them could take attacks for each other because the shadow attacked once again and if she had to take that twice with all the damage she just took she probably wouldn't be conscious. The sheer number of attacks she just took was enough to actually bring her to her knees this time. Her vision was getting blurry, but then she felt the soothing sensation from the heal she just cast wash over her. Holly carefully stood back up and wiped the sandy slime that had gotten all over her hands on her pants.
Holly paused for a moment and then slowly turned to Ringo. Her eyes narrowed and her lips curled into a snarl. Despite their distance, it looked like she was almost trying to loom over him. Her tone was absolutely venomous.
"Never do something like that again," her expression remained like that for a moment, and even looked like it might get worse, before softening a bit. "I am perfectly capable of taking their attacks. In fact, I'd go as far to say that I am one of the most difficult people to take down here. You should be more concerned about yourself."
Post by Layla Amare on May 20, 2014 16:06:40 GMT -5
Haaah...that was close. After so many blasts, Layla (in what was becoming a painfully obvious repeating pattern) seriously thought she was done for. She really shouldn't have come tonight. That was a thought that only lasted for a second, though, before realizing that no, she was perfectly fine right where she was. She was able to heal the flappy shadow thing's silence attacks, and damage him with light. That was important. She was right to come. Even if it meant even more narrow scrapes with death. ...Actually, since when was she worried about that? Narrowly avoiding death used to be a thrilling experience for her. Was she really becoming that paranoid about dying after collapsing a month ago?
Well, for the moment, she was fine. And hopefully it would stay that way. Another blast of pure energy came from the shadow soon after the healing took hold, but now that she was back up to peak condition it was fine. Relatively speaking, of course. In response, she hit both the shadow and the slime with another explosion of light. There were only two targets now, but the Wheel still left its mark on the battlefield, as large and as strong as before.