NPF Avatars: Pain and Amazement

[Raiden]

The small group were fighting ferociously against the hundreds of flamers. They were doing quite well, in fact. However, it was keeping them busy enough that they did not notice something on top of the Mashirosen Tower.

It was a figure that glowed with sparking electricity. His long white hair flowed in the wind from the high spot, and his glowing eyes surveyed the destruction below.

"As was expected. The Flamers are of little consequence to them. Which means, though, that I have less time to raid this tower."

Raiden scratched at his chin.

"What is a Thunder God with the ability to alter reality supposed to do? I know!"

Words silently slipped from Raiden's mouth, and became solid in the air around him. This was going to be both fun, and a surprise. He was performing a feat that none of the NPFers had ever managed to see.

He was going to fuck with reality.

The symbols split into hundreds of different sigils that hovered in the air about him. Slowly, the sigils fell and began to cover the Mashirosen Tower with different symbols and runes. As the glowing magic text sank into the building, the structure seemed to alter its very form, become more twisted and strange. Staircases appeared that seemed to go nowhere. Sections of the tower grew, with no entrance into the new areas. The stone and metal became black, and strange glowing minerals formed in the building.

And of course, he added a special touch at the entrance. But they would have to find that out for themselves.

Raiden laughed as he himself seemed to meld into the building, entering the upper areas without having to go through an opening.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Rhiya was aware of something... not quite Rhiya-like.

She looked down and waved her hand past her face. "Huh, transparent."

Then she looked further down.
"Ah."

~~

This was a new experience. Sub-Rhiya - wingless as she was - looked about her on the battlefield. Naturally, by some bizarre Brownian Motion, a large circle was cleared around Real Rhiya's prone body... or it could possibly be due to the fact that no goddamned Flamer would dare provoke an unconscious Rhiya clad in the remnants of her foe (literally) just to 'see what would happen'

Sub-Rhiya looked back at her sub-self.

"This is new. I wonder if this rubbed off from me from the constant presence of Pyros?" she voiced aloud, then took a bit more close scrutiny at her physical body.

~~

There was a couple of details that was oblivious to Rhiya before she passed out, and this was what they were:

Not only had she stripped one unfortunate flamer of his skin and used it like a cloak, while donning another's guts as a scarf and yet anothers's eyeballs as a pair of gruesome earrings, but there were other items of... considerable 'interest' upon her person.

This was namely the lower jawbone (still bloody, with remnants of cheek tendons clinging onto it) perched like a bizarre crown on top of her head, a necklace of teeth (strung together by hair, using only the canines) hugging her neck, and the various other bits and pieces she stuck to herself - in her RFS rage - like one of them insane camoflage crabs that stick any shit that they can get their claws on onto their exoskeleton. There was definitely a couple of broken-rib-cage arm-bands and finger-bone-and-sinew bracelets and anklets as well, and Rhiya swore she noticed a spinal-cord belt around her waist, beneath all the blood, tendons and showing neuronal pathways.

Sub-Rhiya was sick for a brief moment.

After emptying the contents of her 'stomach' relatively quickly (spilling sub-food all over the place) she stood back up again, and, avoiding any further observations to her rather.... disturbing appearance at the moment (she was sure there was a spleen GLOVE on her right hand) turned towards the Pyros that was happily reading a Terry Pratchett novel high overhead.

"Erm... excuse me," Sub-Rhiya said to get Pyros' attention - that, and she was sure she had nothing else to do while her body was unconscious, "why is my subconscious suddenly like yours? You'd better not be affecting me just because I madly jumped you and... you know... did that."

[Incendius]

"Sir!" a voice sounded out into the room as a figure was seen running forward at a high pace down the corridor. Breathing heavily the figure came into the room with a sheet of paper with many different writings upon it. Stopping his full scale run in front of the person who was obviously in charge the running man clasped his knees and breathed heavily in and out.

Looking up from the readout on the screen the man the runner was addressing questioned in a sharp voice that brooked no nonsense or vague answers and left no hint that the person should straighten up. "The results of our manuever?" was his query as the remainder of the room fell silent to listen in.

The first person to speak snapped to attention his body straightening and his hand held against his forhead in a salute answered "It was a success sir. The purging has commenced, and the unwantables that were sent have been destroyed." At this proclamation the room fell silent, the only sound the beeping off the assorted screens.

"You may go soldier" was the only thing the man spoke, and the runner as per his name ran from the room. When he was sure that the runner was gone the man spoke out again "Well then, we shall commence with the next phase. Any questions before we start?" he addressed to the entire room.

Only one person spoke up and said "But is it really wise for us to trust... him? I mean, he is the one that is providing us with the outlet for our unwantables, but... do you really trust him? Is it really wise to do that? Can we not find another way to handle this?"

The seeming highest ranking person in the room shook his head slowly and sighed simply answering "I know we all have doubts to this venture, but we have tried time and again to do this in other paths, and this is an oppurtunity that we can not miss. I agree that we should not trust him, but that does not prevent us from using him. We shall continue with this until it becomes unstable. The orders shall stand, the unwantables shall continue to be sent, but this time in greater number and in force. Hopefully they shall be purged as the others before, and if not, we can always try again with another, for we now know how to do it ourselves. We must save our feoriums, even if that means sacrificing others."

[Krylo]

The glyphs caught Krylo's eye immediately. It'd be hard for them not to, what with the bright shiny colors and flashing spinning lights. It was like a laser show. A really nifty one.

However, Krylo knew it wasn't just a laser show immediately and his eyes quickly moved up to see Raiden. "Fucker," he hissed quietly, rage seething in his voice.

As the tower began to mutate the mod glanced over his shoulder. "I'm going in. Put the dog on defense detail," he said quickly to Mauve and Twiddy, before breaking into a run.

There were still flamers left. Lots of them, but as hordes of creatures had learned in the past, and would learn in the future, no one gets in Krylo's way. Not even a hundred cheap human torch rip offs.

The mod broke into a run directly toward the area cleared by the recent C-4 explosion, both of his guns directly infront of him. A flamer moved to attack from the left, and the gun in Krylo's left hand moved to the side and fired, planting a bullet in the offending creature's skull, without the mod ever slowing. Another attempted to attack from the right, elliciting a similiar action from the incensed gunman.

Then Krylo neared the border of the flamers. They were beginning to concentrate on him now, flaming rocks and knives began to come at him from all directions.

He slid one of his pistols into his duster while quickly jutting out his right leg and falling into a spinning crouch. His free gun fired off its remaining eight rounds, stopping several projectiles, while the moderator slid underneath the others. In the meanwhile, his other hand came out from the folds of his duster, a grenade in hand. The pin was pulled and the grenade was released directly ahead of him, just as Krylo came out of the spin.

The grenade hit one of the flamers in the face, before his own firey aura set the explosive off. Waves of force ripped outward, and Krylo charged right into, and through them, using the cloud of dust and flying sharpnel as cover to move through the flamer horde, and into the clearing where Darth released his own explosives.

When he was exposed again, his skull was visible, and his clothes were torn from the explosion, but his flesh was quickly mending, and he showed no signs of slowing, even as he threw his empty pistol into his coat and pulled out his withering blade.

"Fucking, hac...!" one of the flamers started to complain at Krylo's regeneration before the withering blade slid through his throat, sending a quickly decomposing skull sailing through the air, as the flamer's body fell to the ground, its heat expelled.

Krylo's other hand slid down to his waist and drew his remington, moving into another spin, that struck a flamer attempting to come from the side with a backhanded slash. Normally the attack would have been a small wound, but the flamer quickly found himself coughing blood and stumbling backward as the rot afflicted him.

As the other flamer was dying, Krylo sunk down, and performed a sweep kick, forcing a few others back before he came to his feet, facing directly toward the entrance to the tower. The hordes were thinned sufficiently by now, and the door was only a few feet of flamers followed by a few feet of open ground.

Krylo brought his pistol to bear with blinding speed and fired, a single hollow point round tearing out of its barrel as the chamber rotated to ready the next.

The bullet passed through first one flamer, and then the next, and the next, tearing through flesh and splashing entrails from one to the next. One after the other, their flames went out as blood and guts soaked the ground behind them, although only for seconds before Krylo ran through the puddles of gore and directly to the entrance, taking a few small hits from burning rocks.

(OOC: And now we see what the entrance surprise is)

[Incendius]

The entrance surprise was surprisingly unsurprising. On the beach facing towards the tower was an upraised building, with many different doors. The doors themselves were pretty mundane, well except for the magically floatings written runes over the door that specifically wrote out different names. Like for example, the main largest door had a rune signifying Krylo over it, the other doors either had one rune, for the other strongest members such as Rhiya, and two runes for the members who did not have powers akin to a gods so they would be able to team up. The doors themselves were massive granite slabs that seemed to have no handles, nor knobs to open them. There were an incarved set of words that could only be construyed as a riddle strewn across all the doors that said "Ask before entering"

[Fenris]

Deciding the coast was clear, Fenris headed to the entrance next to Krylo.

"Ask before entering..." Fenris said, reading the riddle and scratching his chin. He looked around at the doors, seeing a rune designating members of the party. He saw his own rune, and it was with another rune.

"Who's rune is that?" Fenris asked, pointing to the one next to his.

[Krylo]

Krylo looked at the rune signifying his name, and wasn't sure how he knew it was him. He just did. Not that it mattered anyway, the biggest main entrance was the one he'd have decided to take regardless of what the runes said. It was his style.

The mod read the riddle and slid his gun and sword away before pulling back his fist and smashing it into the door, giving out a resounding noise. He then did it two more times. "Let me in!"

It was about as close as he was going to come to a knock at the moment.

[PyrosNine]

"Nah, It's just your imagination. You don't really exist. Maybe."

Pyros lied to the subconcious representation that floated before him. He didn't know how he could see her without using any lore, but he figured this was somehow related to the sacred vow of conquerment, where a lord tells his lady he's going to slaughter someplace and give it to her, rivers of blood and all.

"Or it could be the sacred vow of conquerment, but that's highly unlikely because I don't want you hitting me with things. Or in ecurt's case, it's copyright infringement. BAD ECURT! BAD!"

Pyros chucked Come-Come Paradise at Ecurt, who as usual slunk away before Pyros got the Menchi suit out.

Then he noticed a strange warping, and something happened to the Tower. The componental lore of the tower had been altered, with grammarye Pyros didn't even recognize. The only explanation was....he'd best keep that to himself.

".....Interesting." He floated down and inspected Rhiya's body, only to find it covered in blood and gore, which was weird because Rhiya hadn't been standing next to Krylo or Darth SS at all today. He guessed it had to do with "Rhiya's Frustrated Status" thingy or whatever, but didn't want to set it off by insulting her though.

"Rhiya, I know not of what's going on, but I do have to say your newfangled RFS is coming to be a problem." Pyros pulled out some tweezers to pick up a piece of fleshy fashion Rhiya had ripped from a mangled corpse.
"Eww."
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Meanwhile, in the back of Pyros's Head:
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Sub-Pyros: Finally! Someone to play 64 dimension hyperchess with and discuss the flaws of the universe due to boolean logic! No more communicating with dead tavern visitors whenever my main conciousness gets drunk and passes out in the bar!
(Starts making a pair of "I'm with Invisible" t-shirts)

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Back outside Nein's noggin
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Pyros carried Rhiya's unconcious body towards the entrance, a firewall preventing any fools from following.

"Well, regardless, let's hope you wake up soon. I want to move on, but I won't until your up and at'em. It appears we may have to split up soon. Raiden's playing some game, and I'm afraid we're all going to be playing, whether we like it or not. But two can play any game, even solitaire."

[Incendius]

Well, even though it was not quite a knock, it worked well enough. Krylo's granite door popped out of existance without a sound, along with all the other doors. In each of the tunnels only a dim light was provided from rickety light bulbs powered by electricity. It smelled dank, and felt ominous, and there was a presence that could be felt inside.

[Truce]

Now that he was back on the ground Ecurt could fully appreciate the scale of the flamers' attacks. Their numbers were beginning to approach that of the n00bs from before, and their attacks were much more effective than their previous opponents. Granted, they were still about as weak as wet paper, and about as smart, but it was still proving troublesome to deal with them all. It didn't help that Krylo had gone ahead either; though many of the flamers were still focused on the mod there were still many more that were all too eager to attack those that were left behind.

As he summoned up a wall of plushies to temporarily hold back the flamers, Ecurt took a moment to sit down and think up another plan. Without Krylo, they wouldn't be able to do another mass bannination. Even if they could their main magic powerhouses had already expended a lot of their MP in the last one, and probably wouldn't be able to do it so soon. Still, he knew that there had to be a way to deal with all of them at once.

Whatever it was, Ecurt didn't have time to find it. The horde of flamers suddenly broke through the wall of plushies and charged once again at the Undead Overlord. Knowing that they couldn't afford to waste any more time, Ecurt tightened his grip on Gleipnir and rushed at the oncoming throng of humanoid flames.

The mob began throwing their axes at Ecurt, but they were blocked by plushies that seemed to appear from thin air, stopping the attacks long before they would have reached him. Before they knew it he had closed the distance between himself and them and had already commenced cutting down their numbers. As tightly packed as they were, his blade had no trouble finding its prey, and each and every swing left one less flamer to deal with. There was no method to Ecurt's attacks-it was just nothing more than a relentless assault against those who were unfortunate enough to get in his way.

However, his victories did not come without injury. Though armor protected him it also was slowly cooking him from the inside, superheated by the flames of his foes. Gleipnir itself was burning red; a small revenge from those it had slain. He could hear his sword's shrieks of pain, and noted how much it matched his own.

Soon, he had thinned their numbers enough that they were able to put up an semblance of a fight. Already suffering from being overheated, his movements began to slow, and his attacks were not as clean as they had been. Then a flamer caught him from surprised, appearing from behind the body of a comrade that had just been cut down, and gave Ecurt a good right hook to the face before the overlord even had a chance to bring up his sword to block. Staggering back a step, Ecurt regained his balanced and sliced the flamer in two.

It was too late though. The damage was already done. The flamers regained whatever confidence they lost and redoubled their efforts to subdue Ecurt. Eventually, they had his back against the very same wall of plushies he had created earlier. Too tired to continue the fight or escape, Ecurt resigned himself to his fate.

Then he saw it. The answer he had been looking for. The way to defeat the Flamers. The funniest thing of all was that it was so simple, too. It also explained why exactly the city hadn't been burning in flames yet.

"Are you prepared to die, n00b?" spat an obnoxious flamer, just as he raised his axe above his head.

"Of course," Ecurt said as he bowed his head, hiding his wicked smile. "I'm always prepared to die, but certainly not from someone as pathetic as you."

"Why you-" The axe was brought down, sure that it would kill Ecurt. But nothing happened. No heads rolled, no blood stained the ground, nothing. Though it should've decapitated the overlord right then and there, it simply passed through him. Though the flamer tried again and again, the result was always the same. He couldn't touch Ecurt. "What the hell?! You...you must have haxxored!"

"No," Ecurt said, finally standing up. "I've just learned to ignore you. After all...you're nothing to be worried about. Nothing at all."

Now, with all the flamers on his Ignore List, Ecurt simply walked through the flamers and towards the tower. Unfortunately for him, the enemies there would not be so easy to deal with.