NPF Avatars IV, Chapter III: The Sphinx on the Doorstep

[Bailey]

Syttulg looked around for anybody still in need of help, dashing forwards to slice at the Dryad's head once he found somebody.

[Fenris]

Fenris lay on the battlefield, cradling his stump. He was practically in tears. Through blurry eyes, he saw what was left of his arm starting to turn to flesh. Fenris's eyes went wide. He knew by looking at the other half of the stony arm that his arm would start bleeding out the hole once it healed. Grabbing the stray arm, and locking it into place with the jagged fracture, he realized that his only hope was to find somebody, anybody, who could mend it.

"If anybody is not too busy, and would like to partake in saving my life, I need somebody to reattatch my arm over here!"

----
Elsewhere, the rubble monster that attacked Fenris had finished melting in its charge against Phoenix, and dissolved at the base of Rhiya,

[PhoenixFlame]

Phoenix cackled as the angered rubble-monster that had attacked Fenris was slowly eaten apart by the cobalt-blue plasma flames cutting through his softer vines and harder rocks. It collapsed with what rock might call a pained moan. Phoenix called it poetic justice.

She was just about to raise her weapon, when her weapon was suddenly grabbed from behind. One of the Dryads must have been a professional Dragon-Climber also. Phoenix was mildly unpreturbed, but disliked being stoned regardless if it were the Dryad's doing, or the result of illegal drugs.

Yes. It was her Dryad from the very beginning, behind her now, and looking much more fleshy and angry than her origional opponent.

"Um. Hello." Phoenix said, fighting the fae as her hand was wrenched skyward, gun shaking toward the glass ceiling as the two fought to control the only weapon within several feet.

*Krack!* *Vssrrrsh!* Phoenix's revolver discharged, firing another plasma bolt high into the air overhead, augering into the glass ceiling before detonating and spraying tiny bits of it's payload all over the field.

"Grzzr'argh!" Phoenix yelled, swinging her right, and stoned arm in a less-than-graceful punch at the Dryad's face. Ironically, it connected. The Dryad staggered backwards and released Phoenix's gun.

"Not so tough now that you're not stone, eh?" Phoenix taunts, raising her pistol, and hoping the thing would run away. Honestly, firing at this range would be suicide. The Dryad stared at her.

Phoenix sighed, "This is what we in the business refer to as a "Mexican Standoff." Theoretically, the only way a Mexican Standoff can end is if we both agree to stop fighting and go home, or... *click* We blow each other's brains out. The in-"

The Dryad wasn't interested. She lunged at Phoenix's chest, whom awkwardly attempted to pistol-whip the fae in return. Both succeeded, though the Dryad had claws. It was something like a bad episode of "The Shores of Hell" on "Nightmare Mode". The claws dug deeply into Phoenix's abdomen, while her pistol clanked against the Dryad's head, snapping it sideways.

"Ugh, this is awkward..." Phoenix groaned. The Dryad grinned. "If only I had..."

*Kzzzrrrrrrzzzrrr*

The Dryad drew Phoenix's PC-5 Vibrokatana from behind her back.

"My sword..." she said meekly.

[Inbred Chocobo]

The vibrokatana rose up as the dryad prepared to finish off Pheonix. A whistling sound suddenly filled both Pheonix's and the Dryad's ears. When they turned to look, they saw the Wind Edge hurtling towards the Dryad. The Dryad took off, doing its best to avoid the attack. Unfortunatly, the Wind Edge still struck, though this time in the rear, sending the dryad spinning, and causing the blade to go wild.

The dryad got up and moved it, because now it saw IC charging it. Off it went into a nearby tree, but instead of IC following, he went and retrieved Pheonix's blade.

IC tossed the blade, letting it stick into the ground near Pheonix, and turned for his Wind Edge. Just as IC turned for the Wind Edge, the dryad was back for more. This time, the dryad slammed into IC, and sunk both claws into IC, one in the back and one in the chest. IC set both feet on the ground and shoved back, trying to get the dryad off of him.

The dryad accepted the deal to get off of him, and backed off. Just as it turned around to get away, it felt its back leg catch on something. IC then yanked back and spun around. He spun around three or four times, then had the dryad go overhead and slammed it into the ground. IC backed off then, taking a breather over his wounds and to retrieve his weapon.

[Darth SS]

Darth was engaged in a high speed fight with his own dryad. Thankfully, his ghost arm was warding off petrification, but he found himself at a bit of an impasse. He couldn't hurt the dryad, and it couldn't hurt him. Nevertheless, Darth found himself running backwards along the wall, with the dryad chasing him across it, swinging furiously at it.

Rock was a solid. Solids were hard to break. When did rock break? When a fissure was in it. As long as Darth could crack the bitch, he could kill her. But how? Rock. Hard. His weapons would break, his bombs did nothing, and shooting could create difficult ricochets. What could he hit the dryad with? Rock.

Darth snagged her hand at the next swing, then stopped running. The two of them began to fall back to the ground. Darth bent her arm so her own claw was at her neck, then flipped around behind her. When they landed on the ground, Darth was standing on the Dryad's back, and the Dryad had cracked her own throat. Badly.

When the two flipped up into fighting positions, the Dryad was shifting to a softer form to heal. Darth's katana whirled out of its sheath, and into a bitching backhand. It was a perfect imitation of Mace Windu in Episode II when he killed Jango Fett. It also had the same effect, popping the dryad's head off.

"My thanks to the man who taught me that. Samuel L. Jackson. The L stands for 'bad motherfucker.'"

[POS Industries]

Meanwhile, someplace else....

"WALT!"

It was raining. Sayid ran full speed through the sheets of rain spilling down in the jungle, chasing after Shannon who herself was chasing and calling after the young boy who, by all accounts, should be miles away at sea.

"WALT!!"

Sayid could hear the girl screaming in the distance, but the downpour obscured her from his vision. He could only see her shadow through the sheets of falling water before the gunshot rang out. As she turned around, he could see the blood streaming from the wound in her stomach, and he could only cry out her name as she slumped dead into his arms. Cradling her in the jungle, Sayid looked up weakly to see Ana-Lucía standing before him, the gun used to slay his lover still trained on them, a look of shock and confusion--

"Pe-chan?"

Pedro O'Sullivan swiveled his chair away from the flat-screen television mounted on his wall as the credits began to roll and responded to the digitized female voice that came from seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once. "Yes, Rei, what is it?"

"Sorry, Pe-chan. I hope I wasn't interrupting," the Relatively Empathic Interface program continued in its usual sweet tone, "but we've taken some interesting readings from the comet. I thought that, seeing as your show should be over, you might like to take a look at them."

"Of course, of course," nodded POS, "I'll be right down. I needed to stretch my legs, anyway."

The AI was pleased. "Great! We'll see you in the astrometrics lab shortly. Also, I thought you might like to be updated on the status of our friends."

"Friends?" Pedro asked confusedly as he rose from his chair and stretched a bit, "I don't seem to recall having any--oh, right, those guys! How are they holding up? Dead yet?"

"No, they're still alive. They've run into a bit of trouble at the moment, but they seem to be handling it just fine. Well, overall anyway..."

"Ah," POS sighed blandly as he swiftly exited his office, "I guess that's okay. Maybe later, then..."

[mauve]

(Sorry if this post sounds messed-up; I am so very very tired right now it isn't even funny.)

Originally Posted by Garud

"Eh, I never thought I would be this dependant on someone until I got into a nursing home. Would you mind tipping the bottle. Pretty please?"

"Since you said please..." Mauve pried the bottle out of his hand and dumped its contents on his petrified arm. She had originally planned on saying no, and then threatening to put him and the other petrified folks in the NPF Arts and Crafts museum as statues. She wouldn't really: It was just a joke, for kicks. But seeing as how fate loved to watch her suffer, she figured that even joking about it would probably cause her nothing but problems in the next battle. Karma and all that.

"There. Now with any luck, neither of us will need any more mobility assistance until we enter nursing homes." She stopped, thinking. Then she shuddered. "Because honestly, the thought of me as any kind of nurse or caretaker frightens even me."

Irony was obviously alive and well in this cave, because at that moment Fenris called out frantically for-- you guessed it-- medical assistance. Mauve looked over towards the sound, and her eyes went wide.

"Uh oh," she said. "Don't mean to abandon you, Garud, but we've got a hobo in distress." Thus saying, she approached the freaked-out Fenris, first making sure that Garud was indeed recovering.

"Fenris!" Mauve said, kneeling down to look at his arm. "Holy cow, man, what happened to you?!" Not waiting for reply, Mauve dug into her pockets and pulled out whatever she could. Among the items removed was a blue scrunchie. Mauve used her knife to cut the fabric and removed the thick band of elastic inside. This she tied very tightly around Fenris' upper arm. It was meant to slow the flow of blood, but with a wound this size, she wasn't certain how well it would work.

Both halves of his arm were recovering from the curse, although one half was decidedly faster than the other. Fenris was frantically trying to keep both halves pressed together. If he kept them there, Mauve could heal the wound as soon as both halves were mostly flesh on their contact surfaces. Unfortunately, that meant that most of the nerves would be back online before she could start. He probably wasn't going to like that.

"Don't move," Mauve warned him.

White magic swirled around the wound a moment later, joining the fully-unpetrified part of Fenris with the lost part. The lower half of his arm was still in the process of converting stone to flesh, but at least he had one whole arm again.

[Fenris]

Fenris swore he could have kissed the mage right then and there. He didn't. He just stammered out a "Th-thank you," and looked at his arm. It was whole. Whole.

'You handled that well,' the voice in his head said sarcastically.

'Why are you such an ass?' the other voice asked the first voice.

Fenris stood up and waited for the rest of the curse to flow away from him. He felt ashamed, really. He knew the first voice was right. Fenris had panicked. This was just the first trial in the first temple. If he couldn't survive this, how was he going to be any use later on?

"Really, I couldn't thank you enough, Mauve."

He stared at the ground and waited for what little was left of the battle around him to end.

[GARUD]

Garud had regained movement, but his feet and arms were still stone. He stumbled over to his savior (what?) and Fenris.

"Mauve, you are an angel. An angel of pain maybe, but still an angel! I would hug you, but I fear that my stomach would get dirty if it ended up on the floor."

The demon slayer turned to Fenris and said,

"How's the arm buddy?"

[PhoenixFlame]

((Mop-up Slice and Dice))

Phoenix slipped her gun back into her coat, and calmly gripped the hilt of her vibroblade with her still-functioning left arm. A smile broke across her face as the weapon hummed to life.

"Thanks IC." She said, and lept off of Rhiya's stoned form and headed toward the tree the Dryad had fled into. It would not escape so easily this time.

*Vwrrrrr...* "Come out, come out, little one." Phoenix cackled.

For seconds, nothing happened. Then the creature lunged. It was faster than it had been before, but far less stony. Phoenix's vibrokatana bit deeply into the creature's torso as it attempted to claw at her. Green flesh and "blood" sprayed everywhere as the vibrokatana whined like a stressed chainsaw.

*ScresccheeeVwrrBzzzrrr!*

Soon, the dryad was two smaller dryads, and Phoenix continued to dice the creature up into smaller pieces with her weapon while accusing with sundry obscenities it of cutting off her fingers and ruining her right arm. By the time she finished, she was covered in dryad-guts, but felt much better.

"That took a little more effort, but *I* feel it was worth it." she said while whistle-walking back toward the group.