VVVVVigil: Valorous Veterans Vanquishing Venal Vermin

[Recaiden]

All she needs to do is look. And what she sees in Halae is very promising.

Arlem draws her dagger, with its elaborately carved handguard and the chain hanging from the pommel. It's a very pretty artifact, but it's not even made of jade or anything.
"Alright, Dorothy. This is just practice."
You might imagine the knife to be disappointed at this, but it doesn't react in any way. It's a knife.

"We could really use an investigator." Hmm. Could she work a mystery into the test somehow?

She dives in immediately, threatening a powerful stab immediately. But this is a feint, and only if Halae completely neglects her defense would it come close to connecting. Arlem actually intends to skip to the side once her opponent has committed to some sort of parry or counter and then shove her off-balance with her free hand.

[Halae]

[Dragons Arriving]

Halae might surprise Arlem when she rushes forward, putting on a burst of speed that'll likely make the dagger connect, but only onto a metal plate, and not with the power of a proper strike in the first place. This will likely interrupt the winged woman's movements and attempt to push Halae off balance as the swordsman brings the pommel of her blade up with the intent of driving the wind out of Arlem's lungs by striking her in the solar plexus.

The Dragon-blood's face is neutral, her eyes intense. No emotion is betrayed, and no sign of how she'll move next is in evidence - she must have a terrifying poker face.

[Recaiden]

Good, Halae is reading the fight well.
However, I don't think it'll be too surprising.

As the dagger connects early, Arlem beats all her wings to push away from the dragonblooded woman, the pommel-strike slipping just in front of her. She settles back onto her feet, dagger and hand held up cautiously.

[Halae]

[Dragons Arriving]

She'll have to contend with Halae dogging her, sticking close and stabbing in a small array of thrusts. These thrusts aren't for actually hurting Arlem, but putting her on the defensive and stealing the initiative from her. If the fire aspect can keep her on the back foot, she can arrange a situation where she wins.

[Rebonack]

Lapis has, very likely, found something to be distracted by now that a member who's more than a mascot is tending to the dragon-blooded.

There are always weeds to tend to and butterflies to chase.

[Geneva's Lab]

"I've dealt with actual chaos magic before," Geneva states matter-of-factly as she balances another machine on Lucky's flank. "Comparatively speaking, this should be simple enough to account for."

She had, in fact, designed a device to counter the less active forms of Fortuna's magic.

It was necessary to get ANYTHING done, otherwise the random background noise would make havoc with anything even approaching a structured study.

The hippogriff flicks the machine in question on, which begins reading aloud from a phone book in the most boring, deadpan tone possible.

It's pretty boring.

"Okay, moment of truth! Let's see what happens!" Geneva says before activating the ring once more!

[Lycan 01]

Geneva's Lab

The droning voice of the machine reading the phonebook seems to do the trick. The gate crackles with energy, but without the wild snaps and sparks of errant electricity. Lucky's helmet crackles with static a moment, before the music goes silent. After a moment Lucky mutters "I feel kinda weird..." with an uncertain look in his eyes behind his visor.

"Wow, I think it's working. You actually nullified his weird luck," Dawn says incredulously.

Meanwhile the machine keeps droning names and numbers.

Bob Bobbington.

Bob Bobberstone.

Bobby Boppoityboo.

A small burst of static.

Kyzrriak Thrice-Felled.

Another burst of static.

Warboss Ulk'Skragga.

More static, crackles of white noise. Dawn shifts uncertainly.

The Great Horned Rat. Phone number 13 13 13 13 13 13 13......

"Uh, that doesn't sound normal," Lucky says, just before a rat scurries out of the gate in a small puff of sparks and smoke. The gate begins to crackle with emerald sparks, and glow with an eerie green hue. Another rat scurries through the portal. And then another.

The green glow grows more sickly and ethereal, and a chorus of squeaking begins to echo from beyond the veil. It sounds like rats. Lots... and lots... of rats...

13 13 13 13 13 13

[Rebonack]

[Geneva's Lab]

Okay.

That...

Probably isn't supposed to be happening.

Geneva doesn't really get the significance of what the machine is doing, but is seems really ominous.

So!

She pulls a lever.

A lever that cuts power to the ring.

Which... uh... hopefully shuts it down.

[Recaiden]

She'll have to contend with Halae dogging her, sticking close and stabbing in a small array of thrusts. These thrusts aren't for actually hurting Arlem, but putting her on the defensive and stealing the initiative from her. If the fire aspect can keep her on the back foot, she can arrange a situation where she wins.

She contends with it, bouncing back from foot to foot to flutter-of-wings. Arlem has another perspective on it. Every attack is an opening that your opponent can take advantage of. Repeating an array of attacks makes you predictable.
After a few repetitions she suddenly stops giving ground and darts forward instead of falling back, aiming for Halae's sword-arm.

[Lycan 01]

Geneva's Lab

The power is cut!

The sickly green portal crackles with unstable energy, sparks and bolts of emerald lightning snapping into the air. The squeaking gets louder. Almost as if hundreds, thousands, untold legions of rodents are rapidly approaching.

It seems that whatever is coming has managed to establish a foothold from its own end. The gate no longer needs power from Geneva's lab - it's being used from another world, far beyond her reach or control.

Lucky suddenly sneezes.

The gate goes dark, just as the screaming chorus of the Vermintide grows to its crescendo. The lab goes silent, lit only by dim emergency lights and the soft glow of a radroach trying to hide behind a filing cabinet.

"Awww my helmet was still on..." Lucky whines softly, unconcerned with how close they were to an inter-dimensional invasion.

Dawn, meanwhile, trots over to Geneva and coughs awkwardly. "Do we, uh, want to try again, or wait until later when things are more... logical?" she asks, giving a wary look back in Lucky's direction. He's trying to fiddle with his helmet with his wings, without knocking all the equipment off his back.

[5a Violista]

[Skybase training grounds - by the track]

The fox obviously likes being petted again. It's nice to have some attention like this, the fox decides, content.

"M-mage body?" Awen is pretty sure she doesn't have that, whatever it is. It sounds bad. And probably contagious. She continues lying on the ground. "No, it's just that the air up here's thin." And she's never done exercises like these before, only normal stuff like cooking and cleaning and helping people get dressed. "And I've had a poor constitution since birth," and everyone else would tease her because of it. Not to mention, since her magic started coming in, she hasn't had much chance to exercise either because she's always been on the run for her life, or practicing magic.
...And even though she's wearing less clothing than she normally does, it's still more than is appropriate for exercising.
...
And she could probably come up with lots of reasons.

"By the way, please don't over-inflate his ego," the witch requests, gesturing at the fox. "Sure, he's old for a fox, but he's still a third of my age." Meanwhile, the fox moves its head to get attention in the right spots.

Anyway.
Enough talking about her.
"Really? Maybe your shadow's tired or hungry or something, and just needs to be fed the right kind of...energy or atmosphere, or whatever. Whenever I control people's shadows, they always get hungry." Hungry for the life-force of the person casting the shadow, but she doesn't mention that. 'Hey, just infuse your blood with your life-force and then feed it to your shadow' isn't really appropriate in polite conversations.


[Skybase - Academy indoor Training Facilities]

...
As expected, the...creature, or whatever it is, charges at her with its arms and claws extended to swipe the witch in as little time as possible.

Meanwhile, she continues looking over the summoning circle, trying to figure out how to end this encounter (because, as evidenced by her broken ribs, her bleeding arm, her...etc etc, she's likely incapable of defeating it the normal way).

Oh! But wait, if she does that...but what if...? But then,...but then, she's running out of time.

She has an idea - possibly inspired by pleasure she's feeling from the things that ought to be causing pain instead. As the beast reaches her and swipes at her, she leans in and lets it gouge out a few of her entrails onto the summoning circle. She wasn't able to figure out where the creature was coming from, but she was able to find out which part of the circle referred to where its life-energy is coming from, and...

...As Awen lies on the ground, she alters the circle's energy, forcibly inserting her own life-energy into the circle so that the beast-thing's life energy is replaced by her own, among some other minor modifications...
...and the beast, thankfully, vanishes into a green mist and the mist collects in the witch's wounds. Good.

Okay.
So, step one, she needs to stitch back together her wounds.
Step two, clean up the room.
Step three, figure out what exactly she did with the circle and the beast and whether it'll have any negative effects in the future.
Step four, probably go get healing or something as soon as her spell wears off and pain stops feeling so good.
Step five, continue her fruitless search in the library, trying to figure out why some shadowy nightmare beast showed up when she tried to summon a fairy.
Or maybe she should put 'lie here and rest for a bit' somewhere between steps one and three. Luckily, she's good at both sewing and cleaning so the resting part will probably come soon enough.

[Arkhosia]

Moon Well Grove

Blanche shakes her head with a smile, suppressing a laugh. "Nope, don't think so. I've never really climbed that much, to be honest." It wasn't like she hadn't been fairly active growing up; they still had games like tag and four-square in the future, albeit slightly altered by time, and her home planet had plenty of trees. Blanche just never felt the urge to try and climb one.

"I'd feel a little bad just standing around while you do all the work, though." She steps back to survey the treetops. "Maybe I could go grab, like... a rope, or something?" They didn't have tree-climbing in basic training, but they did have rope-climbing.

[Shadowcaller]

Moon Well Grove

"Aw, darn." Anika scratches her head as her brilliant cat-climbing plan comes crashing down.
But speaking of crashing down...
"Actually, I got an better idea. I'm going to fly up in my hawk form and break off some twigs and branches, then you stand underneath and collect them. Once you think we have enough, signal for me to stop and we'll start placing them around the well. Plan? Plan." Assuming that Blanche does not protest (since why would she? It was a brilliant plan!) Anika will gesture towards one of the closest trees. "Let's start with that one!" It looks like she is about to shapeshange when she looks down and realize just how high up they were. "Uh, maybe we should climb down first though."

[Gullara]

[Moon Well Grove]

When the two touch back down on ground, someone marches out from behind a nearby tree. "What do you think you're doing?" It's a girl, definitely young despite being taller than Blanche. Then again, she looks a lot like Anika, and look how tall she is. She also has a writhing mass of snakes on her head and a blindfold covering her eyes. "What was that noise?" She puts her hands on her hips.

[Arkhosia]

Moon Well Grove

Probably for the best that this is where it crashes, rather than plummeting from up in the branches.
There are no objections on Blanche's part, and she follows Anika down to the trees below - not that taking the lead was a likely option anyways, thanks to the night elf's longer strides.

Suddenly, a wild gorgon appears! Blanche steps back in surprise, and you can practically see the calculations flitting through her mind as she stares at her for a second before looking back at Anika. "Er... is that your sister?" She looked a little young to be summoning snakebabs.

[5a Violista]

[Skybase]

Having used her expert sewing skills to stitch back closed her wounds, having cast a minor healing curse, and having cleaned up all her blood, Awen's checklist only has two more things on it: figure out how that thing hijacked her spell, and find out what she did to herself with altering the circle.

...
Well, now that her original pain-replacement spell is wearing off, everything starts hurting again so maybe she should visit the medbay.

Finally feeling pain again, the witch heads off to get some painkillers and some rest.

[Shadowcaller]

Moon Well Grove

Anika blows raspberries and roll her eyes at what she considers a minor insult to her heritage from Blanche. "No, that's just the weird snake-toddler my sister made when she corrupted the well." She steps forward and attempts to shoo away the tall child. "Get lost, weirdo. We're setting things right again and you're not gonna stop us."

[Gullara]

[Moon Well Grove]

Natharia scowls and her snakes hiss dangerously as Anika nears. "She's my auntie." Natharia clarifies, without much affection. Anika has been mean to her since day one! "Mom wouldn't like what you're doing." She warns.

[Arkhosia]

Moon Well Grove

Blanche blinks as she processes this new information. Huh. She doesn't really look like a toddler... maybe snakebabs grow up fast? Either way, she doesn't butt into the conversation.

[Shadowcaller]

Moon Well Grove

Anika frowns when Natharia makes this claim. "Yeah, no." She stops and bares her canines in a threatening manner in response to Natharia's serpents. "Have your 'mom' even mentioned the rest of our family? Like her parents? Her grandmother or even her uncle?" Shanti hasn't and Anika only seem to need a glance to confirm this and smirks triumphantly.

"Yeah, didn't think so. Since while my sister might be a tits-up heretic, she isn't stupid. She knows that you have a icicles chance in a forest fire to be accepted as anything but a monster to them." The druid gestures at Blanche. "She's more of a Sunfletcher than you'll ever be." Then Anika makes the shooing gesture again while making sure she isn't too close to Natharia this time around. "So get lost."

[Gullara]

[Moon Well Grove]

Natharia flinches away from Anika. Her defiant stature diminishes. "No. I'm going to stop you." Her voice cracks immediately. Suddenly she runs past them, before her tears escape the confines of her blindfold and betray her. She starts to climb up to the moon well, shouting back at the. "Stay away or I'll- I'll hurt you!"

[Arkhosia]

Moon Well Grove

Blanche cringes as Anika's words get venomous, watching the poor girl run off before giving her companion a look. "Jesus Anika, really?" She sighs, looking over at Natharia clambering up before turning back to Anika. Even if she didn't care about that kid's feelings being hurt, they'd have to deal with the results to actually get this done.

Then, a flicker of realization passes; she recognizes what's happening here. Her expression softens and she attempts to grab the taller woman by the arm, pulling her along as she heads towards the moon well if successful. "Come on, we're fixing this."

"Hey, uh, kid? I know your auntie's being a bitch right now, but she really didn't mean to hurt your feelings, she's just scared! Er, not of you, I mean - look, being an aunt is a really big thing, and sometimes it can be really scary when a really big thing happens before you're ready for it!"

[Shadowcaller]

Moon Well Grove

Anika wasn't sure what she had been expecting, in fact she hadn't done any of that. The moment she had heard Natharia call her a auntie she had just told her what she already had been thinking about regarding Natharia's status and hoped that it would simply cause her to... leave.

In retrospect, she had no idea what she had been thinking the moment she sees the girls tears. She had wanted to stop the girl from running off, or anything. But for once she couldn't bring herself to act. Her body feeling oddly numb as Natharia runs past her and starts climbing the enormous tree stump.

It's not until Blanche pulls her arm that she does seem to animate and turns around. Her lips part as she is about to say something when Blanche speaks for her. For some reason, this annoys her more than anything else, this was what caused her to react again. "I told her the truth." Anika insists as she breaks out of Blanche's grip. But then she turns to look at Natharia. "But- I'm sorry, 'kay? I was told all this **** and it also made me cry since people suck. They don't like me either since I'm different, like you or Shantariel. Just in different ways." Blushing, she turns her head to look away. "I'm just sorry I made you cry. I was being just as ****ty as the idiots."

[Gullara]

[Moon Well Grove]

Natharia slows just a bit to hear them say their pieces. "You're a jerk to me and mom all the time. Why can't you just leave us alone!" The girl tears off her blindfold and throws it behind her. She starts climbing again as the damp piece of cloth drifts down to land by their feat. No words will stop her from reaching the top and disappearing out of sight.

[Arkhosia]

Moonwell Grove

Blanche flinches a little as Anika yanks herself out of her grip, ears wilting. "I-I'm sorry, I... I thought I saw some of me in your reaction." There's a bit of a pause and a conflicted look as she tries to puzzle out what to do here - she wasn't good at feelings, damnit! - before she steps over to Anika, picking up the blindfold.

"Look, I'm not sure what to do here. I... I think we should get your sister... but my gut says you need to be the one to make this right," she advises, offering the garment to Anika. "Show her that us different folks don't have to suck too, y'know?"

[Halae]

She contends with it, bouncing back from foot to foot to flutter-of-wings. Arlem has another perspective on it. Every attack is an opening that your opponent can take advantage of. Repeating an array of attacks makes you predictable.
After a few repetitions she suddenly stops giving ground and darts forward instead of falling back, aiming for Halae's sword-arm.

[Dragon Combat]

Ah, there is is. Exactly what Halae was waiting for.

The trick with trying to move in on a series of quick thrusts is that they don't take much time. If she'd been going for big sweeps, perhaps it'd be more difficult to do this, but when Arlem darts in, Halae uses the intended target, her sword arm, to deflect the attack by way of the armored gauntlets she wears. This of course puts her blade out of position to strike back.

However, it doesn't stop her from moving forward just slightly, enough to ruin the attack that Halae had been baiting out and delivering a knee right into Arlem's ribs. How will she deal with that strike, I wonder?

[Recaiden]

There it is. Exactly what she had been waiting for Halae to finish waiting for and do.

Something intended to actually connect, even if she had to draw it out herself.
How she deals with the strike, I think, is to snap her other arm up so that just as the knee slams into her, she can try to grab Halae by the offending leg and throw her.
"Not bad."

[Halae]

[Dragon Combat]

Halae spins in the air, her feet twisting to shift her balance so that her legs will hit the ground first. It's not quite a graceful move, but it's absolutely enough for Halae to finish the movement on her feet, with her blade up, and ready for more. She doesn't even look winded.

"Not bad, yourself. So, do you need more?"

[Rebonack]

Geneva's Lab

The power is cut!

The sickly green portal crackles with unstable energy, sparks and bolts of emerald lightning snapping into the air. The squeaking gets louder. Almost as if hundreds, thousands, untold legions of rodents are rapidly approaching.

It seems that whatever is coming has managed to establish a foothold from its own end. The gate no longer needs power from Geneva's lab - it's being used from another world, far beyond her reach or control.

Lucky suddenly sneezes.

The gate goes dark, just as the screaming chorus of the Vermintide grows to its crescendo. The lab goes silent, lit only by dim emergency lights and the soft glow of a radroach trying to hide behind a filing cabinet.

"Awww my helmet was still on..." Lucky whines softly, unconcerned with how close they were to an inter-dimensional invasion.

Dawn, meanwhile, trots over to Geneva and coughs awkwardly. "Do we, uh, want to try again, or wait until later when things are more... logical?" she asks, giving a wary look back in Lucky's direction. He's trying to fiddle with his helmet with his wings, without knocking all the equipment off his back.

"Later," Geneva says quickly, looking rather bemused by the whole situation. "Definitely later."

With a sigh she'll gather up her equipment, including the machines balanced on the prone pegasus. Those get stored away in the proper places.

Then?

She'll try to dislodge the roach from behind her filing cabinet.

She'll even employ a broom if that's what it takes!

"Go on, shoo, get out of there!" she chides the over-sized insect. "You aren't going to be chewing on any wires in MY lab."

[Lycan 01]

Geneva's Lab

Lucky is fiddling with his helmet, trying to dislodge it and presumably clean it.

Dawn merely rolls her eyes, and trots after Geneva. "So, uh, has anypony else from our world shown up here? Other Wastelanders, maybe even ponies from other points in our history?" she asks, trying to keep a faint glimmer of excited hope out of her voice. Geneva had mentioned her husbando being from a similar world, after all, so maybe there were other ponies from her world. Ponies she could work with for the good of the Enclave Wasteland.

Meanwhile...

When Geneva looks under the cabinet the glowing radroach is surrounded by normal roaches, many of which seem to be staring at it intently. A few roaches are scuttling towards it with small bits of food, and at least one loose coin. One of the roaches directly in front of it is... wearing a tiny black robe?

Sweet mercy, they've started a cult.

[Rebonack]

[Geneva's Lab]

Starting a cult warrants more vigorous broom thwacking.

So that's what Geneva does.

"There's this part of the City called Carousel Court that's basically what Equestria was like before everything exploded."

She rattles the broom around under the cabinet.

Hopefully the roach doesn't try to grab it from her.

"Twice. It's really nice there. Best place in town to go if you want fancy sweets. Though beware, there's a mare who lives there named Bubblegum Confetti who I swear is Ministry Mare Pie reborn. I heard she recently got a new welcome wagon after the old one was smashed by a disgruntled troll."

He thought the music was too cheerful.

More thwacking at the roach. "Get... out! Negh. Anyway, I did meet a jenny a while back who came from one of the Badlands donkey tribes we bumped into. Nopony we knew, though. Oh! Down Feather! She's from back home. And she has, uh, Persimmon with her."

Being accompanied by Persimmon could be considered a great thing or a terrible thing, depending on somepony's point of view.