NPF Avatars: Sadness and Family Intervention

[Raiden]

Raiden felt his body and all the electric forms he had made get surrounded by water.

Why Twiddy would do that was beyond him. Water had a tendency to make him short out and give off an incredible electric destructive area. As such, when the water struck him, the entire area filled with a powerful electric explosion.

************************************************** *********
Raiden raised an eyebrow at Dragonsbane.

"Still using large words to compensate for mediocre physical attributes, huh?"

Small spheres formed in the night air around him. However, these spheres were no larger than a marble, instead of the large orbs of death he usually made.

"It's too bad you've shown up so late. I almost have my hands on the Mashirosen. However, you should provide a quaint little distraction."

The tiny spheres of incredible explosive power zoomed forward in DB's direction.

************************************************** *********
The door of the coffeeshop Mauve was wandering in seemed to have changed. A new lock appeared that wasn't there before. It was a simple turn lock, which meant easy exit.

************************************************** *********
"Oh please, Mesden. I've had enough of your threats. None of you know what I'm fully capable of. Hell, I never even knew. Our father never told me. But now I know. Which is why he's heading here. Likely to fix the mistake."

The Raiden puppet closed his eyes and began his song again.

"He's got the whole world
in his hands..."

************************************************** **********
Raiden continued to be struck with the constant barrage of attacks, which did nothing more than fuel his god rage even more. The atmosphere itself seemed to shake at the rage of the Thunder God. Zooming forward, he grabbed onto the FlameShield that surrounded Pyros. Ignoring the burns he was getting, he ripped into the shield and began to tear it apart with his bare hands. After making a big enough hole, his fist stuck in and grabbed at Pyros's neck.

[POS Industries]

Pedro had to let his eyes adjust after the matter-to-energy transporter sequence had ended. The room was dark, made even more eerie by the blue glow of the Mashirosen core. POS had gotten about three and a half seconds of self-satisfaction before he felt his stomach drop straight through the floor. He had buried those little tricks into the code of the tower's defense systems in order to be able to steal the Mashirosen himself and hold it for ransom, should the need have arisen, and while he was glad to know that his trial run had all-in-all been a success, he now had a much worse problem on his hands.

"Woo! Do that again!"

A voice. The girl. He could just make out her shadow in the darkness. She was awake now. That was good, but still not good enough. POS jumped as he heard a muffled "boom" in the distance as the emergency power generators came online, activating the lights in the room and bringing a nearby computer terminal online.

"So are you really up this time?" POS asked Arhra, "Because it would be really handy if you were. We just did something very impressive in the short term, but now we have an extremely pissed off, fully powered, authentic legendary thunder god after our blood, so if you have something in your bag of tricks to keep him from tearing us limb from limb and playing jump rope with our entrails, I'm all ears."

Almost immediately, Arhra's cat ears began to twitch, and she started talking into her tail.

"Huh? Oh, hi Ecurt! What? Right, report. Yeah, I think we have something to report..."

[Darth SS]

An incredibly groggy Darth dragged himself up. His stomach was sore, and so was his leg. He pulled up his shirt and looked at his formerly-life threatening wounds. Puffy pink scar tissue looked back. The HALO-heal had kicked in. It apparently hadn't accounted for his blood loss though. Thus, he groaned as he got up, and was kind of unsteady.

From his backpack, he withdrew a banana, a cookie, and some gatorade. He ate/drank all of the above, and waited a few minutes. The crowd had quieted down. Then, the nutrients hit his system and he started to feel a lot better. Back to the matter at hand however...

The XM8 would be dead-weight against Raiden. Darth ditched it and all the ammo. He did, however, hold onto the shotgun. Even Raiden had a bit of difficulty with simultaneous projectiles. The Jericho also left as well. If there was one thing that could stand against Raiden, it was a god. The best second alternative was drama/style. Thus, Darth withdrew his precious Ruger Super Blackhawk. He'd gone diving after Poseidon solely to recover it. The gun had been modified by him to have a less "wild west" grip. It was chambered for a .44 Magnum bullet. Long story short, it was an easier more managable version of Krylo's handcannon. He also slipped down his pants an ASP. It was a handgun so small it could be hidden in your palm, and it held 7 bullets. It was concealed at his crotch. Raiden had no shame, but he didn't grope any guys. The only one he attempted to grope was Krylo.

Darth yawned, and then shook his head. He got his backpack on, loaded his Ruger, spun it, and slapped it down into the holster. That was his gun. Aw yeah.

"Time to go rumble with a god."

Darth walked out of the room. His soundtrack was now "Puttin on the Ritz."

[mauve]

Mauve climbed through the rubble of the destroyed coffee shop to the door. As she stumbled over the last broken table, she took a look down at herself. The flames from the explosion had burned away the blood stains from Krylo, but now she had not only blood stains from Raiden, but black ash smears as well. Nice.

"What am I, a friggin' collection dish for blood samples and mutilated body tissues?!" she muttered crossly. "What does the world have against my little pink dress? Are my fashion crimes really so terrible that fate itself must punish me?"

Grumbling, she kicked aside a fallen chair and reached for the door. Her hand hovered over the knob. The lock was suprisingly simple.

"Well gee," she said. "This looks suspiciously easy."

Half-expecting the door to explode or something, the mage's fingers wrapped around the lock and turned it. Then she grabbed the handle and pulled.

[Truce]

Ecurt nodded in reply and then, after realizing that Arhra couldn't see him, sent another message. "I'm hoping its good news then. Fenris and I ran into a little bit of trouble, and we've been forced to start outside of the Tower again. I'll lock onto your armor and open a portal from where I am to your general vicinity, but that will take a couple minutes, so in the mean time just fill us in with the basics."

[Fenris]

Fenris groaned in the background of Ecurt and Arhra's conversation.

'Why doesn't he help me?' Fenris thought, still unable to form a coherent sentence. He groaned again, and forced himself up, propping himself against the tree.

'I managed to hold my own, kinda, against an electic cat/weasel thing, only to get my ass kicked by a tree,' Fenris thought, appreciating the irony of the situation.

'I have to thank Ecurt for this armor, later. I should be dead right now,' Fenris thought. 'Maybe... I can take... a little nap...' ran through his mind as he passed out from a mixture of exhaustion and pain.

[Mesden]

"...he's got the whole wide world, in his hands.
He's got you me, and brother, in his hands.
He's got the whole world in his hands. It's a nice song you told me a while back. Too bad things change."

She looked back at Raiden, not with anger, but with understanding.

"I guess I can't help it. Threats won't work. Kindness won't work. Beating this form of you shitless won't work. So, I guess it is down to Him, isn't it?"

"It's the role of the father to put things right when the son fucks up. Then again, I'd say it was more his fault than anything. So many things..."

She gave a short sigh and placed her arm in the air. The area completely dismissed into the normal cave exit of a fake ethereal world.

"Could you get rid of this mockery for me?"

A few runes escaped Raiden's lips, and they phazed into the area. The surroundings waivered as reality itself was altered to his whims. When the environment decided upon the new reality, the room changed into a strange mishmash.

"It seems my Rune is beginning to fail me now. I cannot change it back to what it originally was."

"Ah well. A thorough beating can make you a little weak I guess. Too bad things ended up like this. I guess whatever fate I had in this world should have never been placed."

Raide's eyes gave a slight caring stare. She was the hermit of the gods and goddesses. She didn't care for anything except her own world until Raiden had stepped in and talked to her. It was sad to hear her give up on everything all over again.

"Ah good, He's just about here..."

[Dragonsbane]

Dragonsbane laughed, and laughed pityingly, "I'm...I'm sorry, were you attempting to goad me? You have failed abysmally to grasp that power is useless without skill." he wiped tears of merriment from his eyes, even as the spheres hurtled towards him. He didn't move, he didn't dodge, he would have confused the hell out of the managenetimancers who had painstakingly designed his body's reflexes and muscle structure to be superior to those of any humanoid. The spheres were well-aimed, and exploded precisely upon reaching his location at the time they had been fired, blinding and awesomely powerful flashes marking the area they had annihilated. And yet...

His voice came from behind Raiden, "A valiant effort, yet sadly futile."

He did not say that he could have taken advantage of the temporary blindness Raiden would suffer as a result of the explosion to launch an attack, to turn the ground beneath his opponent's feet to superheated magma, or to fire rays of magical energy calibrated to deconstruct matter they struck. Nor did he mention that he could have hurled the spheres back toward Raiden. Such statements were obvious and therefore unneeded. Besides which, he wanted to test his newest spell. Dragonsbane had one hand lifted, the tapered tip of one finger pointing at him, "Summon Phoenix."

As Raiden turned around, a blinking H.U.D. of red light showed a pair of targeting crosshairs locking onto him, then a thousand points of ruby light coalesced around the Archmage as the H.U.D. vanished, trailing comet-like tails as they flew upward and coalesced into a blindingly bright crimson beacon that shot into the night sky. From the empty air, a staticy male voice crackled, "Roger, Lord Dragonsbane, target received."

[Arhra]

Arhra told Ecurt the good news, "We've got the Mashirosen!"

"WHAT?!"

The summoner yelled back into the cat tail with glee, "I fell asleep and got to the Mashirosen in a dream then summoned reality. POS was able to use the defence system's override to get it and us out of there."

"YOU WHAT!? POS WHAT!?" Ecurt's voice this time had more overtones of bafflement then surprise.

"Raiden's probably right on our tail, hurry up and get here!" She let go of her tail and looked at POS, "We'll need to put our heads together and come up with a Plan out of what we have. I've got chaos magic, summon magic and sailor fuku. I can shapechange a bit too but that's... erratic."

Arhra didn't mention her powers of revivifaction - she was hoping it wouldn't come to that. Often she was pretty vulnerable for a while after it happened and if the revivals happened too close together, it could kill her permanently, as illogical as that sounded.

Still, she was certain between the two of them, they'd be able to come up with a Plan before Raiden got there. Note the capital - it's important. They'd managed to get far ahead of the rest after all.

[PhoenixFlame]

PhoenixCorp HQ…

*KZZZNT! KZZZNT!* Klaxons blared within Phoenix’ private quarters of PhoenixCorp Headquarters, somewhere within Nuklear City. Red strobes periodically illuminated the room as the exhausted woman sat bolt upright in adrenaline-induced panic. “A Master Alarm, Now!?” she gasps incredulously, looking down and fortunately sighing relief at how she had feel asleep still in her jumpsuit. She ran full speed toward the door to the lab, which was unpowered.

*THUNK!* “OW!”

Shaking her head clear of the momentary daze, she grabbed the crowbar set across the doorway’s entryway, which was clearly marked, “In case Xenomorph Invasion.” With this, she pried the formerly-automatic door open.

“What’s going on?” she asked Tech Mclowski.

“Lord Dragonsbane has sent us a summons.” he replied.

“What’s going on? Has she been deployed?”

“Affirmative, Phoenix. Raiden’s gone and stole the Kurosen…”

“Stole the Kurosen? So that’s why we don’t have any power… Oh no.” Phoenix thinks, mentally calculating how much power the emergency generators create without the vital link to the Kurosen.

************************************************** ********
On the Battlefield…

A piercing, earth-shaking crash of a large sonic boom tears across the sky above Raiden. Clouds shimmer and part, nearly revealing a massive, crimson starship, it’s fusion engines shimmering brightly in the sky overhead. With a dazzling flash, a firey meteorite streaks from the clouds, falling toward the earth at terminal velocity. The crimson contrail stretches as far as the eye can see, as the teal and purple high-velocity, low-altitude drop pod violently plummets several hundred meters toward its summoner.

Seconds before impact, a trio of retro-thrusters ringing the top of the pod suddenly ignite, eliminating the device’s downward momentum over the course of 1.25 seconds. A large “P-V” and the accompanying lightning-winged, flaming sword insignia can be seen on the side of the triangular prism pod as it gently touches down immediately splitting open into three flattened panels upon the ground like a banana peel. With a cold "Vsssh." , cryo-stasis mist shrouds the area for several moments, before out steps a tall, statuesque feminine figure. Her red hair billows dramatically in the wind as her similarly crimson eyes suddenly snap open, fixing on Raiden.

"Your orders, Dragonsbane?” she asks.

Dragonsbane merely points menacingly at Raiden.

“Understood.”

The android casually extends her right arm parallel with the ground, and with a flash of light, a massive surfboard sized, knifelike weapon of purple and teal materializes into her outstretched arm. The camera pans cinematically across the lettering near the handle’s laser-sight, which reads “Raijin-X High-Energy Plasma Thrower.” The diminutive woman hefts the weapon effortlessly across her hip, leveling its firing aperture toward Raiden. Her left eye snaps closed as a boxy, indigo crosshair zips across her HUD, locking onto the Thunder God’s torso as she gently pulls the weapon’s firing-lever. The whole scene flashes white momentarily as the weapon discharges with a piercing crack, a bowling-ball diameter beam of the finest azure linking the weapon and it’s target...