Supernatural Isekai IC *Still Recruiting*

[ArlEammon]

"Merging?" Cassie blinks. "Um, so... you say it's going to happen soon, as in, you don't think it's already happened? Is happening?"

She pauses as though for a response, but there aren't a lot of things Wordsworth can say to change her follow-up.

"...how long have you been cooped up in this hotel?"

"I don't think it's happened yet, no. I've not been here long. Mortimer has. Perhaps one year for me."

[gawwy]

"Merging?" Cassie blinks. "Um, so... you say it's going to happen soon, as in, you don't think it's already happened? Is happening?"

She pauses as though for a response, but there aren't a lot of things Wordsworth can say to change her follow-up.

"...how long have you been cooped up in this hotel?"

"I don't think it's happened yet, no. I've not been here long. Mortimer has. Perhaps one year for me."

Are you thinking that our showing up here is the start of the merging Cassie?

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

"Or the middle, if he's been here a whole year. I... don't want to sell anyone out, but she basically admitted she doesn't know the whole story, so..."

Great, now Cassie is playing the pronoun game, too. What fun.

"But, also," she looks to Wordsworth, "there must be situations where worlds interact more predictably, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't know about them at all! So, another witch or wizard like you might have the power to move between them, or summon people from one to another..."

[Lewascan2]

Mia Mathers
Battle With Mordos

The explosive entrance of Rowan as well to the fray came with the welcome addition of a searing blue glow that finally served to drive back the darkness enough to see their opponent. Mia’s eyes narrowed at the confident warning declaration from Rowan that the apparent demon -who was rapidly shedding his human guise and shrugging off both Rowan and Edward’s flames- was also stronger in the darkness. That didn’t really surprise her at this point, annoying as it was, but now that she could see clearly again…

Mia grinned in anticipation, raising her guard further, as she watched Mordos morph into a large, looming arachnid monster. The boom of his wrathful roar was muted by her Stand’s protective overlay of her body, preventing her eardrums from breaking or ringing from the thunderous noise. The opportunity Mordos sought to capitalize on after his attempted(?) stunning strike therefore made the unaffected Mia… a poor target.

As the fangs of the demon’s mandibles came within a foot of Mia, a deep rippling sensation leeched color from reality for the second time. In a world of greyscale, it would perhaps be only Rowan able to perceive that only Mia remained in color and moving in this effect.

“You’re in my range...”

"OOWREAHH!"

A thunderous, lightning-fast counterattack was aimed at the frozen Mordos from below, an uppercut with enough force to send even cars hurtling through the sky now aimed to lift the giant demonic arachnid completely off his feet and suspend him above Mia, held captive and hopefully helpless to escape her continued attacks or those of her allies.

Despite having less than a second to stop time, 「Star Platinum」 was fast enough to spell doom for nearly anyone in melee, especially a non-speedster. Even if by some misfortune the demon was able to move in stopped time, it wouldn’t matter. It had failed to dodge the shrapnel before, and 「Star Platinum」 was wildly faster by comparison to an attack it had been actively holding back on.

"ORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!"

Super-speed, super-strength and utterly inhuman precision acted in concert, as 「Star Platinum」 held nothing back, unleashing a furious barrage of attacks that individually could have shattered diamonds and compromised the structural integrity of a large building from just the impact tremors. And every last blow was thrown with deadly, targeted purpose.

"ORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORAORA!"

Eyes were aimed to be punctured and splattered with precision finger stabs. Fangs were aimed to be violently wrenched from flesh with hooked blows. The Stand’s selective tangibility went into play to completely ignore the demon’s likely more durable exterior and attack its internal organs directly. A barrage of blows went for the brain to try and inflict a disorienting, disabling concussion or worse, aimed to puncture and rupture the venom gland, stabbed at joints with knife-hand strikes and generally aimed to wreak complete internal havoc, as-

The passage of time resumes.

-a further series of thunderous supportive blows would continue to rip upwards to do Mia’s best to try and completely juggle the demon midair and punch actual holes in its outer layer, not ceasing her attacks for a single moment in her merciless, brutal assault. All the while, the Stand paid attention to grab its target and wrench the demon back every few attacks, so that Mordos wouldn’t get the chance to be sent flying out of its range from the force of its own blows and break the attempted stun-lock.

.6 seconds that time. Nowhere close to Jotaro’s learning rate, but that I’m improving at all is already a win.

Releasing a gasp of exertion and sucking wind, Mia’s chest heaved once more from the effort of stopping time. Yet, despite the objective potentially deadly stakes of this fight, the gleeful smile on her lips was something she could not deny, the sheer hype of the experience of using such a power -of feeling tangible improvement- filling her with an incomparable elation, a joy that made her soul sing. Grinning wildly, she bellowed to her allies in a rallying cry, “Don’t hold back! Let that parasite have it!”

[Thunder999]

EDWARD

Apparently in this world, fire isn't the solution to regeneration, how could decades of rpgs have misled him so cruely.

Physical violence seems to be having more effect than spells, which does make sense in hindsight, this guy overpowered their new wizard friend (Edward is rather doubtful of Emma's assumptions that the wizards are behind all her problems, though it Mortos here was pretending to be one, it's an understandable conclusion).
He can work with that, he's a master of transfiguration, a sweep of his wand and over a dozen iron daggers appear in the air before him, conjured from nothing, a sharp jab sends them speeding towards Mortos' restrained body.
He's not entirely sure if they count as the Cold Iron Mordy mentioned, but they've never felt a forge's heat, a moment ago they were nothing, now they are iron.

[FrightKnight0]

VS: MORDOS

Rowan pulling aggro was something Jason hadn't anticipated, but the higher level of light in the room and the cessation of the spider-demon's telekinetic pull meant that he could go from reacting to acting. He wasn't sure what all Mia had done to the creature, but he aimed to not give it time to rally. Recalling the rings from the wall, he let them fly through the air behind him as his soft stance melted into something harder, his legs swiftly propelling him towards the creature and into the air. All ten rings gathered behind him like a halo before flying out beneath him as he leapt. With an acrobatic flip, he kicked down on one ring, lined up with the center of the spider-creature, and golden light flared from it to the other nine as they all slammed down, nine rings slamming into the floor as the tenth hurtled towards Mordos's back, a shimmering mystical net that would hopefully keep the creature occupied for a moment, holding it in the path of Edward's transfigured blades.

[ArlEammon]

The Fight Between Mordos And The Others
Emma witnessed the fight between The Archwarlock and the protagonists, as well as Mortimer. She tapped her fingers on the side of the door into Mortimer's entrance. Mordos snarled from the vicious barrage of physical assaults. The cold iron daggers, the martial arts of Mia and Jason, and other attacks seemed to be doing a number on him. Mortimer resumed casting his thunder bolts at the arachnid demon, and it seemed as if victory was a foregone conclusion. Though as a monstrous demon he was healing past all injury. Finally, the monster shrieked again as hotel security slowly made their way through the Hotel corridors. "ENOUGH!!!" Mordos screamed in a demonic roar. "PLAY TIME IS OVER!" The demon spider's maw opened, this time ejecting a purple miasma. Emma hand waved a ward shielding the Hotel corridors from the cursed miasma, and the magic of the attack was debilitating. It would instantly drain the protagonist's life force if they didn't have a counter for it, not killing them but instantly boosting his own life force. Meanwhile, Mildred, attempting to be helpful, pointed her wand towards the miasma and launched what only be described as "magic missiles", five of them to be precise, which honed in on Mordos, pelting him and causing him sufficient annoyance to wince a little, buying the protagonists time to either counter his assault or try something else.

[gawwy]

"I don't think it's happened yet, no. I've not been here long. Mortimer has. Perhaps one year for me."

"But, also," she looks to Wordsworth, "there must be situations where worlds interact more predictably, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't know about them at all! So, another witch or wizard like you might have the power to move between them, or summon people from one to another..."

Are you thinking that our showing up here is the start of the merging Cassie?

"Or the middle, if he's been here a whole year. I... don't want to sell anyone out, but she basically admitted she doesn't know the whole story, so..."

Great, now Cassie is playing the pronoun game, too. What fun.

Actually that's a really good question Cassie. Mads turns to Words'worth, How many parallel realities are there here? Would you permit me to touch you to see if i can find alternate you's?

[ArlEammon]

"But, also," she looks to Wordsworth, "there must be situations where worlds interact more predictably, right? Otherwise, you wouldn't know about them at all! So, another witch or wizard like you might have the power to move between them, or summon people from one to another..."

"yes. That is an accurate assumption."

"Or the middle, if he's been here a whole year. I... don't want to sell anyone out, but she basically admitted she doesn't know the whole story, so..."

Great, now Cassie is playing the pronoun game, too. What fun.

Actually that's a really good question Cassie. Mads turns to Words'worth, How many parallel realities are there here? Would you permit me to touch you to see if i can find alternate you's?

"There aren't a lot of alternate realities. More like, extra dimensions, if that makes sense. But yes. Go ahead."

[Thunder999]

EDWARD

Edward's first reaction to the fog is defensive, with a thought a Shield Charm pops up around him, the sphere of magic blocking the fog from getting close. He then attempts to Vanish it.

[gawwy]

"yes. That is an accurate assumption."



"There aren't a lot of alternate realities. More like, extra dimensions, if that makes sense. But yes. Go ahead."

Thank you, Mads takes Wordsworth's hand and could sense his fatigue from the days activity, He explored that and found a catalog of similar scenes across myriad realities, mostly clustered around this hotel, but three very close and distinctly different, one darker, one shattered as if reflected in a broken mirror and one distorted, ethereal and dreamlike... Interesting.

I can take that fatigue from you if you want? I can find someone deserving of it later. offering a service to Wordsworth as a small thanks for his truename.

No I would like to sleep well tonight thank you. the wizard replied.

Mads shrugs and lets go of the elderly hand.

All right, many overlapping branches here in the hotel, and 3 distinct other dimensions, all distorted slightly. Id like to learn to walk those distorted ones in the future. But I suppose we have used enough of your time today. Unless my companions have anything else to ask Ill return tomorrow for further tuition.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

"Yeah," Cassie says to Mads. She resists the urge to start pacing again. "This... is already a lot to think about. Um, thanks."

She nods to Wordsworth to excuse herself before turning to leave.

[gawwy]

"Yeah," Cassie says to Mads. She resists the urge to start pacing again. "This... is already a lot to think about. Um, thanks."

She nods to Wordsworth to excuse herself before turning to leave.

Team not very stealthy but actually managed to study.

"I think ve should try and find the others? reception told us where morty was staying ja? We might find them there, we should be careful on zee approach. Ve vouldn't want to mess up their, literally, super powered stealth skills. Ja? Should be just a short way that way.

Mads waves a hand toward where he thinks morty the mutes room is.

[Lewascan2]

Mia Mathers
Battle With Mordos

They were hurting him, quite a lot even, but Mia had to click her tongue in dissatisfaction at how fast he was healing through it. She'd known he could regenerate before, but seeing the demon shrug off even this much of a concentrated assault definitely gave her earlier enthusiasm a bit of pause.

A new bellow escaped Mordos's maw, and Mia's eyes widened at the sight of a purple smog beginning to billow out. Watching the world through 「Star Platinum's」 accelerated perceptions, Mia felt like she was moving glacially, as she began to step back. Her Stand sent another uppercut the demon's way, aiming to break his jaw and slam it shut, hopefully cutting off -or mitigating- the spew of fog. As her Stand did so, she paid attention to the effects of its hand passing through the miasma of unknown purpose, which were...

Nothing?

Not as far as she could tell anyway. Her Stand's hand wasn't even itching from the contact. If it actually did anything, it was an effect too subtle for her to waste her time worrying over right now. Instead, seeing the spread of the mist and not being assured of her allies having similar safety from its effects, she had 「Star Platinum」 stop "juggling" Mordos with its barrage, stick its face into the mist before the miasma could reach Mia, and take a deep breath.

Although "taking a deep breath" might have been putting it lightly, as a titanic suction force began to fill the room. 「Star Platinum's」 chest expanded from the effort, as a powerful wind began to filter the room's gaseous contents. Before the eyes of others, it would appear that the miasma was being drawn and compressed into a pair of "telekinetic" containers in the shape of a pair of lungs, the fog being filtered from the air into the pair of dense dark-purple masses. All the while, the Stand made sure not to trap the air as well, letting any benign gas it sucked in simply pass through its "lungs" intangibly.

Stepping back further with a look of concentration on her face, still breathing heavily from the aftereffects of stopping time, Mia shouted to her allies, "I need to focus on this, but don't stop!" She would continue to have 「Star Platinum」 suck up the miasma as long as Mordos kept spewing it, her Stand's super-strong lungs sufficient to continue forcibly compressing the likely dangerous gas into its body for safe containment. Unfortunately, this would lower her capacity to keep attacking, but it was better than allowing the demon to have his way.

[ArlEammon]

Emma Does Something Else

"Get out of my Hotel." Emma states simply, but forcefully. The force of her command seems to bind Mordos to obey her will, against his own. A red mist puffs into existence around Mordos, and the spider demon's physical form is burned away, as if by fire. The monstrous warlock creature screams out some unintelligible curse as he burns away from Emma's spell. Just then an earthquake seems to shake around the entire hotel and resort. Divine protection protects the Resort and Hotel, though the Phoenix area appears to be undergoing a violent devastation. All the protagonists seem to be feeling a strange change in their very souls. All protagonists who don't have a True Name yet suddenly receive their True Names (OOC, give your True Name.), and earn another power set.

[gawwy]

Team study - Mads

Mads and the gang turn up anticipating a fully contained situation with team stealth doing some machiavellian ****.

Instead they are briefly treated to a scene of demonic chaos.

Then Emma issues an edict banishing the demon.

And everything goes to hell.

"What did he just curse us all with? Is this it? The Apocalypse the old man warned of kicked of already?"

Somthing beats in Mads soul...

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

Rejoining the Party - Cassie

"...I take this to mean your wizard wasn't as friendly as ours?"

As Cassie catches her footing, she looks at the dissipating smoke where the monster used to be, then at McLaren, then Mia, standing triumphantly but exhausted, like she did all the work. Only now does Cassie realize that everyone else is grappling with something internally. Cassie noticed it for herself, too. She was writing it off to her morphogenic matrix being weird, but now it's starting to get exhausting.

"Hey! Are you all okay? Let's find somewhere we can lie down..." She looks around, remembers again that we're literally in a hotel, and gets the nearest door open - coincidentally the same door that Demon Morty had previously commandeered. She then ushers in anyone else who looks like they're feeling faint. There is an 80% chance that this will mean George and no one else, but still.

Once George is on the bed, Cassie takes in more of the surroundings. This will probably include the mirror, the phone and papers that fell off the desk in the quake... and the window. Our first opportunity to see what's going on outside.

[ArlEammon]

Mortimer, explaining
"Mordos, the doppleganger that imprisoned me in the mirror. He unleashed a spell that merged the Hotel with the other words. The resort is now the focal point of the new universe. He's said he might do this for a while but he was holding off to stop the very same Apocalypse he just now brought." Emma laughed. "Oh great! That's just divine."
@Mads/DrGunsforHands
He can see that some cracks are opening, swallowing cars, trees, animals, and people, not to mention entire buildings on occasion. The wind is also storming, and nowhere is safe. Panic is the order of the day.
However, within a few agonizing moments, it will all be mercifully over.

[Lewascan2]

Mia Mathers
The Apocalypse Arrives

Thankfully, Edward was similarly on the ball, and a wave of his wand seemed to vanish the purple mist Mia was helping contain into nothing. Grinning, Mia had 「Star Platinum」 raise its arms into a boxing stance, ready for round two, as the demonic Mordos grew even more cornered by the group's concentrated efforts.

Only now, Emma seemed to finally deign to act, and with a single plainly mystical command from the witch, Mia could only watch with both satisfaction and wariness the sight of the demon howling in defeat and burning away to nothingness. Lacking any particular proficiency for the mystical, Mia could only speculate what that spell had actually been. Had it been some sort of disintegration, or was it a banishment spell, sending the demon back where he came from? One of those was markedly more concerning than the other, and Mia once more felt resolved that patience in ever potentially getting revenge was the right stance to take. For all that she despised Emma, she wasn't fool enough to dismiss her tangible power.

Still breathing deeply from the aftereffects of her time stop, Mia sighed in relief and turned to the rest of the group, hearing the clamor of footsteps and noting that at some point in that mess, it seemed the other half of the summoned group had arrived as well. Chuckling, Mia shot them a small, tired wave and quirk of her lips, drawling, "Sorry, didn't save any excitement for you." Her tone indicated she was more bantering than expressing any form of regret, as the Stand User rolled her shoulder and arched her back in a small stretch. "Geez, well, that sure was braci-"

Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the sudden shaking of the ground. The violent shaking began to send the room’s effects flying every which way, making a mess of the area. Distantly, Mia could hear Mads shouting about the demon cursing them, but she didn’t think the demon had anything to do with this; this was more likely bad luck.

Regardless, Mia staggered to one knee, the rumbling of the ground thrumming through her bones, and then, she felt her soul swell and sing from a nearly indescribable sensation. She sucked in a sharp breath, as a word, a phrase, a name boiled into her consciousness. It felt like it had come from within, and she instinctively understood that it referred to her with mystical import.

Ketsui no Tamashii

The meaning -the translation- came to her easily, and she found the strength to smirk right before the world suddenly and irrevocably changed. Mia staggered again, as a physical change struck her with the spirtual. In many ways, she didn’t seem to have changed at all, but in a ripple, it was as if all the little imperfections and deficiencies in her body had ceased to exist, granting her an unearthly sort of beauty even in spite of her rough, punk manner of dress.

Mia had once heard the phrase ‘how does one describe color to the blind?’… or something to that effect anyway. But now… oh, only now did she truly understand. It hit her like 12 shots of vodka. Not that she’d ever drunk alcoholic beverages before, but she imagined the allegory was apt. It was like sensory overload without the overload, and her body felt fresh and light as a feather, the dregs of her exhaustion suddenly wiped from her as if they’d never existed.

The difference… it truly was hard to describe, to suddenly be of the most distinct opinion that she’d been comparatively blind and deaf all her life. 20/20 vision… didn’t even begin to cover it. The world seemed to move in slow motion, as crisp details and colors struck Mia’s sight in ways that had her eyes widening even more just to take it all in, the invisible spectrum of light now blazing across her awareness without impeding her understanding of what others without it saw. The world seemed to move in slow motion; yet, she had no trouble perceiving it at a manageable speed, nor comprehending the concerned words of Cassie.

The rest of her senses were no less refined, to the point that it was just ridiculous. She could feel the movements of the air so acutely that the disturbances caused by others merely moving stood out to her spacial awareness, along with the heat of their bodies radiating around them. Meanwhile, she could taste the freaking air, and she wasn’t yet sure if she found that exceptionally cool or incredibly creepy.

Mia looked down at her hands -several shades paler than she remembered, and her vision was suddenly picking out the smallest details on a level that was… frankly microscopic, an alien, crystalline lattice now seeming to have replaced her flesh. She had an instinctive understanding that her skin was now… oddly reflective… though not enough to show up under anything but direct sunlight. To mundane eyes, it would look perfectly normal -if pale, but to Mia and her Stand, it practically glimmered.

There was a low, distant burn in the back of her throat, but she shoved it down with strangely practiced ease, despite having never practiced it at all. In the back of her mind, she understood what this was instinctively, the same way she’d intuitively understood how to use her Stand, but in the forefront of her awareness, she found herself having to make a serious effort to parse through all she was sensing and pull herself back to the present.

The Stand User’s gaze turned to the shattered window, and to an outside observer, it was almost a blink-and-you-miss-it motion, a snapping blur she’d moved in without fully comprehending it till after the fact. Yet Mia was more concerned with the ongoing devastation outside the hotel.

The distant screams of the fearful and dying people reached her, echoing even from miles away, as her eyes beamed the scenes of violent death and destruction straight into her mind with permanence and veritable 4k resolution. The thunderous noise of calamity threatened to drown out the voices; yet, Mia found her hearing providing a cold clinical parsing capacity, her mind operating with a speed that left her earlier capabilities wildly in the dust to commit every last detail to her now perfect memory. And all the while, she found the increasingly large and disturbingly tantalizing and unmistakable smell of blood wafting upon the wind with sinful temptation.

Swallowing the burn in her throat with a mouthful of venom, Mia found herself taking a moment longer than she’d have liked to rip her gaze from the sight outside and refocus on the people she was with, feeling no small amount of relief that none of them had been injured in the earlier clash with the demon. She wasn’t entirely concerned that the presence of blood would have incited… irrational actions from her, but she didn’t particularly fancy the distraction or temptation at this moment.

"What." The flat word escaped her lips as less of a question and more a statement of her disbelief and shock, not just at what was happening but at what Morty was saying.

Only now did she truly understand the scale of what the wizard had meant when he claimed that Mordos could “merge dimensions”, but she still found it hard to believe he was this powerful after the way he’d been getting bullied by the group’s teamwork… Then again, maybe- No, this was just ridiculous! How the hell could he pull something like that off with such a short casting time?! Had he simply had the spell preprepared and waiting for a trigger? For the scale of what it was, that was the only thing that made sense to Mia, and for her own sanity, it was what she would choose to believe until told otherwise. Not to mention, but she had so many questions about how this latest empowerment had occurred. Though she hadn’t questioned her good fortune before, she’d thought the powers they arrived with would be all they would get, but this… What the hell was this?

Gritting her teeth, Mia shot a glance back outside the window, hands tightly curling into fists in frustration and unease at the situation. "Should we... do something about that? Anything at all?" Could they, even? Though she asked the question, even with this new burst of empowerment, she wasn’t sure how much she could help beyond racing back and forth to grab civilians and deposit them safely inside the hotel. Even stopping time would do little more than delay the inevitable with how short her duration was.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

There's an interesting thought. Cassie's first thought was to stay put until the shaking stops and to help recover from the aftermath as a community. That's how normal people deal with natural disasters! But then, she's not a normal person anymore, and this disaster is far from natural.

"Right. Yeah! We should!" Cassie starts pacing again as she thinks of where to start. "The other wizard said that this would be happening to the whole world soon. Dimensions merging, I mean. He made it sound like it'd be from a meteor, though, not a curse by some guy."

Her pacing brings her to the room's kitchenette. The cutlery drawer was left half-open by the quake. She grabs a knife.

"You say the hotel is the focal point. What does that mean? Is there any chance we can move the whole building? Center it somewhere else?"

She returns to the window while she waits for a reply. This still isn't an ideal time to be doing science to herself, but she might not get another chance for a while and she really needs something to do with her hands right now. She grabs a lock of her hair and starts sawing it off.

[TheAlmightyKue]

Rowan

It had happened so quickly. First, the darkness that had consumed all of their visions. Which Rowan had tried to mitigate as best they could with their flames. Then came the fog, the miasma that this demon spewed forth, which Rowan would assume their flames wouldn't do anything to. They were quite sure they could fly over the fog, but with the demon being a demon, fire likely wouldn't do much in the way of damage. It was becoming clear they would need to do something to handle this growing threat.

Then in a flurry of actions, the situation found itself semi-resolved. Emma the witch who had brought them here had made herself useful and cast some form of magic against the demon. He writhed and shrieked as red mist acted like fire, but was not, destroying him. But his curse seemed to trigger a change, the earthquake, and Rowan fell to their knee.

But as they landed on their knee the world changed. No, that wasn't accurate the world didn't change, they changed and the world stayed the same, but wholly changed. Their body ached with a false memory of burning pain, like recalling an old injury, but an injury that Rowan had never known themselves. Looking down at their hands still engulfed with brilliant blue flames Rowan took stock of the changes in an instant. Their skin was different, human cells were replaced with this unknown crystalline structure that mimicked human skin in appearance but not qualities. They became acutely aware that their senses allowed them to range out beyond themselves in a way that they couldn't previously.

Rowan could hear the beat of every heart in the room, minute that of Mia. Mia's scent was different from the humans around them as well. Rowan's new instincts told them that Mia was a potential threat. Without even finishing the thought Rowan was on their feet and across the room from Mia their eyes locked on Mia. But seemingly as fast as this had occurred Rowan had appraised the room and threat and relaxed.

The fire in their hands felt odd, not painful by any stretch, but warm, pleasantly so. Rowan lifted their hand again and while one hand lost its fire the other retained it. They were enthralled by the look of fire in their hand, how the light made their skin sparkle in ways that no other human eye could hope to see. As Mia and the others spoke Rowan too noticed the burning in their throat, like someone had poured acid down their throat. It was saturating and consuming, but not unmanageable. It just took a measure of focus to push it from their thoughts. But the very clear swallowing of a mouthful of venom was a sign to any in the know that the thirst was not something Rowan was expected to have to deal with.

Looking around at the others, aware of the blood thumping through their bodies Rowan's vision lingered on them for a second too long before speaking. “Is there any way to stop it, any way to stop its spread at the very least?” Their voice was clear, perfect, alluring by design. The emotional atmosphere would wash over them and Rowan felt the fear and anxiety of the people outside, though distant. And the feelings of the group now around them. “We need to do something, they're terrified”

[gawwy]

Mads looks out following Rowans indication of fear and searches for people. Finding one he focus on them sadly, he sees a flicker of himself, no a different him, near them. Then suddenly he's next to them, and in the window looking out too. The perspective confused him but the terrified screams focused him on the terrified people

" Ve are here to help Ja? He shouted, before grabbing the closest person and teleporting them back to the hotel.

Get them somewhere safe he shouts to the team as he teleports out to get another. And another. The multiple viewpoints make him dizzy at first, but the five meat brains compensate quickly. He quickly starts dropping of displaced persons to the room.

[Lewascan2]

Mia Mathers
The Calamity Arrives

A flicker of movement drew Mia's gaze to snap to the figure of Rowan, her nostrils near imperceptibly flaring, as she came to several unnerving realizations all at once. The inhuman speed and grace, the distinctly different smell (also decidedly nonhuman), the lack of heartbeat or body heat, the far too familiar crystalline makeup of their skin and the brief surge of hostilitythreatcompetitor? All of it served to make her eyes narrow to an infinitesimal degree towards the being she realized was suddenly also a fellow vampire. Their gaze was locked on her, and she instinctively met it for a moment that was likely quite a bit longer and tenser for them than others in the room. Mia felt herself bristling, hackles rising for a moment, before she made an effort to shove them down and break the stare. She wasn't sure where her own wariness ended and her new instincts began, but she didn't need them intruding right now; the last thing they needed was infighting.

Instead, she focused her attention on Cassie, even as she couldn't help but make sure to keep Rowan somewhere in the corner of her vision at all times. She was sure Rowan had about as much choice in this change as she did -which was to say, none at all, and so showing them hostility would be completely unwarranted. Caution, however? Understanding what they both were and how dangerous another of her kind could be without great self-control? Well, that was more reasonable, far from offensive, perhaps even a matter of course and natural form of respect.

Cassie's words were informative, but Mia wasn't certain how helpful they were to her right now. She couldn't presently cast any magic that she was aware of, so she doubted there was much she could do to mystically interfere with the catastrophe. And as Mads teleported out and back in with a rescue with no apparent hesitation, Mia frowned and decided there were better ways to make herself useful than listen to Cassie questioning Morty.

As Rowan exclaimed in concern about the people outside, Mia snorted and practically glided around Cassie to the shattered window in an almost liquid motion, nimbly slipping into the open frame. A casual brush of her hand along the window frame sheered off any remaining jagged glass, clearing it for safe traversal of those with lesser durability. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, "Then less talking and more doing something yourself." Quickly glancing between the Mads that remained in the hotel room and the… multiple Mads now appearing outside in the chaos, Mia briefly snapped out, "Hey, keep an eye on the sky. I'm gonna be sending you some fastballs to catch!" And with an explosive kick, Mia was leaping out into the storm in a flickering blur.

Flickering through the storm, Mia resisted the urge to hold her breath, as the smell of blood intensified all around her. Despite the temptation it offered, her sense of smell was one of her most powerful tools at this moment, and with it, she could easily hunt down the injured and the trapped.

Her first target was a large fissure that was crumbling open down a busy street, swallowing people, vehicles and people inside said vehicles alike. The screams of terror and pain echoed in her ears, and as she got a better angle within mere moments, she could see down the fissure. She could spot the sight of cars wedged into the widening gap, some several dozen meters down, others deeper and still others in mid-fall. Thoughts flying, Mia determined priorities and acted.

Spoiler: Time Stop Rescue Blitz

Show

"「Star Platinum: The World」!"

As color leeched from reality and brought with it a blessed dead silence, Mia exploded into motion, passing by several cars falling down the gap. In a flash, her hands -now imbued with inhuman strength- reached out in concert with her Stand to easily tear off car doors with shrieks of metal and cast them aside. Seatbelts were casually snapped like rubber bands, and passengers frozen in states of terror were ripped free and with utmost precision from her Stand to be-

-yeeted high into the sky in powerful arcs in the direction of the hotel, hopefully in clear view of either Mads or anyone else on the team that could catch them. Due to her Stand's utmost precision, Mia was able to throw them without risking snapping their necks from the act, and this, she determined, was the most efficient rescue strategy for her.

For ultimately, she didn't have the time to waste running back and forth between the hotel and rescues. People would die in the interim, and if she just left people out here right near whatever immediate danger she'd saved them from, it was likely they'd just get caught in another long before they could hope to reach the safety of the hotel. The best thing she could do, therefore, was to make them clearly visible for rescue. After all, for all that Mads could teleport, she wasn't sure he had any sensory powers that would let him hunt people down to rescue in the first place. As for Mia? Well, given what she was now, "hunting people" was one of the things she did best.

A thundercrack of footsteps accompanied Mia bounding like a pinball around the innards of the earthen fissure, diving deeper to rip people out of the cars that had fallen, before pulling them to the surface and giving them a similar yeet. The smell of blood was so intense around them that she found herself a little more concerned for their well-being, but she didn't have time to stop. She could speculate, however, that the cars that had actually fallen had likely resulted in their occupants suffering some form of bodily trauma. Mia wasn't a healer though, so whether they lived or died wasn't something she could generously affect beyond this much aid. She could stop them from being crushed in the earth or being buried and dying slowly alone, but if their injuries were too great to survive regardless, then she'd done all she could.

All the while, Mia couldn't help but marvel a bit. She felt the frozen wind slicing past her, as she moved like quicksilver. The world blurred around her and yet remained defined and perfectly perceptible to her inhuman gaze and that of her Stand. She had already blurred down 200-foot strip of roadway, and her time stop was only just beginning to wane. She could have moved faster, of course, if she were running at a dead sprint and not delayed by needing to pull people out of cars and throw them at safer speeds, but she still boggled at the difference in efficiency being a vampire made for her time stop. Even the miniscule amount of time she did have was suddenly vastly more effective than anything even DIO could have hoped to have.

You hear that, you glorious bastard? I may not be as versatile, but in this respect, in the power you took the most pride in, I'm inherently superior... and using the Stand of the one that killed you at that. Hah, how that must burn like the sun, I bet! She paused for a moment, feeling a familiar sensation. .7 seconds now. Despite becoming a vampire, it doesn't seem to have increased my improvement rate... but I suppose that makes sense. There's still a critical mental element to it. Confirmation bias might be working both for and against me.

Her time stop was drawing to a close more quickly now, color beginning to leech back into the world, as movement and madness resumed. Glancing back over her shoulder, Mia spied the people she'd rescued, currently frozen in time, unknowing of their fates. 48 lives now hung in the balance of the rest of the group's reflexes, and there would only be more to come. Because all of this had occurred inside one objective second of time, and Mia wasn't even close to done rescuing people.

She'd keep an eye out and try and catch anyone the other failed to, but for now? Mia smirked and turned to keep sprinting, now largely aiming for the cars and people on the road that had yet to fall into the fissure but were in imminent danger of it.

"Time begins to move again."

From an outside perspective, it was as if Mia was a nigh invisible distant blur one moment, heading for the chaos, and then the next, the roadway she'd aimed for had several dozen screaming people shotgun arcing high through the stormy sky away from it, as if they'd teleported into the air. All the while a great number of cars were crashing to the sides of the roadway or tumbling into the earth, all of them bereft of at least one door. Those same doors were in the middle of finishing their own parabolic arcs.

The source of all this was plenty clear, as the distant Mia now made contact with the not yet collapsed roadway in a blur and calamitous shriek of metal. She was running straight down the center of the road, and dozens of both doors and civilians went hurtling into the sky in her wake, all of them aimed in tosses to be in clear view of the hotel. It could be as clear as nothing else that Mia didn't have the luxury to be gentle or slow about this in order to save lives, and her earlier words would quite plainly convey that she was expecting the rest of the group to pick up the slack.

Mia, meanwhile, was saving her next use of time stop to make rounds to catch the people she tossed in the unfortunate case the rest of the group couldn't take advantage of her setup. It would be inconvenient and stop her from saving more people, but she wasn't about to just callously let people splatter from her own actions. She'd prefer to not have to run back to the hotel personally with each rescue, but saving fewer people was better than saving none at all.

[gawwy]

Mia Mathers
The Calamity Arrives

Quickly glancing between the Mads that remained in the hotel room and the… multiple Mads now appearing outside in the chaos, Mia briefly snapped out, "Hey, keep an eye on the sky. I'm gonna be sending you some fastballs to catch!" And with an explosive kick, Mia was leaping out into the storm in a flickering blur.

From an outside perspective, it was as if Mia was a nigh invisible distant blur one moment, heading for the chaos, and then the next, the roadway she'd aimed for had several dozen screaming people shotgun arcing high through the stormy sky away from it, as if they'd teleported into the air. All the while a great number of cars were crashing to the sides of the roadway or tumbling into the earth, all of them bereft of at least one door. Those same doors were in the middle of finishing their own parabolic arcs.

The Mads still in the window could see the people being yeet into the air by the blur-formally-know-as-Mia and redirects his other four bodies to intercept them midair, the many differing sensations of free fall for even that brief moment was starting to make him feel sick. Unable to waste time throwing up he started moving his vertigo to the poor souls he was rescuing, with.... predictable results.

[ArlEammon]

"You say the hotel is the focal point. What does that mean? Is there any chance we can move the whole building? Center it somewhere else?"

"The Resort is going to be the center of the new universe. You see, the Hotel exists in the is world, the shadow world, the mirror world AND dream world all at once. As a result of whatever Mordos was doing, or a result of approaching Comet, or BOTH. I don't know. Somehow, it means that The Elysian Hotel and Resort will be the most important location in every universe. It's going to be an embassy, for one thing."

Rescue Efforts
In less than two minutes, many people were saved, despite the many dying. Mildred, Lindmer and others in the Hotel, not to mention the protagonists all pitched in to mitigate the carnage with their best efforts. A mysterious whale sounding song could be heard throughout the air. Mortimer's eyes widened as Word'sworth could be seen behind him in the doorway to his hotel room. The wizard waved his hand, as if warding away some great evil. Then Word'sworth could be seen limping on his walking stick after, walking towards the window to survey the damage.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

The vampires, without realizing it, have noticed something about Cassie that she has not quite figured out for herself. She said before that she didn't have any internal organs, and this was true. She has no heart. Yet now, there is a pulse. She has no blood. Yet now, vital spiritual energy nonetheless courses through her, emitted by sugary crystals dissolved in her alien matrix. By way of comparison, if a healthy human is freshly-baked pie on a windowsill, Cassie is now heavy barrel of factory-grade cherry syrup. It's horribly sweet and probably full of preservatives.

The thought of moving the building was meant to spur on two people: the wizard who knows how the curse works, and the witch who theoretically owns this magic hotel. If that weird prediction about embassies means they can't help, then it's a dead end for now. Mia's right, anyway. The best place to start is to get out there and-

"Mia? Mia! What the salt and vinegar hell are you doing?!"

Welp, no time to think anymore! Sink or swim, I guess!

Hastily now, Cassie half-slices half-tears off the chunk of hair she was working on. It feels as eerie and bad as she thought it would - it's still a part of her, even when physically removed. She leaps through the window, morphs her torso into a billowing blue glider, and sets forth to intercept the airborne populace. At the first person she sees, a local middle-schooler by the looks of them, she hurls some of the half-melted hair. It twists and reshapes itself to catch the wind and get under them, and then -

shhnnnrrk!

- expands into a fluffy mattress, just in time to cushion the landing. It was the first thing Cassie could think of! Shut up!

With the proof of concept established, she banks, twists the glider into feathery wings, and starts slicing off and throwing more chunks of herself with varying degrees of effectiveness. A few more of Mia's test subjects get crude cloth parachutes. A burning building gets a rope ladder. One leg melts off, then stretches out as it falls and lands over an expanding fissure as a net, catching three people at once. The other drops to the ground and blows up into a small metal shelter around a dozen more, before a building collapses on top of them.

By the time the two minutes are up, there's nothing of Cassie left. The wings themselves maneuvered to snatch up one last survivor and deposit her by the shelter before dropping to the ground in exhaustion.

[TheAlmightyKue]

Rowan

Yes, it was indeed uncomfortable to meet an equal predator. But Mia was the only one who looked flawless in Rowan's eyes. Everyone else looking a bit misshapen and malformed. Perhaps it was just the unfamiliarity with the new vision that left Rowan feeling like everyone was slightly off.

As Mia would head off to help they would take a moment to familiarize themselves with their new body, so as better to know what to do with it. But as they did they realized they seemed to know how the body moved and acted, a familiarity that shouldn't exist for someone so new to it.

Rowan moved to the window before the humans among them could blink and was out the window in the same movement. Thankfully throwing oneself from a window likely wouldn't hurt this form anyway, but Rowan's ability to fly came in handy here as they soared through the air to assist in catching some of those Mia had launched airborne.

Afraid to touch them for a moment, for fear of this thirst overwhelming them, they would use their mind to reach out and assist in moving the civilians into the hotel and away from the chaos that was the world falling apart around them. The fear was horrible, it ate at Rowan's concentration. It was worse than even the thirst, it was consuming.

But Rowan wasn't going to let it consume them, focusing their thoughts as they tried to control their own emotions, a calming aura would emanate from them which in part would help any civilian they caught with their telekinesis and kept close to them, it would calm their panic at the very least.

” What should I do with them beyond getting them inside?” they asked as they guided the floating humans into the hotel through a window they forced open with their minds. ” Get inside.” they told the humans and turned to look out on the city ” Can I assist anyone? I don't know what to do to help the most.”

[FrightKnight0]

Jason rushes out onto the balcony, pulling a new piece of jewelry from seemingly nowhere and slipping his new Sling Ring onto his hand by instinct more than anything else. He follows up on Cassie's immediate rescues with Sling Ring portals, sliding the shimmering rings around the rescuees and sending them into the foyer of the hotel.

[ArlEammon]

The Rescue And Aftermath
Word'sworth surveyed the damage outside the Resort, with his clairvoyance, he saw the dead and the carnage that wracked the city of Phoenix for miles. Turning around he had a serious look on his face. "Oh this is just perfect." He said sarcastically. "We have to act fast. I can sense a disturbance in the basement level. Whatever's going on down there could make the earthquake seem like a baby giving his first cough in comparison."

[Lewascan2]

Mia Mathers
The Calamity Arrives

Spoiler: The Last of Rescue Operations, Answering Rowan's Question & Grabbing Cassie's pieces.

Show

Her allies of happenstance were about as quick on the uptake as Mia had hoped. Her lips quirked in a smile of amusement at Cassie's distant squawk of or umbrage? Panic? Whatever the case, the... apparent shapeshifter? Huh. Neat. She was taking an interesting strategy, chopping herself into pieces and having those pieces morph into implements of aid, spreading out wafts of that strange syrupy smell she carried all over the place. Meanwhile, despite Mia's concerns over them, Rowan was demonstrating both a relieving control of their bloodlust and a rather useful telekinetic power.

Mia made sure to toss a larger portion of the civilians her fellow vampire's way. They seemed the most well-equipped to catch them. Not that Mads or Jason were doing a poor job by any means, but there were a lot of people to catch. Mia elected to start being a little more... grouped about where she tossed people to avoid spreading the catchers thin. There'd already been several close calls, but no-one had gone splat yet. And Mia made sure to keep herself relatively close to and observant of the impromptu "landing zone", ready to interfere in any misses. To that end, she refrained from using her time stop any further for the time being, saving it for one such emergency. In the meanwhile...

Crashing through the window of a collapsing burning building in a flying leap, Mia raced about the upper floors in search of trapped people, tearing doors off hinges in her wake. Though the heat of the flames didn't particularly bother her, the threat of the flames still made her instinctively prickle, well aware that they stood as a distinct weakness of her kind. Of course, they were only a serious threat if they ignited her venomous bodily fluids, but she'd taken to primarily using her Stand to handle anything burning. In her search, she tossed no small amount of people out into the sky towards Rowan, her throat burning with temptation all the while. This much exposure to blood and injury was doing little but swell her appetite, and she'd found herself having to resist the serious temptation to detour to feed on a body that was already dead. Because why not, right? It's not like they needed the blood anymore anyway.

The fact that she'd even considered it unnerved her, no matter how many times she dismissed it. Because despite how many times she did so, she felt her heart wasn't in it somehow. No matter the excuses, what she was considering was basically cannibalism, something that should have turned her stomach, but suddenly, she found that the only thing it did was make her salivate with temptation. She was more disturbed by the fact that her mindset had been clearly altered in such a fashion than the fact that she was considering such things at all. Though, admittedly, another part of her was concerned that she had always possessed a similar attitude and simply not known it till now. They did say power revealed one's true nature...

She found herself musing that she would... need to be very careful not to start considering herself something "other" from humans. Just because her body instinctively preyed upon them, considered them food, didn't mean they were any less than they'd ever been in relation to her. Human... vampire... they were all people at the end of the day. Maybe she had some inconvenient dietary needs now, but she wasn't about to start considering her former species as cattle to be harvested.

Though... that might be easier said than done, but only the future could say for sure.

She might not have been human any longer... but she wouldn't abandon her humanity.

She just had to always keep that in mind, and... everything would be fine.

Right?

The distant questions from Rowan at the hotel were picked up by her keen hearing, drawing her from her thoughts, and Mia pitched her voice at a volume she was confident they could hear in return. "Just keep catching people... Although..." Mia stopped running around to stand atop a not yet collapsed building and observe the apparently waning effects of the calamity. "Honestly, I think we're done for now. If we really want to conduct any large-scale relief efforts, we should probably regroup and organize properly." Mia stiffened, as a strange, whale-like song rippled through the air, her eyes narrowing in search of the noise, frowning at noting it was coming from the hotel's area. Yet, she continued speaking, "We should return to the hotel with whoever we've already grabbed and reconsolidate. If you have any healing abilities, might be best to focus on healing the injured. The less free-flowing blood, the better for you and I... right?" she finished off with a knowing tone, before returning to her task.

Mia frowned, looking down at the destruction. She'd helped rescue many people now, but there were still more left in peril. In a modern-day city, with their absurd populations... there would always be more. She could spend all her life hunting for people to save, and with a vampire's sensory suite, she was fairly confident she'd never run out of candidates. She could do that... but she would be honest with herself. She wasn't anywhere close to that selfless.

She didn't have enough time to waste on things like that... never enough time.

It was the same reason she'd bet people would consider her callous and uncaring on matters of "world hunger" and misfortune or the like. She was the kind of person to only get annoyed every time she saw advertisements begging for donations to sink into foreign populations, skipping it if she could or muting it if she couldn't. If she allowed herself to be worried about the problems of everyone, she'd never be content in life. It was easier to focus on herself, on what was relevant to her immediate circumstances. Anything beyond that...

Well, she'd just have to be satisfied with helping the people in front of her. That was enough.

It was the most practical way to live her life, Mia decided, as she finally headed back.

Partway there, Mia detoured to clear the rubble of a collapsed building to rip open a small, buried metal shelter enclosing about a dozen civilians, herding them in the direction of the hotel with firm commands. "Go!" The command escaped her lips perhaps a tad more aggressively than she'd intended, but her bloodthirst was well and truly ignited by this point. For all her restraint, the temptation didn't become any less irritating, and she suspected she'd need to feed soon to take the edge off. "Hurry, and stick together! There will be medical care at the hotel!" While she didn't strictly know that for certain, she was fairly confident Edward at least could whip something up, if not one of the other numerous powerful spellcasters living there. There was no point sending them to a hospital in this mess; the vampire quite suspected that the infrastructure for such facilities to be functional had been devastated anyway.

Once the civilians had left the makeshift metal shelter, Mia frowned at the construct, her nostrils flaring at the now-familiar cloyingly sweet scent billowing from it. She'd noticed the oddity about Cassie before back in the hotel room, but at the time, she'd been rather more concerned with Rowan and the calamity outside. Only now, she did recall distantly spotting Cassie tearing pieces of herself off to transform into implements of aid. Yet, doing that hadn't seemed to be something Cassie demonstrated a great capacity to recover from. The last time Mia had seen her, the apparent shapeshifter was in the middle of being only a pair of wings.

Though, now that she thought about it, hadn't Cassie's body parts only started changing form after she chopped them off? Did she "preprogram" them somehow? Could she sense and reshape them at range? Probably not, given how static they'd remained after changing, but maybe Cassie hadn't thought about it yet. She seemed to have a biomass limit. How much had this cost her? Could she reabsorb what she'd spent? Despite having seemingly changed in nearly all perceptible ways, the metal shelter still smelled intensely of the unique substance that comprised the shapeshifter, so Mia was inclined to believe that something about it hadn't fully made the transition.

Mia's frown grew deeper in contemplation, as she and her Stand ripped into the rubble further, clearing it out enough to yank the metal shelter from the mess entirely. Hefting it up with one hand and uncanny balance, the vampire began to quickly follow after the group of civilians that had once been protected by it, acting as a safe escort to the hotel. Along the way, she made small detours to grab a rope ladder that had also once been part of Cassie, along with hauling up a net suspending several more people over a fissure, adding three more to her little group, which had slowly been collecting even more frightened civilians in search of aid and safety in numbers. No small number of those people were staring at her wide-eyed, perhaps for good reason, as she casually walked around with a solid metal shelter balanced upside-down atop one palm like a waiter's tray from a fine restaurant. She'd also dumped the ladder and net inside it, using the shelter as a makeshift bowl, a receptacle that soon collected a number of crude parachutes and one mattress.

The pungent smell of vomit and some fear-based bowel movements greeted her long before her return, as Mia arrived at the hotel resort. It seemed the group's chosen transportation methods hadn't entirely agreed with the people they rescued. Keen eyes flicked around, as Mia approached the entrance to the front lobby. Her nose wrinkled at the tantalizing smell of blood wafting about, the presence of the injured in high numbers more than obvious to her, the thunderous chorus of fast-beating hearts sounding out all around.

This close and in such numbers -free of the prior rush, Mia now had time to properly appreciate the ugliness of the aftermath, see the shell-shocked and often tear-streaked faces of the survivors. People were disheveled, filthy and wan, and the vampire found herself nearly hyper-fixating on the unpalatability of it all. She couldn't help it really. Her hyper-enhanced senses, comprehension capacity and newly perfect memory simply refused to let her block out a single solitary detail. Every single person she saw was an exercise in... almost disappointment. They were lackluster. Flawed. Even the slightest dissonance in the lengths of strands of hair stood out like a flashbang to her sight, the disorder making some nearly unconscious part of her tut in disapproval. It was such a strange and unfair thought to have that she found herself frowning, even as her mind practically leapt to compare them to Rowan, to the only example of flawle-. Scowling, Mia ripped her thoughts from that nonsense direction.

Her already present frown intensified at the still ongoing whale-like noise reverberating through the air, sounding like it was coming from... the very walls themselves. It made her skin crawl with unease, even as she heard the distant sound of an unknown elderly voice speaking from Morty's room above, and the words he was saying definitely put more haste in her stride. Mia made no motion to stop the civilians she was escorting from scurrying inside and scattering as they may. Her eyes were only for the sight of a pair of feathery wings lying slumped on the ground before the hotel entrance.

Crouching down by the mass that currently smelled the strongest of Cassie, Mia dropped the metal shelter she'd been hauling around to the ground beside her with a heavy thump and vibration. Brow pinching in concern at the unmoving wings, Mia asked, "Hey, that you, Cassie? You good there?" She certainly didn't seem to be. "I brought most of that stuff you made out of your body. Seemed like it was costing you, and I figured you might be able to... recycle it?" Frowning, Mia tipped the makeshift shelter over with a protest of metal to enable her to dump the "rope" and "net" inside it onto the ground beside the pair of wings. "There's someone new in Morty's room talking about this only being the beginning of the destruction. Apparently, there's now something in the basement that if not addressed will make this current calamity look like a baby's cough in comparison. If you think you can get back in any shape for action..."