middleofsomewhere | The Will to Fight: Ongoing: Red and Purple

The Will to Fight: Ongoing: Red and Purple

Dawn Attack

It's been a busy few days of fighting demons, attacking keystones and fighting both on the demon and human planes. On the morning of day nine of the month of Kazoo a gate opens close to the base camp that the two teams have made.

It seems the demons have decided to focus on this unexpected threat, because it is a sizable force, with a number of the large demons. They march towards the camp with single-minded focus, the opportunity to stop these unwanted defenders taking precedence over their desire to destroy the city.

The advantage to the landscape being as ruined as it is, is that there isn't much to stop the lookouts from seeing this force headed towards them. A gate opening is not subtle. There should be enough time to make sure the defenders are ready.

Scouting Ahead

Once that skirmish is won those on the Red team will find their SCA's beeping, with an exclamation point far out to the east.

A group of demons is congregating at the location indicated. Investigate why, defeat the demons and close any gates nearby.

It will take a while to get there and there is plenty to do on the way for those that follow the exclamation point. Roaming packs of demons, gates to be closed. Exhausting work, especially for those going in and out of the demon gates.

Protecting the City

Once it is clear that these defenders are not going to be easy to wipe out, the attacks on the city itself get more frequent. The demons have changed tactics: rather than sending in large groups they open many small portals, sending small strike teams to harry and target individuals.

Some of the attacks are clearly meant as traps: they open the gates in or very close to the city, to lure the Voidtreckers in to where they will be affected by the spell. Ranged attacks may be useful here.

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It takes Devero a little longer, if only because he's a worrier and it's hard to get his brain to shut off sometimes. But he's also exhausted, and soon enough he sleeps too...

He has an alarm set for roughly around dawn, local time, but that's not what wakes them. Before the alarm even has a chance to go off a voice comes blaring tinnily out of Devero's Interface and Koumyou's SCA both.

Devero jerks awake, groggy enough that he hears only the alarmed tone and not the words. "Wha'...?"

Koumyou tiredly reaches over to his pack and drags out the music carriage headphones he has stowed there, pulling them onto his head without seeming to open his eyes.

He listens for a moment, then sighs.

"No rest for the wicked."

Time to get up.

Devero scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands; it does very little to clear the grit. He pushes himself upright anyway, fumbling his Interface out of handheld mode and back onto his face.

His reaction is not nearly so sanguine once he parses what's going on. He sits horrorstruck for a moment, a barely audible, "Rust and ruin," passing his lips, and then scrambles upright so carelessly he almost takes the whole low tent with him.

"I have to get back--!"

"I'll come with you," Koumyou backs out of the little tent on his knees and one hand, dragging his pack and sword with him. "It'll be okay."

He is, however, going to take the extra thirty seconds or so to pull on his robe, belt it, and settle his breastplate and sutra over his shoulders again. The sword scabbard goes through the sash holding his robe closed, and he slings the pack over one shoulder.

"Do you have someone to move us or are we running?"

"It's curious, I admit..." Nozomi added before thinking herself. "It's so strange."

[She heaves a sigh and shakes her head, mildly frustrated at this.]

Then perhaps guarding the camp with the rest of us will be of use? I could use an extra pair of eyes when going to check on others coming into camp, in case something has followed them. But you should rest to regain your magic, regardless of where you go.

My senses are keen, even without my active scanning magic...

[He sighs, himself. He feels so limited...he's just not trained for this kind of extended siege.]

Very well. I have no ranged weaponry, but I can alert you if anything attempts to sneak its way in. These demons reek of a very distinctive form of darkness, so they ought to have a difficult time slipping past me.

Once Koumyou's free of it, Devero doesn't strike the tent so much as shove the whole damn thing haphazardly into the ARMS band, before grabbing his own shed equipment and gearing up. For all the scrambling panic he'd shown a moment ago, his hands are steady and sure as he buckles on his holsters and pulls on his own armor.

Koumyou's suggestion makes Devero gape at him. "We're not going to make it in time if we run!"

"Well, by 'run' I mean 'fling us through the air in a semi-controlled manner via the sutra'. Not as fast as a teleport or proper flight, but better than using our legs!"

It's a trick he used a few times on Nion. First time by accident, when he'd almost gone into a ravine.

"Oh that's brilliant." She beamed. "So you're a kind of radioactive spider person. Amazing. I love it. I used to be a super hero once. It was a good time. Didn't last long but then they never do. Any other weird mutations? More eyes than necessary? Webs from uncomfortable places?"

Admittedly, her reaction was one of the better ones. Somewhere up there with Ned and waaay better than Aunt May's initial reaction.

"Uh... no? I mean-I'm basically like part Spider now, and I one hundo percent do not recommend getting bit by a radioactive spider-it hurts. A lot. Uh.. as for more eyes no-but I do have extremely sensitive senses-usually I can control it to an extent so it stays at like at uh.. seven or an eight on a scale of one to ten but I'm sick, stressed, in pain or something else then it's more like upwards of an eleven." He explains calmly as the continue to walk. "And I make my own webbing. Like, in a lab-not organically. I can stick to just about any surface, I heal at a much faster rate, and I have a-uh sense that kinda warns me of danger."

Be great if that sense could warn him what the danger was, though.

"Getting bit by anything usually does. Especially if it's venomous. Fortunately I'm fairly adaptive myself and my body tends to reject mutations-- at least in that sense. Plus radioactivity well-- it can give me a bad day, yeah." The knock of double heartbeats still give her the chills even now when she lets herself think about it.

"Ohh. Can you stick to anything? Can I see your fingers?" She wishes she had something with magnification on her but not with these pockets. "But I'm not sure if a prognostication sense is something that spiders actually have. At least not spiders from Earth. At least not from your time period. I mean there was a few months in 3021 where it was arachnophobic hell but then the peace treaty was brokered and they ended up living on a terraformed Venus for a few hundred years at least until the fire nation attacked."

"I think enough radiation could give anyone a bad time." Peter says half-jokingly. He offers her his hand when asked. As long as they can walk an talk then it shouldn't slow them down. "If you're looking for the setules, you can't really see them without a microscope." He explains. "I mean, I'm not gonna pretend I fully understand how the spider-sense works and there's a lot of times where it kinda doesn't-I mean like if I'm tired, confused or upset it doesn't work at all and then even if it does it's not always very specific and a lot of the time I don't even know why it's going off-just that it is.

"It's kinda like a lowgrade anxiety attack. Like you know something's wrong but you can't quite figure out what it is-which I had that even before the spider-bite so Jokes' on the Spider, I guess." He shrugs. He's more than a little confused about about all of that last part she mentioned and he wants to ask but where would he even start?

"Not my time period or not my universe? Because like, if you haven't heard of SHIELD or the Avengers or uh-Iron Man, then you might not be from the same universe. That happens a lot here."

There's a suddenly feeling of guilt at that tone and Peter shifts a little awkwardly. "Uh.. sorry. I didn't mean..." He, personally, happily adopted anything to do with spiders that wasn't just gross and frequently made jokes about being part spider but he supposed that was entirely different from being half-ghost.

"Well, if it helps, you look like some of the guys I've seen?" he offers sympathetically. "They couldn't fly around...but they looked, normal? One even lived with me for ten years! Never had a clue he was dead!"

See, that's normal, right.

"All the ghosts I saw in the cinema, they're always hiding around corners and mad and messing with the furniture! Actually, it'd be great if they did that in Spira... but if they're see-through and mad, you're probably gonna be attacked by a fiend."

"Until either they stop or we fall, which I hope it's really not the case." He did wonder though what would happen if they manage to mess up a mission. Thankfully they seem to do pretty well at them at least.

Allen looks over at what was left and it didn't seem like much was left so maybe they would know soon enough.

"Of course and as for how I am holding out. I have my moments of exhaustion, but I think so so does everyone." So he was perfectly okay with it and to keep going regardless.

He soon flew over to what seemed to be a body laying about. Upon closer look it turns out to be Allen and he is simply out cold.

"Back home, I was told a saying of Don't Stop Keep Walking. So I tend to follow it regardless of my situation. So to be I keep walking the path, I believe I have chosen for myself. If that makes sense." He was sure it might not make any sense to others however.

She is at least going to assume they were friends. That much she could at least figure. But right now maybe wasn't the best time to go into that type of conversation. They had demons to deal with after all.

"Okay, what do you think will be ahead?"

At the sight of a body, Raven hurried her step. Already reaching out with Empathic senses--and breathing a sigh of relief as she verified he was alive. Just unconscious. Oh boy. "Don't suppose you can talk, huh?" Raven addressed Timcampy, as she moved to settle into a meditation pose.

"Okay." She at least took the answer in and ponder on it for a moment.

"then it will only happen in an emergency. I think that would be a good idea, don't you think?"

Danny sighs.

"Forget it, okay? Its just... stuff, from back home."

Danny was not above making jokes about being dead. But... spend a few years hearing everyone you knew, including your parents, constantly talking about how all ghosts were evil non-sentient things who didn't have real emotions and feelings. And well, it kind of got to you.

Besides, they needed to focus on the demons now.

[ The give of his gun tightens around the coil of the barrel, which is all the indication he needs to latch onto. Like the tug of a fishing line that's caught bait, he reels the mechanism as fast as it can take him, hoping Inigo's planted it somewhere that can handle both his weight and momentum.

It almost feels like he's flying, being dragged by the fibre cable through the air, his feet sometimes meeting the ground running, but ultimately making it out of the portal. And it's his greatest relief to see colors back into the world, however destroyed the world they were saving already was. His sights immediately find Inigo's face and there's a peace that washes over him, the distance between their bodies closing in the more the cable is pulled forward.

But it's never smooth sailing just like that. Before the portal closes, two demons jump out, using the speed gained in their realm to lend them an extra boost by the hind legs. They're aim is to land on Roland, claws extracted angrily, jaws open to bite and maim. Their screech is loud, and Roland knows he's in it if he doesn't react fast. ]

Dammit!

[ There's nothing to be done, except to keep reeling, keep steady until he makes it to Inigo's side. They're only a few feet away now, but the demons are closing in on him too. Without his strength, now sapped from too much time in the gates, or his other hand to summon his sword from the arms band, all he can do now is tense his body, awaiting the pain of their eventual descent.

Though if he was to ask for aid, then there would be no other than - ]

Inigo!

[ Roland Alert, Roland Alert - ]

"...I want to say that that's the kind of thing a roommate should probably mention, but I still haven't told my parents I'm part-dead, so..."

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The Will to Fight: Ongoing: Red and Purple

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