NPF Avatars IV, Chapter XIII: Fire Three!

[Flarecobra]

"Hey!" I slithered foreward, intent on getting the Caryatid's attention. "You know....you kinda resemble a god of lamia culture.......Marlith." I approached her showing little fear. Seeing the vents made me think <Hm....if those vents got damaged, it looks like it would malfunction.>

[phil_]

Ok, first issue, lava will make me dead, as will any contact with our enemies. Come to think of it, I'm pretty lucky that these are the first fire-bodied monsters we've come across. So, gotta take care of that. Anyway, second issue is hitting that big, glowing tail. If Nintendo has taught me anything, it's that weak-points glow red.

"Ah!" Some of the magmagators had decided that Phil looked tasty and were closing in on her. "Heh, too bad, guys, but I actually thought ahead today. You'd probably have munched me before I could think of THIS!" Phil hopped away from the stupid animals who didn't seem to be listening. "●Summon: Moblie Asbestos Couch Fort!" Pillows, cushions, and the bulk of a fold out sofa bed poofed over Phil's head and fell on her, forming a mighty fortress of fabric, springs, and stuffing. Add to that four horse-like legs on the sofa and that the entire thing was made of good ol, carcinogenic American asbestos, and you had the general image of Phil's new minion/vehicle.

Phil popped her head out the top. "Yeah! Eat it, crocagators! ●Ice!" Phil blasted one of the critters, causing it to flinch from an annoyingly cold smack to the nose but not much more. It breathed beige fire at the couch fort and was joined by its companions with a green and a grey blast. The first two had no effect on the mighty asbestos, but the third caused dangerous rocking. Phil threw a pillow at that magmagator (infused with an ice spell, of course). She then galloped out of the area, leading the gators toward Nikose, who seemed to take death pretty lightly. "Heads up, Purple!" The couch fort reared up dramatically. "Yahoo!"

[Arhra]

Calling out to attract the Caryatid's attention, Flare got it.

"And you resemble a fool." the Caryatid hissed back, flinging her wickedly serrated blade at the lamia. The weapon flew almost perfectly vertically at Flare's heart, a tortured scream of air behind it. The Temple's guardian then suddenly twisted to the side, repositioning to put a pillar between her and her foes, hand reaching out to select a weapon to replace the one she had thrown.

Something Hawk hadn't quite realised as he experimented with attempting to use fire on fire monsters was that the magmagators both could jump out of their liquid environ to a surprising height and spit their flame over a surprising distance. A magmagator, having approached unnoticed from under the surface, suddenly burst out of the lava beneath him, a thin stream of flame spraying from it's jaws. Feeling golden fire licking at his wings as he frantically tried to evade, Hawk suddenly realised that it felt... good.

Arhra had been ignoring the heat, treating it with the vague disregard that her energy draining incarnation gave her to environmental extremities. If anything, the small but constant flow of energy was putting her in a better mood. In between her two hands, she had the cat's cradle of magic intended to capture the sudden release of energy upon the Seal's destruction underway.

Hydra had decided to follow the cliche, the heat making her overly active, practically jittery. Most fantastic beasts just didn't seem to understand that too much heat is just as bad for lizards as too little. She seemed resigned to bodyguard duties again, though she eyed the approaching magmagators hopefully.

Of course, they got there sooner than she had expected, a pair approaching under cover of lava only to surge out over the short remaining distance, a blue and a purple flame spewing from their jaws.

Arhra ducked, trying to evade the bright purple torrent of flame aimed at her head, tongues of fire licking at her hair. Hydra was hit full on by a ghostly blue flame which clung to her serpentine body and promptly did nothing. Even without the aid of Mammoth's Red Curtain this would have been true. It did feel kind of spooky though. Taking advantage of her reprive, Hydra jumped the magmagator, clinging on its back.

The reptilian pair rolled around wrestling for dominance, Hydra swiftly overpowering her smaller foe and biting it a great many times with her great many heads, all of which were conventiently armed with paralytic venom. Hydra stood again, holding on to the paralysed monster, and checked how Arhra was doing.

Arhra was holding the magmagator beneath a stream of flaming oil pouring from the leering demon face at a pillar's top. Normally, this would be ineffective, but the fact she was holding it's mouth open, the stream pouring down it's gullet, appeared to be making things quite unpleasant for the poor critter.

"Your head's on fire." Hydra decided she should tell Arhra. Those violet flames crowning her head couldn't possibly be good for her health.

Arhra spun to face Hydra, crazed fury on her face. "No time! Rip and tear!" she shouted, flinging her captive crocabeast at Hydra and charging forwards across one of the open framed bridges. Hydra watched her, jaws slightly agape, as Arhra whipped at a magmagator that leapt out of the pool at her with the incomplete stop-explosion-when-Caryatid-dies spell as she sped past it.

Hydra glanced longingly at the magmagator she had dispatched and the one Arhra had tossed aside, lying on its back, belly puffed out and twitching feebly. No, she told herself sternly, setting her captive down. Arhra was acting unusually irrationally violent and somehow had to be there to look out for her. She could eat later.

A whole lot more magmagators were emerging from the lava, one already breathing a jet of white-hot flame at her. She also could fight later, Hydra decided, running after Arhra.

[mauve]

"Hm," said Mauve, looking around the room. "Fire. Check. Lava, check. Fiery Caryatid, check. Aaaaannnddd... Oh. Lava alligators. Well that's pleasant. H'okay. Let's see what I've got going for me."

She looked down at herself.

"Plus side: Magic resistance. Minus side: No magic here to resist-- just ordinary everyday fire. Plus side: I've got magic. Lots of magic. Minus side: Alligators. Fricken' alligators made of lava. Plus side: I'm armed. Minus side: I'm armed with knives. All right, I think that just about does it for the inventory." She rubbed her hands together. "Now to get to work."

She ran forwards, her hand clenching into fists at her sides. She launched herself at her target.

Mauve pulled a cushion off the asbestos couch fort and dropped down inside, replacing the cushion above her.

"Rock on. I'm safe." she said, throwing her hands into the air victoriously. "Now I can plot evil plots of Caryatid-destroying without getting horribly scarred by fire and lava. I like this plan. This plan is good." Her monologue halted as she noticed the fort's driver staring at her. "Oh... uh... Hi Phil. Hope you don't mind. I'm not a fan of lava and getting burned to a crisp by said lava."

[Nikose Tyris]

Nikose, nearly unthinking, hurled himself to be between Flare and the incoming spear, taking it directly to the chest. The force of the throw pinned him down to the ground, but protected Flare, his first priority.

Now, his second.

"Phil... Water!" he shouted, as his flesh healed over the spear, causing an interesting looking growth to appear.

"Lookit her tail! If that truly IS magma, and we drop a significant amount of water on it, her tail should forcefully shatter as it hardens to rock and explodes from the speed- URK!" He began to let out a long, mournful, incredibly in pain moan as he grabbed hold of the spear in front of him, and began to climb up the length, slowly extracting it from his chest.

((I'm assuming it's about 6 feet long- When Nikose healed around it, no more pain, but now I need to get this damn thing OUT. I'll probably be incapacitated for a while.))

[phil_]

The couch fort continued to charge randomly around the arena. "Hey!" Phil yelled, jabbing a finger at Mauve. "No girls allowed!"

"Oh, wait, no. You're good. Sorry, it's surprisingly hard to remember that the rules of couchfortery are currently reversed for me." A magmagator's slam caused the fort to rock violently. "'Scuse me for a sec."

Phil popped her head out the top. "Hey, you jerks! Quit hitting my fort. ●Ice!" Another gator got a face-full of magic snow. From the center of the room, Phil heard Nikose's yelps before she ducked back into the fort.

"Hey, Mauve, Nik wants me to douse the caryatid. Now, as you know, that'd be the end of this awesome couch fort. So, if I direct this thing over there, could you make her contestant number one in our wet t-shirt contest of death? It'd mean a lot to the remaining guy-types."

"Also, decide quickly because I've already done the first part of that plan and we're about to leap past the caryatid." And so it was, that the couch fort bounded across an island near the island that Nikose, Flare, and the caryatid were playing "Odd Couple Plus One" on.

[Fenris]

Having not checked the thread for a while, Fenris decided to do something nobody expected her to do. She abandoned Lumaes, and snuck off with the others.

She then jumped in Philissa's Couch Fort while she read up on what the hell people have been up to lately.

[mauve]

"Aye Captain!" Mauve yelled, saluting Girl-Phil.

She pushed a cushion off the top of the fort and sat up on the roof, hands spread apart. An orb of purple-black smoke formed between her palms before solidifying into an orange-sized ball of water that hovered in the air before her. She grabbed the water ball and tossed it lightly into the air. It disappeared.

"I've been making up a lot of magic attacks off the top of my head lately," Mauve commented with a sigh. "It's like some great otherworldly being in charge of my every move and word was getting bored of my usual Final Fantasy-esque magic attacks or something and decided to make stuff up as she goes along. Weird." She waved a hand in the Caryatid's direction, and the water orb reappered above the lava woman's head-- About a hundred times larger than it had been moments before.

Rather than command the giant water orb to target the Caryatid and attack immediately, she simpy removed her hand and let gravity take over. The orb lost its shape, spilling down to the Caryatid's tail in a curtain of water.

"Hope Nikose knew what he was talking about," Mauve said to no one in particular. "Okay, back to hiding." She sunk back into the fort of asbestos-lined cushions.

[Flarecobra]

Gina rushed to the couchfort, and said "Letmeinletmein!!!!" in a rather frantic tone, a pair of the Magmagaters closing in on the nymph.

I, thankful that Nikose took the spear, headed for the nearest lava pool, and said "Man, I wish I didn't have to do this...." and jumped in. The lava felt a little thick, but it was enough to move in with some diffuculty. I rose to the surface and said "Here's a little lava in your eye!" and flung a handful of molten rock at her head before ducking back into the Lava. <Man, I hope there's nothing else in here...> I thought, before I felt something bump my back on it's way to the surface. <Crap.> I thought, moving under the surface to another area, where I broke for air, right in front of a Magmagater, who took a second to reconize me, then tried to attack, but ended up getting a faceful of thick lava right in it's mouth. It was stunned for a second, which let me dive back under the surface. <OK...now what...> I thought, then felt a bit of a current. <Well, might as well go with the flow and hope my breath lasts...>

[phil_]

It was getting kinda crowded in the couch fort. Ok, someone's gonna have to go. Kinda running low on stretching out room. "Right, family meeting. Now, I need a little more personal space than we currently have right now. Thusly, I'm kicking someone out. Sorry, Fenrietta, but real chicks who aren't smelly hobos get preference to, you know, you. See ya, good luck." Phil waved goodbye as the cushion behind Fenris hopped to the side and the blanket she was sitting on whipped up, throwing her out of the fort. "She'll be fine, I'm sure."

"Now, let's go harass some animals until that waterball attack is resolved." The couch fort hurried toward the closest magmagator and stomped on its head. The magmagator didn't appreciate the attention and twisted around to unleash a belch of yellow fire. This caused a nasty ruckus inside the fort when it burned a hole in the floor. "Gee wiz! ●Ice! That wasn't supposed to happen, what the heck?" The couch fort hopped back, drops of melted asbestos dripping from its belly. "If either of you wanna open up on the gator, have at it," Phil suggested to her passengers as she patted out the remaining flames.