Home 22: Our neighborhood watch is extra vigilant

[Deathkeeper]

Dancing Fox Inn

Well, what are they like? I sure wasn't expecting centaurs when you sent the last batch. I should know who I'm looking for, at least. Or just tell me when they'll show up and I'll find out tomorrow, I guess. Mist replies with a mental equivalent of a shrug.

[Rebonack]

[Previously Hugh's Home]

SUDDENLY FORTUNA AGAIN!

And just when Psyche thought that she was going to get some peace, too?

But there shall be nothing of the sort!

"Hiya! Change of plans!" the draconequus bellows as she pulls out a cricket bat, hauls back, and gives Psyche a MIGHTY SWAT!

How might of a swat, you ask?

Well.

Mighty enough to knock her all the way to Random Places and Plots, of course!

And possibly turn her into a tiny, vaguely humanoid red squirrel.

[Recaiden]

Oh, okay, I won't surprise you with that. There's three, right. A boy with a bag, all human as far as we know. A woman with furry ears and a tail and a thing over her eyes. And a little fairy-like creature. They'll all be together. They should all be together, anyway.

[Deathkeeper]

Dancing Fox Inn

Ah, well, okay. I'll be expecting them, then. sends Mist at last.

[Fenric]

[Keiko's Tower]

Cleo waves goodbye to Stephandra, laughing the whole while. Apparently Keiko's hidden capability of being responsible was buried pretty deeply.

"Of course not. You're about to tell me you've already gotten tangled up in something, aren't you?"

Keiko not only doesn't look embarrassed... she preens a bit and is clearly excited

Myobu has asked me to help out with a an issue affecting the Temple! Or he will sometime tomorrow... or... eh, time and stuff. We'll arrive when we're supposed to whenever we actually leave. But it doesn't matter! He called for me personally, Cleo!

Keiko looks at Cleo with the big excited eyes of someone who just got their first "real" job offer.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

SUDDENLY FORTUNA!

Except not so much.

Instead of just snapping her claws and suddenly appearing inside, she walks in through the back door like a normal person.

"Hey everyone, I'm home!" the draconequus announces as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary were going on.

Like... say...

The fact that she gave Geneva the boot.

And the fact that's she's been causing trouble all over the Nexus.

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace looks up from a spell-weave he has been working on.
"Hello, Fortuna. How've you been? Your wedding's next week, right?" he asks, leaning over to get a look at his calendar.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"Or tomorrow. Or a month from now," Fortuna replies, waving a paw dismissively. "You know how the Nexus is when time gets involved."

Confusing.

It gets confusing.

"It'll happen when it happens. SO!" suddenly she's in Jace's personal space, smiling widely. "Anything interesting happen while I was out?"

Hmm...

Khannie's in her room doing homework?

Does that count as interesting?

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace shrugs dismissively, used to the personal space violations.
"Not really. Khannie went to school and is either doing homework or pretending to do homework and practicing her punches. I've been working on figuring out how that gun I found a while back generates its magic missiles. Might try something I'm more likely to actually use later, though. Transmutations or something. And Zebes has been playing a video game."

One could possibly here a very satisfied draconic purr of, "Grasp of Maloooooook~"
That sounds pretty routine and normal. Not incredibly interesting really.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"Ugh. That sounds pretty boring," Fortuna huffs, crossing her arms over her chest as she reclines in mid-air. "Things needs to be less boring. Hmmm... how might we accomplish that..."

A mischievous grin sports Fortuna's face, the golden die faces on her haunches flashing. With a flourish, she reaches back and gives the die a SPIN!

The sound of countless dice tumbling over each other fill the room until at last it comes up on-!

214.

With a POOF! of white smoke something has appeared!

Did Jace ever have a pet when he was a child?

If so, the little critter has just appeared in the middle of his living room, returned to life.

If not? Well... then the poof of smoke will continue sitting there being opaque until Rebo figures out what's in it.

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Well, in the original Pathfinder game he had a first familiar named Amarid but the real Nexus Jace doesn't necessarily have that canon. It's all a bit confusing to think about, but for now let's just say there were no such pets.
Jace flinches at the sound either way, letting the spell weaves fall slowly and start to fade.
"Fortuna, did you just roll? In the house? What is that?" he says, frowning at first and then drawing his attention to the cloud with morbid curiosity.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"Yep! Yes! I have no idea! Toodles!" Fortuna replies, before giving her claws a SNAP! vanishing in a flash of magnesium white light.

The smoke gradually clears revealing-!

A skeleton!

With a railroad spike driving hammer and a bandoleer of railroad spikes! It's bones are slick with petroleum jelly and with each step it takes some milk sloshes out of its hilariously over-sized boots. A large crossbow is slung across the skeleton's back along with a quiver full of mewing kittens. The skeleton gives a fearsome, "Doot doot!" pulls out one of its railroad spikes, and then swats the giant nail with its hammer, sending it hurtling toward Jace!

Wuh oh.

This might be a problem.

Meanwhile, from upstairs, "Daaaaad, long division is haaaaaard! Can I take a break?"

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

"In a minute!" Jace calls back, leaning back and to the side to dodge the flying spike. He snatches the revolver off the table as he does so and empties its cylinder, but instead of bullets three magic missiles exit the barrel and make towards the skeleton's head.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

With a loud THUD the spike drives itself into the wall opposite, neatly replacing a normal nail that was holding up a framed picture of Henry the Magikarp. The portrait sways from the impact.

The trio of magical bolts strike true, hitting the skeleton dead in the forehead-!

-and just kind of stick in the thick layer of jelly. Now the skeleton has three orbs of raw magical force clinging to it like nerf darts.

"Doot doot!" doots the skeleton as it draws its crowsbow, loads it with a black and orange kitten, and fires the feline at Jace! The cat gives a distressed yowl, bursting into smokey orange flames shortly after its launch.

As you might expect, the sounds of gunfire draws attention pretty quickly. Since guns are really loud. Khannie doesn't even bother asking what's going on, something that jarring has got her dashing out of her room and toward the stairs to find out what happened.

Because gunfire means a fight.

And if there's a fight, that means there's something that needs to be punched.

And if something needs to be punched, Khannie is all over that.

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace ducks, and angrily tosses a fireball in retaliation.
Hopefully the kitten will be okay but he doesn't really have any spell to put out flaming bodies and soften impacts.
One might think that the fireball would incinerate the remaining cats, but somehow the fireball will explode at the skeleton and impossibly curve around the quiver of baby animals.
Thanks, Shaped Spell.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

The kitten lands on the couch nearby. Its upholstery begins to smoulder as the litten mews in agitation.

Aaaand then the fireball explodes. Waves of heat wash across the room, causing the jelly on the skeleton to bubble a bit. Otherwise, it doesn't appear to be harmed. Stupid cheatery skeleton!

"Doot doot!" the skeleton says, launching another cat pokemon at Jace.

Seems the game right now is lobbing projectiles at each other.

Meanwhile!

Khannie reaches the stairs and takes a running leap, rolling when she hits the ground and hopping up to her little feet!

She gives the skeleton a confused look. "What's that...?"

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Say what you will about Jace's parenting skills, but he does know Khannie rather well. That's why the first words out of his mouth are,
"Khannie, it's a sticky monster.. Don't touch it." before he has to dive behind the counter to avoid another projectile. He can't keep doing this forever!

Zebes has his own ideas, as the pocket dragon has been sneaking up on the skeleton and now attempts to slice open the straps to the skeleton's quiver with his claws, disarming it.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"How am I supposed to punch it if I can't touch it?" Khannie grouses, looking around the room for something she can pick up and clobber the skeleton with. Hopefully something her dad won't get too upset about if she breaks.

The skeleton reaches for another kitten, but finds its quiver empty!

Most because Zebe's cut it off and spilled kittens all over the floor. Now their house is crawling with cat pokemon.

Great.

"Doot," the skeleton doots in irritation as it aims to swat Zebes out of the sky with its sledgehammer.

It's probably in Zebe's best interest here not to get hit with the sledgehammer.

Those thing really hurt.

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

"Meep meep!" taunts Zebes as he backflips out of the hammer blow.
Hasn't this skeleton tried punching a bird before? It just doesn't work.

Meanwhile, Jace has grabbed a broad-headed spear off the wall and makes a swiping lunge at the creature. Energy resistant jelly can't stop regular old kinetic energy.

[Rebonack]

[Jace Place]

The skeleton hauls back to swing at Zebes again, only to get clobbered with a spear! The weapon shatters the skeleton's shoulder, causing the bones to become limp and unresponsive. With a fearsome "DOOT!" the skeleton whirls around to make a one-armed hammer attack against Jace, but it gets a chair broken over its head by Khannie, shattering its skull and clavicle.

"Take that!" Khannie yells at the monster, smashing the chair across its spine and ruining the furniture quite thoroughly. "You big jerk, leave my family alone!"

With a rattling, dusty sound the skeleton sags forward as though defeated.

But not for long.

A loud slurping sound fills the room as the milk in the skeleton's left boot drains away, causing the monster's bones to repair themselves at a truly unnatural rate. The thing is up and moving again so quickly it takes Khannie quite by surprise, giving the skeleton the chance to nail her square in the sternum with its hammer.

"WHUoooof!" the little repto-mammal pokemon gasps as the air is forcibly expelled from her lungs, sending her tumbling across the floor.

"Doot!"

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace's eyes flare with soft blue light. He lays into the skeleton with the partisan, his swings faster and harder than before, and entirely unrelenting.
"I'll. Grind. You. To. Dust."

Below the action, Zebes scuttles along the floor and tries to claw a hole in the skeleton's right boot to rob it of its extra lives.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

Between the furious spear stabbing and the hole in its other boot, the skeleton is quickly reduced to a heap of bone fragments and weird artifacts. With one final "Doot." of defeat, the skeleton falls still.

The litter of littens are all mewing. They must be really young, too, since there isn't any meaning behind the mewing. Just mewing.

Khannie sits upright, a wide grin on her face. "Oh my gosh, dad, that was so cool!" she cheers. She's rubbing her chest a bit, but there doesn't appear to be much in the way of obvious injury. As Jace has told Khannie before, pokemon are quite a bit more durable than humans are. And thank goodness for that. If Khannie were a normal human girl that hammer-blow probably would have shattered ribs and punctured her lungs.

Or worse.

She winces a little as she stands up, but if she's experiencing anything beyond mild discomfort she isn't showing it. The little kangaskhan gives the heap of bones a kick. "No fair, it was holding a healing item. Holding healing items is cheating."

Not really. Holding healing items is totally fair!

Children just like to complain about the fairness of things regardless of how sporting they are.

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace drops the partisan to the floor and reaches down to pick up Khannie and sit her down on one of the kitchen stools.
"You okay, Khannie? Tell me if it hurts." he insists, reaching into the fridge and the drawer labeled "Healing" to draw out an Oran berry to put in front of her.

With a few unheard exchanges, Zebes groans and shifts to Dragonite form and begins trying to wrangle the containers into a box so he can get them to a shelter or something.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

Khannie begins gnawing on the flavorful oran fruit.

What? They have a firmness of 'super hard'. So it should be like eating a relatively unripe pear or something, right? Very crunchy.

"It hurt a little, like getting hit with iron head," Khannie replies, smiling brightly. The smile fades, though, her tone becoming slightly downcast and ashamed. "I think I might have flinched when it hit me. Just a little flinch."

That's certainly one way to describe getting hurled bodily across the room.

"Are we letting monsters into the house now?" she asks, her excitement steadily building. "Does that mean I'm gunna get to fight stuff more?"

Of course that's what she would be focusing on.

As for Zebes, collecting the littens should prove relatively easy. Only ONE of them blows embers at him!

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace pats her head in a motion that would be ruffling her hair if she had any on that little dome of hers.
"You don't have to be ashamed for feeling pain, Khannie. You'd have had to be about three hundred pounds heavier for that hit to have not sent you flying. Just try dodging next time." he says, trying not to consider that her being that much heavier is distinctly possible.
"And no, that was randomly summoned by a chaos effect."

A level 1 ember really can't do much to a grown Dragon-type. Zebes will have to depart with the box in his claws to find a shelter for the kittens. Oh, bother. It's Iron Banner weekend, too.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"Sensei Marrowack said that we should use the pain to give us focus," Khannie confides in her father. Her old sensei was very wise as far as she's concerned. "I should have rolled with it better. Or blocked it. Or used Brick Break to shatter the hammer's head!" she says, throwing a few quick jabs at the air too swift for the eye to follow. "Kapow! Iron filings everywhere!"

Filling the room with iron filings would have been murder on the floor.

At the mention of random she tilts her head off to the side. "Random? Like what miss Fortuna does? I thought she promised not to do that in the house anymore?"

She did.

Apparently she broke that promise.

Which is odd.

Fortuna is usually really good about promises.

But that subject isn't nearly as enticing as, "What are we going to do with the monster? Can I keep its hammer? Do you think I got any exp? I don't feel any stronger this time..."

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

"I might be able to sell the bones to a place. Sometimes people like studying monster remains. I'll be talking to Fortuna about it either way. And yes, you can keep the hammer as long as you promise not to smash things with it without supervision."
Jace doesn't really see the harm. Her bare paws are more dangerous than any ordinary weapon. Though he eyes the remains for magic just to be safe.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

The hammer is endowed with moderate force magic, though learning more would require examining it closely. That probably explains why it was able to launch the railroad spikes and send Khannie flying.

Speaking of Khannie, she's fiddling with the crossbow at this point. The one that launches cats.

It doesn't appear to be magical at all.

Why would she care about such things when her fists are probably stronger?

Because human-made tools are neat of course!

Why else?

After deciding that the crossbow isn't very interesting, she finally remembers why she was yelling at her dad to begin with. "Dad, long division is hard. Can I take a break?"

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

Jace puts the hammer on the counter. He'll have to go into its spellweaves later.
"You can, as long as you finish it before dinner." he tells her without much consideration.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

The skeleton remains continue to sit in the middle of the floor.

Being skeletal.

Khannie pokes the bone heap with one of her toes.

Because that's what children do. They poke things.

"Can you teach me something more fun?" she asks, a bright smile growing on her little face. "Because long division isn't very much fun. Can we try magic lessons?"

She really likes the idea of magic lessons.

Thus far she hasn't made much in the way of progress, but that hasn't stopped her from enjoying them.