NPF Avatars: with hardcore finger pointing action!

[mauve]

"Hey!" Mauve exclaimed, pointing out the window to the earth below. "The others left us behind again!" It was true. A clump of NPFers, who were standing amidst the Gaians, doing what they did best, had suddenly dissappeared in a flash of light. A charred circle of dirt and cracked pavement was all that remained of their battlefield. Another flash appeared almost instantly afterwads; this one came from within the golden temple. Light flared through the windows and reflected off the warm yellow metal. Bingo.

"All right," the ex-mage declared. "We've got some catching up to do! I don't pretend to be a battle strategist, but the way I see it, we can either pull directly up to the temple and barge in, or we can drop the ship on a clump of Gaians and walk the rest of the way. But whatever we do, we gotta do it fast. Looks like the others are already in the temple, and I doubt Raiden will give up with some simple nonviolent negotiation."

Her eyes narrowed.

"Besides," she muttered. "I've still got to have a little 'chat' with whoever's responsible for the fuku incident." She hefted the PSG cannon for emphasis.

[Mesden]

A sudden hand appeared under his chin. He knew the feel of it, it was a hard gauntlet and only her forefinger and thumb touched him.

No matter how much he thought he couldn't look into their eyes, he couldn't help it this time.

There she was, the bright red slowly fading back into the powerful white as she dismissed her dragon. The two gods stood face to face, eye to eye and all else fell eerily still and quiet in that moment.

"Someone's controlling you, aren't they?"

[Raiden]

Raiden rested his head in her hand for but a moment. Then, when she spoke, he wrenched his head away and stumbled backwards.

"Go away. Just....just GO! I don't want to hurt any of you anymore."

His breathing was getting heavier, and the glowing energy that was his eyes had a weak glow.

"If you don't leave...he'll make me hurt you. I'll have no choice. JUST GO AWAY-*hurk*!"

He yelled out the last sentence as he weakly dropped to his knees, another incredibly sharp pain going through his chest.

[Mesden]

"Hurt, Raiden? You know by all means that you in your already diminshed state can not challenge an equal."

With a blinding twist of light the red gauntlet took its place in the wayside. Her left hand summoned the Spiritual Withering Blade in an instant and she raised it towards Raiden.

"I will stop you Raiden. I have no quarrel with beating my brother unconscious and finding his puppetmaster."

[Bailey]

This close to the Gaia portals, strange emanations and energies, the same ones which constantly bombarded the denizens, began to affect Newb. His nature made him slightly more susceptible to them than others, and the recent bombardment of chaos magic had knocked down the controls he had in place, protecting himself from these energies. The emanations which reached him found two things. Furry, and Martial Artist. The emanations knew exactly what to do. Newb's hair began to change. As he noticed it, he shouted in dismay. "Oh no, why me?" And thus the emanations found his curse. He began to change further.



A short time later Newb got up from the ground where he had been convulsing. He was much more effeminate now, although he was still quite definitely male, and his short soft fur covering his body was accentuated by the flowing hair which came down past his shoulders. "Great, I'm a freak now." He winced when he said it, expecting to change further, but to his surprise, instead of causing him to change, each monosyllable caused a ninja rabbit to appear, and each polysyllable caused one to dissapear.

Newb began to sob as the ninja bunnies realised that not all ninjas are the same gender and wandered off for some alone time.

[POS Industries]

Pedro exited the bridge, deciding that his services were clearly unnecessary. Frankly, he had better things to do than command starships, anyway. Still, he would have to remember to kill Arhra later for this mutiny. Probably through the use of some convoluted series of deathtraps awaiting her in a secret underground lair buried deep beneath the Mojave Desert. But that was for another time.

Pedro looked down at the datapad in his right hand, displaying the status of the little device he had hooked up to the main power relay system. Steadily charging up its batteries, the device would soon be ready for use in his final gambit. Whatever shape Raiden was in, this would certainly at least put a hurt on him.

Yes, the end was nearing on this little adventure, one that would most certainly mark his first and last journey with this group of..... people. Granted, there was always the possibility of seeing some of them again should they feel the need to interfere in any of his future plans, but other than that he would be happy to be rid of them.

Still, there was one last contingency to deal with. Entering a small office of sorts, Pedro sat down at the large computer workstation that was mounted to the wall. POS had managed to hide away the large sum of cash that he had collected over the course of this adventure, as well as create dummy duffel bags hidden in all sorts of places that would do unspeakable things to whomever might attempt to steal them, so don't even try goddammit. Still, there was one last person that might inevitably cause a problem for him in the near future, and that person needed to be stopped.

Activating the terminal, Pedro entered in a bit of code for Rei's later reference before bringing the video recording system online. If all goes well, the message would be delivered automatically once the current crisis had been averted.

"Hello me," POS greeted the future viewer cheerfully, "Meet the real me...."

[Truce]

"I'm sorry, Mesden," she said under her breath. "But I'm afraid you can't always have things your way."

Suddenly, Esheth was on the other side of Raiden, with both blades readied at her sides. "As much as I would enjoy letting this family reunion go on, I think it would be best for all of us if we get this over with. Whatever the circumstances are for your betrayal, I'm afraid I have to kill you Raiden."

Suddenly, her right arm shot out in front of her, attempting to pierce through Raiden's arm into his chest. However, even though Raiden just stood there without even bothering to look in her direction, a bolt of lightning shot out and struck the sword. Reflexively, Esheth threw the sword to the side as the bolt of lightning travelled through her arm, and her hand retreated to her chest.

With a weak grin, Esheth took a step back. "Well, I guess there's no pussy footing around with you, is there?"

Raising the other sword above her head, it disappeared in a flash of light. Esheth let out an involuntary shiver, having fused the blade with herself, just as she had done with Gleipnir. Slipping into a Demented Neko stance, she glanced at the others and nodded to them.

[Darth SS]

Darth looked down upon Raiden and felt no pity. Nothing but contempt for him. For a moment, he considered spitting on him, but instead thought of a much less nice way of handling it. Quite calmly, he stepped towards Raiden, his clothes shutting up. His right hand went to his back and took hold of P90. There was 50 rounds in the magazine.

Darth placed the gun against Raiden's head and clicked it to full auto.

"You're weak enough you couldn't regenerate. Would you like me to Old Yeller you?"

[Raiden]

Raiden gave out a laugh. His hand reached up and grasped the gun in Darth's hand. With a push on Darth's finger, he trigger was pressed, filling Raiden's head with lead. His brain splattered on the ground, the strange glowing substance that counted as blood in his body spattered onto the wall and ground by him. Almost as quickly, his head regenerated, a quiet laughter coming from the reforming head.

He weakly pointed over to his sword that was tossed against the wall. It was soaked in dried blood.

"I've carved out my heart, slit my throat, stabbed through my eye, sliced open my wrist...pretty much anything I could think of doing. I can't die anymore. Not unless he wants me to. And you guys need to leave before he realizes you're here. He'll sic me on you. I don't want to hurt any of you anymore."

[Mesden]

"Killing a god is not an easy task. You went at it as such and of course it didn't work. But Raiden, if whoever he is truly doesn't know we are at you yet, then you should still have enough will to allow this."

Her unrestrained hand lifted and a link shot out from it and connected to Raiden's head. He felt a sense of lull wash over him, it wasn't strong, but her intention was clear. If he still had any will, she could stop him from any possible action, shutting down his essence of life.