[Nexus] Inside 44

[ThirdEmperor]

Generic Street

Alright, all that "hiding behind the barbarian" stuff presumably doesn't Halle, largely because the poor barbarian appears to have been glomped by deadtime ooze!

Instead, upon scrambling to his feet and away from the wight, Dwayne strikes a fighting stance once more and resumes his previous tactic of waving that magic sword around like an idiot.

Mmmyup, sure looks like he hasn't learned a thing from that near-mauling a second ago.... Except that he's also veeery stealthily reaching for something clipped to the back of his belt, hoping the wight won't notice.

Hopefully he ain't planning on throwing another healing potion at it.

I- is that the best you can do, you, you ugly corpse!?" He taunts, although he sure doesn't sound to confident.

[Rebonack]

[Generic Street]

The Wight is a mindless monster!

It is unable to draw conclusions about a foe's actions! It just murders things until they die. Existence for a Wight is almost elegant in simplicity. If something isn't dead then you kill it. If something is dead or undead you ignore it. The end.

With a nasty his an a crackle of electricity the undead lunges again!

Rawr!

Lunging!

Best avoid letting it murder you to death, kid.

It would be terrible.

[The Bushranger]

[Soul Quest]

Mikani's here! Along with Pearl and Sallianne, presumably...

"So, which way do we go now?" she asks, looking around expectantly.

[Reinholdt]

[Market Street]

"We're going to the Market. Betcha anything my soul is for sale somewhere there. Better be outside our price range."

It's worth more than they can afford, dang it!

[ThePhantom]

Harbor

A certain houseboat rests in the harbor, while below a certain sub links up with it. Aboard the houseboat, the inhabitants clap their hands or otherwise express their happiness.

"Its good to back. Now then, its time to get back to planning."

[Mr. Moon]

Streets, Somewhere

Where this beast came from is impossible to say. Perhaps it was pulled from some realm far away, where the laws of physics don't work the same way. Perhaps it somehow swam its way up from the halls of R'lyeh.

But then, it's hard to tell if the beast is even completely here.

Anyone who sets their eyes on it will have a hard time focusing on it. A few images stick out, sensations more than actual visual stimuli. Soft yellow skin covered in thin scales, secreting some sort of clear liquid. Two legs, three arms, a torso. Black fabric covering it's body - a twisted yet lazy parody of a suit and tie. It walks on two legs, but walks is the wrong word. It lifts its legs as if it were taking a step, moves them forward, places them back on the ground. But a string of black and yellow stays affixed to the ground, stretched out into almost two dimensions and trailing out behind it. Every lift of its legs creates a new knee. It seems to be dragging itself, haltered by this freak of motion but moving despite it.

It's long and thin torso rises up stiffly from its waist, before suddenly bending backwards at a sharp forty-five degree angle. One of its arms hangs limply from its side, as if forgotten. It ends in a hand that is more or less human except the fingers are too long and each has five knuckles, so that they are gnarled and curled up on itself like the roots of an ancient tree. A second arm is outstretched stiffly above it, flattened into two dimensions not unlike its legs. It doesn't appear to have any proper joint, and in fact sticks straight out of its neck. A third arm, however, is not quite as still. It flails around, not restricted by any sockets. Maybe it has infinite joints, maybe it has none at all. Either way, it bends and straightens in three, then two, then seven, then one, then four different places, all the time frantically dancing around the beast's body in seemingly random circles.

Like the third arm, the beast's head also appears to be quite mobile. While it always remains connected to it's neck, it can't quite seem to decide where to put it's head. For a moment, it sits not on its shoulders but behind it, and slightly above. Then it twists and sets itself on its left side, below its shoulder. The limp arm runs straight through it as if it weren't there. Then the head dissapears into its body, only to reappear by pushing through its chest. It sits the for another moment, before creeping to the other of it's torso and suddenly twisting to spring a foot out of its back. The only thing on the head that remains still is its face. Two large white eyes with sheep-like black pupils bulge out above a thin nose and too-large pink lips.

As it moves forward in the streets, it gibbers to itself. The sounds are high-pitched, and form audible syllables only accidentally. Its voice skips, catches on itself, jumps ahead and then pauses to catch up to itself like a scratched cd.

((Edit: Anyone's free to respond to this. I'm doing chores right now but I'll try to get at least one reply in this afternoon.))

[Halae]

[Approaching a Hospital]

Harnel and Cessie finally come out of Deadtime, Harnel carrying his wife in his arms through the sky. Considering her near panic, he's doing his best to calm her with reassuring words and closeness, but he's very clearly worried as well.

[Shadowcaller]

[Approaching a Hospital]


"Okay, this going to go well, nothing to be scared of, nothing to be scared of..." Cessie mutters between panicked breath's as they are flying towards the hospital. Harnel might get the feeling this is completely out of her element.

[Halae]

[Approaching a Hospital]

"Don't forget Cessie, I'm trained well and have helped deliver babies before. I even helped Deliver Sakura's. Nothing bad will happen, I promise." Despite his brave words, Harnel is panicking as well. He's keeping his face relatively neutral, but Cessie will be able to feel it through their bond

[Shadowcaller]

[Approaching a Hospital]

"That's different! Twins Harnel! I don't even know what they will look like!" She shouts back, clearly not having her most rational moment.

[Halae]

[Approaching a Hospital]

"They'll look like us, Cessie! Both of us." Harnel says, trying to keep her relatively calm, "There's nothing to be worried about, alright? Delivering twins is no different than delivering a single baby. There's just a second baby to deliver after the first."

[Shadowcaller]

[Approaching a Hospital]

And without warning the sorceress looks at Harnel and bursts out crying, "I can't do this..." She says weakly.

[Halae]

[Approaching a Hospital]

"You can Cessie," he says, holding her a bit closer as they land in front of the hospital, "You're the woman that's faced down giant monsters and at least one god before. You can handle childbirth, I promise."

[Shadowcaller]

[Approaching a Hospital]

The sorceress attempts to take a deep breath only to gasp for air, convulsing slightly in Harnel's embrace. "Just... just hurry!" She commands him.

[Halae]

[Approaching a Hospital]

Without any further delay, Harnel will rush into the hospital with Cessie, find the first member of the staff he can find, and say, "My wife's going into Labour!"

[Slii Arhem]

[Nexus Contractor's Union]

Sakura grins and leans into Adir a bit. "Yeah, we already pretty much know what we want. It's a cabin out in the forest." She has all kinds of ideas in mind. Undoubtedly Adir knows most of them.

Nexus Contractor's Union

((Skipping Harnel, because he said he couldn't find time to post for this.))

"Right right, cabin inna woods. Lesse, we got some top quality gingerbread sittin around on some pallets out back. Just gotta mix up the icing mortar and we can have it slapped together in a couple days. If youse aren't into the edible thing, we've got a crate of ghosts and some waterlogged boards pried off the wreckage of a sunken ship. Great service package with haunted cabins too. If your poltergeists get too rowdy, we'll have an exorcist or two come by once a week to keep em purring like kittens."

The foreman reaches under his desk/drafting table and hauls out a scrollcase, popping off the lid and rifling through the rolled up contents leisurely.

[ThirdEmperor]

[Generic Street]

The Wight is a mindless monster!

It is unable to draw conclusions about a foe's actions! It just murders things until they die. Existence for a Wight is almost elegant in simplicity. If something isn't dead then you kill it. If something is dead or undead you ignore it. The end.

With a nasty his an a crackle of electricity the undead lunges again!

Rawr!

Lunging!

Best avoid letting it murder you to death, kid.

It would be terrible.

Quick as he can, Dwayne sidesteps out of the charging wight's path and hurls a handful of dust at the undead horror's face. Explosive dust. When and if it hits flesh, the magical substance will ignite quite violently, clinging and burning and generally trying to ruin the wight's day, as well as hopefully it's eyesight.

But whether the wight's blinded or no, Dwayne will follow up with an wide swing clumsily aimed to sever head from shoulders!

[Murkus]

Nexus Contractor's Union

((Skipping Harnel, because he said he couldn't find time to post for this.))

"Right right, cabin inna woods. Lesse, we got some top quality gingerbread sittin around on some pallets out back. Just gotta mix up the icing mortar and we can have it slapped together in a couple days. If youse aren't into the edible thing, we've got a crate of ghosts and some waterlogged boards pried off the wreckage of a sunken ship. Great service package with haunted cabins too. If your poltergeists get too rowdy, we'll have an exorcist or two come by once a week to keep em purring like kittens."

The foreman reaches under his desk/drafting table and hauls out a scrollcase, popping off the lid and rifling through the rolled up contents leisurely.

"Um, we're gonna have a kid in the house. Poltergeists are... sorta bad," Adir says hesitantly. He frowns a little. "Let's skip the edible thing too. Um, how about some wood from a fey forest? Or some kind of magically grown tree-house type thing? Might feel like home."

[Lost_Deep]

Lots of Hope Hospital

The first person here is- oh, it's that nurse person that Harnel met when he was first here. The one with the robotic arm. You remember her? No?

In any case, there is much rushing and hurrying to get Cessie into the proper room and get her comfortable and all that.

The rocketfairies are here, but they don't react like they did last time. While at first one or two follows the group, seemingly only out of curiosity, as labour progresses a few more will come up. The rocketfairies will mainly just keep tabs on Cessie's vitals, watching for any complications. They are silent and stay out of the way, though. This is completely against what Harnel last saw of them, with the swarming and the clicking and buzzing...

[LadyOfWar]

((Apologies about the delay between this post and the last. This was surprisingly difficult to type up, for some reason or other.))

[Inside Warehouse Raid]

In the notebook is nothing more noteworthy than a simple image. A detailed image worth more than a thousand words to the perceptive scholar, no less. It appears to be a chart of some sort. A map, for lack of fancier words. It appears to be a map of a subsection of the Red Zone whose residents have devoted their lives to the service of a peculiar goddess of vengeance. Perhaps she is planning some sort of campaign against this divinity or something? Now is not the time reserved for speculation yet. Now is the time for action! That is what the bright blue explosions ripping through a detached shack on the property belonging to the factory would suggest, anyway!

The factory is extremely boring and all too normal on the outside, so I won't go into much depth on it.

Too bad about the damage done to the vehicle, though. It looked really cool before Percilia made the mistake of putting a new driver behind the wheel.

Well, Raennall, codename Tempest, told Percilia that she didn’t know how to drive. Percilia has only herself to blame for any destruction :-P

Speaking of distruction…

After taking a moment to engrave the contents of the chart into her near-eidetic memory, Lady Raennall noted that the time was correct and revved the engine, then accelerated toward a weak point in the warehouse wall. She chose a spot that her preliminary surveillance of the warehouse that the team met in informed her was least likely to contain any structural supports and most likely to cave easily.

If all went to plan, she and Dipsnig are likely bursting through the factory wall within a second after the initial blue blast at the shack, leaving the enemy no time to recover from the initial shock of hearing one explosion before being met with a huge vehicle ramming into their base.

………………

Dave's Free Clinic
She'll see that Dave is trying to jumpstart his heart.
"C'mon kid! C'mon!"
Glancing at Wes he gives a sigh of relief.
[COLOR="Sienna"]"I need you to get the Defibilators! I'd grab them but I can't take a second away from this!"

Westlanna is the picture of efficiency. In moments she has wheeled in the crash cart and has the pads of the defibrillators set to shock the kid.

“Ready, Sir, clear out.” She tells him. She doesn’t want to shock the doctor too.

--------------

[Granola Street]

Who says that nine tails is the limit?

Maybe ten just hasn't ever been reached before? That or the old story about a Huldra that devours 1000 souls becoming human again might be true. Who knows!

Anywho! Freddy would really love to have fun. In fact, he could probably have a ton of fun if he started exploring his new nature rather than sulking about it. But that ache of his hollow heart keeps reminding him of what he lost...

And that makes him blue...

Eerr...

Well.

He's a Huldra.

So he's always blue. Like the color. As opposed to blue as in sad.

ANYWAY!

He replies to Joy's first comment with a foxy grin. "I managed to keep my soul at least. Which makes me think the Emperor has some kind of plan for me. I can take comfort in that."

He then offers his best bow! Which again, looks rather silly coming from a fox. Despite this he does his best to look as dapper as possible! This woman's mood is contagious and he's going to do his best not to get her down! "Fredrick will do, lady Joy. It's my please to meet your acquaintance. And if you'll allow it-"

He then reaches around with one of his vaguely flame-like tails, the end of it taking on an almost claw-like appearance and he reaches down his own throat and-!

Pulls out a little teeny tiny ember of normal colored fire. Sparks of blue are cast from it, though otherwise it looks like a tongue of fire one might see on a candle.

"I believe this is yours!" that foxy grin grows a little wider! "Ha! I wasn't even sure if I could do that or not! I suppose it was worth giving it a try then!"

His happy and dapper looks leave her struggling to hold back a squeal. She wants to run up and hug his neck like this but she isn’t three years old, so it wouldn’t be half as cute, and sadly this dapper fox will nom on her memories if she touches him. Instead she ends up biting her lip to hold in all that girly energy while her smile pulls up the corners of her mouth until it hurts.

“For me?” She asks, as her eyebrows shoot up in surprise when he holds out the little tongue of fire to her. “What is it?” She steps closer, gently extending her fingers to graze the very tip of the flame.

………………….

Well, they're quite cool with that; they've got her penned up in a relatively small area and they'll see her if she tries to escape. Dragan takes this opportunity to shout: You're surrounded and you can't escape! Come out! He doesn't expect her to listen, but it's worth a try. After issuing a cry, he will hop over the fence and immediately begin to look around, shining his flashlight everywhere.
Anatolij keeps waiting for Dragan to flush the fugitive out. Then he'll catch her.

There is no reply to Dragan’s shout. This gal is playing hide and seek with them, and she seems to be very good at hiding in the dark.

Dragan will be presented with the option of which area to investigate first. The majority of the backyard is open, a few quick sweeps of his light will reveal that she isn’t out on the lawn.

That leaves the shed, and the narrow space between the shed and the garage, or the house and the deck. From a distance dark lumps can be seen in both locations. There is a line of lumps between the shed and the garage, a likely place for a line of garbage cans. Under the deck there is the door to the walk-out basement of the house and beside that a few more lumps that look like possible storage boxes under a tarp. Then the stairs cross the open space beneath the deck on their way up to the wooden platform above. There are several lumps up on the deck, a likely place for patio furniture and one lump has the outline of a grill. To see what anything is, he’ll have to move closer and investigate.

[Morty]

[Chase on Limit Street]

Dragan has no intention on playing by the fugitive's rules, and investigating one place to have her escape from another would be a textbook mistake. He produces a flare - an industrial strength glowstick - and throws it onto the deck, where it emits a bright light. Then he throws another one in front of the shed to lit up that general area. He then begins to throw the light from his flashling around, trying to spot his mark in the now considerably better-lit area.

[Lady Serpentine]

[Chase on Limit Street - Shadowside]

Mayhala hisses in annoyance as Dragan tosses the glowsticks at the area where her friend is hiding. Though in some ways, it does help her. After all, since all of the light sources are in front of him, his shadow should be quite strong.

So, assuming he has no magical protections that would prevent such things, and that there's no other reason she couldn't, she'll form a thin cord out of his shadow, and slide it up his armor from behind, then, unless he notices it and is fast enough to move out of the way, slip it around his neck and form a noose, which will then quickly start to tighten.

[Rebonack]

Aaaaaaaaaand GO!

[Generic Street]

Oh noes!

Burning stuff!

The Wight screeches and begins clawing at its face with its one remaining arm! This really doesn't help its situation at all! The decapitation attempt whiff widely due to the spastic and erratic flailing of the undead abomination, though the thing is so busy having its face burned off that it isn't going to be attacking this round anyway.

Woohoo!

Try again!

[Yoghurt Street]

Touching the Huldra is harmless.

Kissing him is not.

"Your stolen memories!" Freddy replies. Poking at the flame will cause it to stick to the girl's finger and just sit there. It'll feel warm and familiar. "I guess I need to take all of them before they get mixed up with all the other ones inside me."

A beat.

"And... uuh... I'm really not sure how to get them back inside of you either," but at least it's the thought that counts? No doubt experimentation is in order! That's the best way to figure out how to get memories back inside one's head! "Eat it, maybe? Or breath it in? I really have no idea."

Time to try something new! And hopefully those little blue sparks aren't anything bad. Or anything from the Huldra glomming onto the memories, which could also be bad.

[Street With Creepy Thing]

Enter newcomer!

Newcomer in this case is a fellow draped in a multilayered outfit of overlapping cloth with a turban obscuring most of his head and face. Pretty typical nomad outfit. At his side is a gleaming crystalline khopesh, clear as glass and scattering the light that touches it.

As he trudges through the streets this strange creature crosses his path! With a narrowing of the eyes he reaches for the hilt of his blade and begins to move cautiously, aiming to edge around it.

[Mr. Moon]

Street With Creepy Thing

The beast, whatever it is, barely seems to notice the newcomer. For a moment its head turns in his direction, but its pupils are so hazy and unfixed that it's hard to tell where its gaze is actually falling. Then its head snaps back to its neck, where it proceeded to snap back and forth behind its back rapidly.

It continues moving down the streets, before jolting as its legs suddenly snap back under it. For a few moments it walks forward with an almost frightening semblance of normalcy, before one of its feet sinks below the pavement and stays there. As if unaware, it shambles forward another step and then comes to a sudden jerking stop. Standing frozen for all of five seconds, the only thing that moves is the erratic arm that continues to spin and twist around its torso. Its eyes bulge. Its lips begin to move, but the sound that comes out of them is about a second and a half behind. An almost scream-like noise fills the air, a stuttering and broken cry that is punctured by short periods of silence. Then, the whole beast begins to tremble. With its trapped leg outstretched behind it, its free leg begins to paw at the ground, trying to push forward but unable to gain any ground. Its back, previously bent backward, now cranes forward stiffly. As it leans forward, the hand reaching from its neck stays in precisely its position, the torso of the beast moving past it. Now it stretches up from its back, gnarled fingers limp.

With the beast trapped like this, the newcomer should have an easy time moving past it.

[ThirdEmperor]

Generic Street

Well, all spastic flailings aside, one cannot help but imagine Dwayne's own incompetence at combat was a factor in the complete miss. But if all prior fumbles and failures have been insufficient to convince to Dwayne to abandon his foolhardy notions of heroics, well, this one isn't about to change that.

Stepping up as close to the undead as he dares, Dwayne takes another swing, overhand this time but still aimed for the same target; the undead's noggin.

[Mindfreak]

Westlanna is the picture of efficiency. In moments she has wheeled in the crash cart and has the pads of the defibrillators set to shock the kid.

“Ready, Sir, clear out.” She tells him. She doesn’t want to shock the doctor too.

Dave's Free Clinic
"Go." Dave said as he removed his hands just as Wes will do it.
If she does do it, the kid's heart monitor will go back to normal.

[Rebonack]

[Street With Creepy Thing]

Well.

That's... uuhh...

Really disturbing.

When the creature screeches the man clamps his hands over his ears and decides to book it. The thing is really disturbing. And at the same time seems far too twisted and malformed to offer any real semblance of a fight. He feels almost bad for the thing. But not bad enough to put it out of its misery.

Away!

[Random Street]

Dwayne cleaves the ghoulish monster in the head, splitting it in half! The Wight suddenly bursts into a cheap of fine black ash. Welp! Looks like that did it! Dwayne totally won! And mostly under his own power, too! Woohoo!

Oh wait.

Here come three more Wights. One with gleaming talons of ebony metal, one with a wispy, almost insubstantial form, and one armored in thick ice and leaving footprints of frost in its wake.

Nice knowing you Dwayne!

[Gullara]

Nexus Contractor's Union

((Skipping Harnel, because he said he couldn't find time to post for this.))

"Right right, cabin inna woods. Lesse, we got some top quality gingerbread sittin around on some pallets out back. Just gotta mix up the icing mortar and we can have it slapped together in a couple days. If youse aren't into the edible thing, we've got a crate of ghosts and some waterlogged boards pried off the wreckage of a sunken ship. Great service package with haunted cabins too. If your poltergeists get too rowdy, we'll have an exorcist or two come by once a week to keep em purring like kittens."

The foreman reaches under his desk/drafting table and hauls out a scrollcase, popping off the lid and rifling through the rolled up contents leisurely.

"Um, we're gonna have a kid in the house. Poltergeists are... sorta bad," Adir says hesitantly. He frowns a little. "Let's skip the edible thing too. Um, how about some wood from a fey forest? Or some kind of magically grown tree-house type thing? Might feel like home."

Sakura blinks as the man jumps to two very strange ideas. "Uh, what he said. Just a nice place for us to live." Sakura may not have any idea about what your average house looks like.

[Slii Arhem]

Nexus Contractor's Union

"Kid, do you know the kind of premiums there are on evil thrones made out of the trees of perpetually dying dryads? You have to have a special license just to handle wood like that, and if you're looking for that kind of stuff, you might as well go to the Nefarious Construction Co. down on Arkham street. I keep my fingers outta those pies, yannow?" The foreman belches a bit and rummages around in one ear with the tip of his pinky finger.

"Treehouse is no good either. We got plenty of em grown, but I'm not gonna sign off on one fer a couple with kids. Falling from a height like that would not be good for a tyke, and when youse come around looking for who to sue, I'm not gonna be tha one that gets up on the stand, nosir."

Finally, after what seem like forever, he pulls out a blueprint and lays it out flat in front of him, "Ere we go. Had something like this in mind fer a while, S'one of those unnerground type places, like a burrow, hollowed outta a nice big hill. It'll keep cool in the summer, and if we dig some vents deep enough we can get geothermal heating for yer floors, so it'll be hot when you need it without payin for electric heat. If youse're set on having a cabin, we could build an extension aboveground fer a bit extra. Just be a simple log thing, but we can have it watertight in a few days."

The folks at the NCU don't screw around. If they say they'll have your house built in a few days, it'll be built in a few days.

[Lex-Kat]

[Arkham Street Hospital]

The orange goop lands on the floor and begins... not sizzling. Instead the floor begins to bubble and melt as the linoleum decays into inert gas and black organic scuz. It smells really terrible.

"Forge if I know," the Huldra replies as his soul orb hovers next to him. "Wight? Zombie? Evil spirit? I don't recognize it."

The creature begins to make gross guttural noises again, though it gets cut short when Freddy whips his softball sized orb around and clobbers the thing, snapping an arm and sending it tottering off onto its side.

The undead monster begins floundering on the floor in an attempt to get up again.

It isn't making much progress.

Vidalia watches the floor bubble and melt for a moment, then looks back at the zombie/wight/evil spirit. Does that slime do what I think it does? Vidalia asks with the tiniest hint of fear through a mask of determination.

She whips a tendril out and will attempt to rip its other arm off.

[Soul Quest]

Mikani's here! Along with Pearl and Sallianne, presumably...

"So, which way do we go now?" she asks, looking around expectantly.

"We're going to the Market. Betcha anything my soul is for sale somewhere there. Better be outside our price range."

It's worth more than they can afford, dang it!

Sallianne and Pearl are indeed there. Sallianne is following along grumpily. It is almost as if this group has no respect for me. I didn't even want to be here, helping this soulless catgirl. But here I am, doing what the Goddess Neirian demands, like a good little devotee. There are more important things to do that help some non-believer find her stupid soul. she thinks to herself.

Pearl on the other hand is happily following along. She not paying too much attention to where they are going, looking instead at all the interesting people and strange shops. Her eyes are as big as saucers as she tries to take it all in.

And the group as a whole is heading toward the main market and then.... the midday rush begins. Irene's souldar may become fuzzy as the crowd grows.