NPF Avatars IV, Chapter VIII: At the Fountains of Madness

[phil_]

As soon as Flarecobra smiled, Phil realised the folly of letting the band of NPFers spot him. His blood chilled like he'd seen a gang of zombies with One Piece DVDs and a portable DVD player. Too afraid to back down and run, Phil did the only thing he could think of.

He asked questions and delayed the thread.

"Who's the green guy in the loin cloth? And the tall N.A. guy and the guy with the orange cape? And who's the little girl with the other horrifying snake person? And who's that?" With the last question, he jabbed a finger at Rei. "Man, I thought I knew this forum. Why can't we all just have names over our heads like in RO?"

[Bailey]

Syttulg looked thoughtful for a moment, and then shrugged. The sunshade attached to his head rippled a little as lettering appeared along the edges.

|\ | Plantfolk
| \| Syttulg

A successful Knowledge: Insanity or Knowledge: Forumites check (why are those two different categories anyway?) would reveal that the N was the guild symbol for The Eternal Newb.

[mauve]

"Don't worry about it, Phil," Mauve said, having polished off the rest of the M&Ms and healing Steel Shadow's arm (because he asked for help like three pages ago and he was probably near-death from blood loss by now). "You know what they say: 'Every time you try to make sense out of an Avatar RP, an angel loses its wings.' Or was it, 'a planet gets devoured by a giant space goat?' I dunno. But the point is, don't bother trying."

She shrugged.

"Because then we have to explain that the robot lady is a virtual subconcious placed into a PhoenixCorp android body by POS Industries for reasons unknown, and that the short girl is our very own Ahrha, who started out as a guy about two rescue missions ago but died and came back as a woman, and the other snake is a hydra that got reconceptualized via chaos magic in some giant snake-bashing, Caryatid-trouncing super underground melee. Oh, and the cape guy is Steel Shadow. Nothin' freaky 'bout that, though."

She tilted her head up, as though hearing something.

"Oh, see, I just heard another angel fall to their doom," Mauve said. "Or a planet being eaten; I dunno which. See what you've done?"

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Originally Posted by FlareCobra

"Don't come blaming me when you get constapted there birdie!"

"My dear, I have been eating this shit and worse since before you were born, I'm quite accustomed to it", He continued eating, then stopped again and continued, "it still tastes better than hospital food though!"

Originally Posted by phil_

"Who's the green guy in the loin cloth? And the tall N.A. guy and the guy with the orange cape? And who's the little girl with the other horrifying snake person? And who's that?" With the last question, he jabbed a finger at Rei. "Man, I thought I knew this forum. Why can't we all just have names over our heads like in RO?"

"What, am I not important enough to even be recognised now?!" He turned to Phil_, also managing to pronounce the underscore and said, "greetings friend. Welcome to Hell. It's either that, or Nightmare Central. You should fit in just fine."

[POS Industries]

Having a body is weird, Rei thought to herself as she exited the cave with the group, before realizing that even having an internal monologue was something of a new experience. She'd been noticing a lot of changes in her overall functionality since the start of this adventure. Granted, she had been using the android body for the past few months since the battle with Raiden, but mostly just kicking around the POS Industries head office, and more or less as just a supplement to her position as the company's main computer operating system.

However, actually being out in the field, using her combat abilities, interacting with the others, everything that had happened since she joined in this adventure had been causing her to make adaptations in her programming. This ability to develop and adapt was nothing new, of course. In fact, it was the central foundation of her code. However, the amount of different kinds of stimulation and the level of independence required of her due to the current situation had unlocked attributes of her personality subroutines that had never been fully explored, emotions that she had never quite had cause to experience. Fear, anger, pain, and....

...Worry. Rei realized that it had been quite a while since Pedro's ship had entered the energy field of the comet. There had been no communication since, and with no way to effectively scan within the field due to overwhelming interference, there was no way to tell if the Riyal was even still in one piece. Pedro had quite a number of extra lives, but if the ship was destroyed he could very well respawn in space and would burn through all of those lives in a most gruesome fashion.

As the android started having what was her first panic attack, she looked up to see Phil pointing at her and asking, "And who's that? Man, I thought I knew this forum. Why can't we all just have names over our heads like in RO?"

Before she could respond, Mauve jumped in and did her best to introduce some of the newer faces to the latest arrival. As the mage wrapped up her explanation, Rei greeted the man in the current nervous, half-distracted tone she couldn't seem to shake at the moment.

"Uh, hi.... Mike, right?"

[Flarecobra]

I slithered over to Phil and said How are you? What'cha doing around here?" I asked, as I coiled up in a comfertable way near him.

[Arhra]

Arhra neatly snagged one of Hydra's arms in case she tried anything violent because of that 'horrifying snake person' comment. The petite girl managed to be surprisingly immovable as Hydra tugged at the grip. In reply to Phil's last comment she said, "Why because having name tags would look silly. See." Arhra pointed at Syttulg.

"And technically I happened to help in that fight against that penguin... uh... thing as a male mage. Then I died and came back as a girl ninja." She chuckled, "That was fun, what with the flipping out and all. Unfortunately I died, not much later because Rhiya was charmed by a sexy merman. At least I took her out with me. I was charmed too, but I broke free."

"Then I came back as a summoner. That was fun too." Arhra had attempted to summon diverse things, such as the Ark, the Arc and abstract concepts, with mixed results. "Then, when Raiden was crazy, I was accidentally killed by Rhiya," Arhra frowned, she was beginning to notice a pattern here, "and came back as me!" She neglected to mention the important fact of how she'd managed to die several times.

"Anyway, now we're all feeling a bit refreshed -"

A lump of rock the size of a cabbage suddenly landed in their midsts, shattering on the hard ground and sending rock shards flying. Arhra cursed how she always seemed to get interrupted.

Looking to where the rock had come from, Arhra gasped. A great boulder had trundled its way up the hill, pausing and extruding some thin members to stop it rolling away. A shapechanging boulder?! Arhra had the strangest sense of deja vu. Alongside it, a snake-like creature of gigantic proportions slithered, twelve heads weaving on the end of long, twisting necks. Some kind of serpentine hydra?! Arhra had the strangest sense of deja vu. On the other side was a brutish, overly muscular troll. It waved then remembered to look angry. Arhra didn't bother with deja vu - the troll was obviously Thod. Finally, padding daintly along behind was a very familiar sphinx, one they'd last seen guarding the Temple gates.

"Uh, what's all this about?" Arhra asked in confusion.

"Revenge." the sphinx said languidly. Thod, the hydra and the boulder made various noises of agreement.

"Revenge?" Arhra asked, "Have you decided to make up some sort of league of enemies to get revenge on us? I can understand the troll and the boulder, although the hydra's a bit of a stretch, but why are you here?"

"I think you know why." the sphinx snarled, wings ruffling in agitation.

Arhra decided to drop that line of enquiry. "But there's..." she looked around, "...Lots of us and only four of you. You don't even have the element of surprise to double your numbers any more." Perhaps they'd all mysteriously accquired super powers. Arhra hoped not.

"Silence!" the sphinx proclaimed, "We have just anger on our side!" She wondered if, perhaps, she should have waited for those dryads to come to their decision on whether to join up or not. Too late for might have beens now.

"Charge!" she cried. The flowstone boulder began rolling downhill, massive and crushing, while Thod and the hydra pounded after it. At a more sedate pace, the sphinx followed. It seemed trouble had come to find the NPFers.

OOC: The relevent encounter information is in the discussion thread.

[phil_]

Phil summoned the first thing that came to mind. "●Summon: Tristan Taylor!" A tall kid in a beige trenchcoat with a goofy haircut appeared in a flash of light. Phil had summoned the wanna-be duelist/tough guy directly in the path of the charging flowstone boulder, hoping that survival instinct would be enough to make him fight. Raising his fist, the boy yelled in a voice reminiscent of Barney, "My voice gives me super strength!" and he punched the boulder. He was then immediately crushed to death.

"Ha ha ha, oh, that's a good one. Hoo... but seriously, ●Dismiss: Tristan, ●Summon: Train!" The totally-not-funny wrecked corpse of Tristan faded away (with crippling effects to whatever continuity he came from. Probably fan-fic) and a three-car train crashed down between the NPFers and their assailants. "There, that should slow'em down (except the sphynx). Enjoy your extra seconds to plan while I go find a hiding spot." And Phil ran through the group to do so.

[Bailey]

Syttulg dug his feet into the ground, forming them into roots, and lengthened the thorns on his arms. "Oh goody. Mineral deposits." He said, drawing iron out of the ground and adding it to the thorn blades.

[POS Industries]

A split second before the boulder crashed into the traincars that stood between it and the NPFers, a massive, bright, white beam of energy slammed into it from above, blasting the stone to pieces and driving much of it down quite a few feet into the ground. As the light faded, anyone who hadn't previously been looking in the right direction would have seen Rei hovering above the train, levitating herself via gravity control, staring down at the boulder debris with a rather bemused expression on her face.

"Same ol' boulder, same ol' Doom Cannon, same ol' result," the android sighed as she dropped to the ground where the boulder had already begun reassembling itself. Glancing from Thod, to the Hydra, and then finally setting her gaze on the Sphinx, Rei shrugged activated her energy shield. "Well, if we're going to do this, let's get on with it."

It would seem that, for the first time in her short little cybernetic life, Rei was not in a very good mood.