Avatar RP VIII: Chapter VII: Timing

[PyrosNine]

Behind Arhra I, the white mage, came a tiny violet rainbow (of multiple shades of violet) in her time of need.

"Greeeetings, from the FUUUUUTUUURE! Where that joke is no longer relevant, but highly ironic!" said an extra tiny Arhra IX, who stood on Arhra's right shoulder.

"Arhra! Why so serious? With the knife and the balloon murder and all that, I mean." With her tiny violet rainbow clad miniature arm, she patted Arhra on the back. Well, more like her upper neck, IX couldn't reach that far in her miniature state.

Arhra also felt a small burning sensation on her left shoulder.

Chibi-Pyros appeared, disproving. "Yeah. Seriously. Evil Balloons you's. There are plenty of you's, and there are a few evil you's, but you're freaking out because you popped a few evil balloon you's. What's wrong with You's?"

IX had a different tone from Chibi Pyros, being from the future and all.

"Arhra, even though I know my words will have little effect, as the narration already mentioned my being from the future and all, but you mustn't forget what's truly important about being a white mage!" IX said, floating with her purple wings, speaking right into Arhra's right ear.

"They're balloons. It's not even murder in most countries!" Chibi-Pyros continued.

Sillyland, ruled by the ancient yet slightly creepy Clown Dynasty, frowned with capital punishment seriousness upon Inflaticide, also known in local Jester criminal slang as "popping", with offenders facing death by firing squad that drives in with a clown car. And there are always more of them in the car than you think.

"In the path of a white mage, there are monsters, demons, beings of pure hate, malice, and ignorance, who shun peace, love, and even those warm and fuzzy things shared by all, like saying "Good Morning", or eating Flan!" Chimed IX, in honorable tones.

"Like, on the hierarchy of ending the lives of things, Balloons are lower even than Ants! Pyros del Sol will happily pop balloons on his path of Mary-Suedom! And these were Evil balloons! The Space Pope would probably condone the death of a few evil balloon clones!" Chibi Pyros kept ranting in Arhra's left ear.

"And so, even the most devout, and virtuous patrons of the white way must be willing to smite, not in rage, or in hate, or with blood thirst, but with love, with the fury of righteousness to protect those that do love! It is a hard, but painful task asked of all white mages!" IX continued, speaking at the same time.

"I mean, 4 white mages can take down Chaos, Cloud of Darkness, and Neo-Exdeath, but that's if you're lame and don't take a band of Red Mages! I'm willing to relent if you take two white mages, a white wizard, and Boco the chocobo, but only just so. If only they let you take teams of five,then you could take Bard too, clinching awesomeness, but they don't, do they? White Sages don't count for the purposes of this challenge either, they're just Red Mage eunuchs!" Chibi-Pyros nodded to himself.

"But the important thing is, is that even if you must step out of the warm comfort of 'thou shalt not kill', and 'do no harm first', and must take lives, even if they are black as night in their wickedness, even if you must risk straying from your path down the back alleys of bloodshed--"

"Y'know, I was gonna abbreviate my name to be CP, to make it two syllables like IX, but then I thought, what if somebody read my name as Child Porn? That's just wrong! The fact I look like, 5 or so just cements the wrongness! And you in your white mage robes look the youngest out of most of the Arhras! I feel dirty just bringing it up! Or Communist Party? We've already had someone start spouting Trotskyisms! Or Captain Picard? Or Chronic Non-Suppurative Pancreatitis? Or other stuff?"

"You must still strive, and hope for a world of peace and love, where life endures! If you aim to follow the white path, then when you take one life, you must save a thousand in return, and if you kill thousands, you must revive the world! For it is the strive to restore what is fading, or what is lost that will return a white mage to the true path! Even if you are a faux white mage, it is that strive that will prove your truth. That is what I believe, and also..."

"Anyway, to sum what I'm saying up, stop being such a pansy, If you're gonna be against violence and desire to save lives without taking any in turn, you might as well start a Free Clinic in the projects, because what's going on here requires a mage who is willing to use a White Mage hammer for something more than Croquet! Pre-Emptive healing you could call it, for all the damage your allies won't take due to blunt force trauma to enemy heads. Like a blood sword, for those with Hemophobia!"

"...And also what this book says right here!" IX held up a tome of White Magic entitled "White Magehood for Dummies (or former Avatars of Chaos), by Minwu AKA Ming-Wu, AKA Shiro'o Kazama, AKA White Sleight. "Which you can purchase from me, your future self, for a low low price of free! Assuming of course, you return it to a public library in Queens 50 years from now, because I checked it out then and had it on me for the next 17, so y'know, you'll do yourself a favor financially, if you catch my drift!"

"Wait, what the crap? You came here just to hawk off your library fines? I'm here proving a distraction to your well intentioned advice as the devil on the left hand side, and this is about you dodging late fees?"

"They are really big, and really violet late fees! From the future!"

"This could be my last appearance in an Avvy, on NPF for that matter, aside from my appearance in that Philbo comic, and it's about using time travel to avoid late fees?"

"I left the white White Mage book in my Rainbow colored house's White room on a white bookshelf between a white book on Dentistry and a slightly beige looking book that looks slightly white in the Beige room and yet looks slightly beige in the white room! The late fees could not be avoided! This is slightly less abuse of time travel than that Steel guy I'm really here to give harsh words to!"

"We'll see how much time travel is involved with you after I put my kawaii boot up your violet behind!"

"Just try and bring it, CP!"

There then commenced a miniature fracas that fell into an adorable and morally indecisive ball of conflict on the popped balloon bit covered ground.

The book of White magic just kinda lay there on the ground, forgotten.

* * *

Pyros ran ahead, slicing through enemy clones, bee guns, which constantly respawned as he moved through the screen, and made an impressive running leap across a gap, to grab onto the wall on the otherside, only to be immediately set upon by an Eagle mid-air, and carried off to it's hungry nestlings.

"EEAAGLE!" Pyros screamed, carried off by his hair.

He would really have to work on his timing with his sword to get any further with this game, and he was only on the third level, with 3 minutes to spare! Roughly. Steel was making it kind of hard to tell.

That was it, it was time to show Pyros's own blend of fury, honed from a thousand years of being second banana, to a thousand years of being known just as another crazy fire cat god angel, a thousand years of being mistaken for Amaterasu and being stalked through the night by a desperate Tsukiyomi.

Pyros grabbed his long, Pantene-Pro V enfused locks, and pulled himself up towards his captor, knowing that the raptor's talons were already ruining his haircut anyway. With that in mind, he punched the bird in the junk.

He then fell, towards what looked like a wounded Arhra....was it the same one? He'd have to-"

The Giant Fan, in fell in freefall alongside him.

"Oooh! Are you going to summon a coloured vehicle fueled by the souls of the damned?"

The Giant fan was also an Eagles fan.

[Arhra]

Overcast threw his head and oversized coins at the over-winged abomination him and Shyria were facing.

'Arhra II' thrashed her half burrowed wings and a huge chunk of pavement in front of her flipped from a floor into a wall, falling forwards as projectiles shot into and broke up the protective shield.

Teeth and claws sheathed in mystical sharpness by Overcast's hyperbole, Shyria flapped her wings to hop airwards and descend on Arhra II. Smashing through broken up chunks of bitumen and falling coins, Shyria raked her claws against the pinions Arhra II curved forward as a shield. They practically tore apart, impossibly huge swathes torn out of them by the slashes. Puffing flame, Shyria thrust her jaws in and bit down with all her might. It was like biting jelly, a boneless mass with everything wanting to pull away.

Arhra II screamed.

She contracted and pulled into herself, like some sort of wing-oyster.

The dark mass seethed for a second and then exploded like a pot boiling over. The useless streamers of her broken wings suddenly took on new life, shreds thickening and tangling about Shyria's torso. Her wings unfurled and wrapped forward like an octopus engulfing its prey, seeking to latch on and immobilise her limbs. Primary wings grabbed at her head like sharp fingered hands to force her chin up and keep her jaws out of play.

"You will never know the reason for my hatred!" Arhra II screamed, upper body emerging out of the center winged mass like the heart of a bizarre flower, hands seeking purchase on Shyria's throat.

Wasn't every day that you saw someone try to strangle a dragon.

"Ha hah!" In the background, Arhra VI had been looking through the great big bag of loot taken from a time capsule possibly set up by time travelers that she had opened before its time. Which she had, of course, done for the good of all.

What she held was a black feather, longer than Arhra VI was tall. An oily sheen of slowly shifting colours tainted its surface. Just like Arhra II.

She'd dubbed it the Duster Sword. Just like... no...

If it really did come from the future, if it was really made from soylent Arhra II and if time travel had decided to work the way the thiefiest Arhra assumed it did for now, it could do a lot of damage. An object should really not like coming into contact with a version of itself from a different point along its own time line.

That was a lot of ifs.

If all else failed, it was still endgame loot.

"Let's clean up!" the feather sword wielding Arhra declared.

Nobody cared. They were all rather busy.

* * *

Instead of shoulder angels and devils, Arhra I had found herself with a shoulder Arhra IX and a shoulder Chibi-Pyros, both of whom were probably Pyros.

Strangely they were trying to convince of the same thing: that she should get her act together and kill shit.

"If you aim to follow the white path, Arhra IX advised, "then when you take one life, you must save a thousand in return, and if you kill thousands, you must revive the world! For it is the strive to restore what is fading, or what is lost that will return a white mage to the true path! Even if you are a faux white mage, it is that strive that will prove your truth. That is what I believe, and also..."

Things got a little derailed into return of overdue library books.

"But Ix," Arhra I sniffed, "for the people who die, their world has ended."

Rose had just grapsed the full severity of the situation.

They were stuck beneath the earth, facing off against a Fury enhanced Arhra II with a trap and monster filled labyrinth between them and the nearest exit. She was badly injured but, with the Fury in her system, that wouldn't slow her down. Also they had split the party.

"Arhra I!" Rose was suddenly behind the pseudo white mage, "Now is the time to prove the trueness of your heart! Use your invincible shield of love to protect us from Arhra II's inexplicable wrath!"

The vermilion haired mage's hands were planted on the glowing girl's white clad shoulders, as she tried to - gently – encourage I to place herself between the sorceress and the rest of the group.

"She tore off one of her own wings." Arhra I said distantly. "She filled it with Fury and an echo of her own mind and sent it to punish us all."

"I don't think those grow back." the healer added.

Not a terribly sane plan.

A Turquoise Railcar might have gone here, but the Giant Fan was proving to be a persistent foe!

"I see you have this all well in hand," Steel said. Then he was on the other side of the room. "So I'll just go see what that countdown's all about, kay?"

Behind Arhra II he gave a vague salute with his sword, and sped on, time warped around him. Past the double doors he found the most dangerous enemy of all to a speedster: the invisible wall.

The sorceress half turned and looked over her shoulder at him.



Some kind of black magical forcefield was visible now, reddish-purple energy crackling and subsiding back into invisibility where it had been struck.

Arhra II raised one hand and a wave of dark energy shot out behind her, knocking the damaged door off its hinges entirely and buckling the other before rushing into the little cul-de-sac Steel found himself in.

Armored Bishoujo smirked, struggling to control her rage at Arhra II. "Punished for my crimes? By you? I atone for my crimes by punishing evil. And evil bitches like you have no right to punish anyone else for anything. God, you're just the worst kind of person, y'know? I can't stand people like you!"

The cosplayer drew Slasher and Blaster, her bastard sword and blaster (which shot bullets). "Here, hold these bullets for me!"

The only part of the sorceress that moved was one of her hands.

"Pathetic." Arhra II threw the bullets back at her.

They exploded several feet in front of AB, golden ripples spreading alone a vertical plane. Arhra I was suddenly between her dark twin and the rest of the group.

"Such a wondrous shield." Arhra II breathed. "But dear I, don't you think you should stop sabotaging your own side?" she asked, looking at the faux white mage.

"What are you talking about?" the healer asked, distrust on her face.

"Your companions might have the illusion of safety, but they can't do anything now can they?" she purred. With an abrupt motion, she tore a slit in the side of her dress to give herself more freedom of movement. This was unusual; Arhra II didn't seem to like doing things physically.

She looked up again, blazing eyes sleepy with cruelty. "And time is slipping away."

2:31

"I-" the white mage began.

The sorceress cut her off, something that could be called a smile on her face. "You could try not getting in the way and just healing but no, you don't have a good track record with that, do you?"

"No-" the healer protested, shaking her head.

"What else? Assist magic?" her smile slowly widened. "You can't really put your heart into it, can you? After all, you'd be aiding and abetting such glorious carnage. There's nothing you can do without making it worse. You really are pitiful, aren't you? How could you have fallen so far?"

Arhra I has lost all will to fight!

"Was that really the best you had?" Arhra II said, mainly addressing Rose as she advanced, the barrier gone. She slashed her arm sideways, globules of energy trailing in an arc behind it. They contracted into spindle shapes and fired off at chest level into the midst of the NPFers.

Arhra I was already on the ground at the front, completely unresponsive.

"Let's make things worse." the images around her briefly synched up, there was a flicker and a book materialised in her right hand. Silvery lines of light over it in circuit-like patterns and the clasp unlocked.

"LOADED" it boomed.

Arhra II didn't really go for talking books.

"ABSORPTION"

Angular silvery gylphs rained around Arhra I.

[Teal Mage]

Crimson eyes burning brightly with cruelty, II hurled dagger after vicious dagger of venomous words at Arhra I. The Fury empowered Chaos Sorceress's barbs tore gaping holes in the white mage's fragile sense of self-confidence, quickly reducing the healer's invincible golden shield into glittering particles of fairy dust. Will to resist lost, Arhra I collapsed.

Disdainfully, II's eyes settled on Rose. Flanked by a swarm of transparent, colorless, clones of herself, the Sorceress began to advance. Trailing dark red energy - half-chaos, half-fury - Arhra swept her arm through the air before herself.

"Was that really the best you had?"

Magical power sharpened to needles, shooting across the chamber.

Rose was suddenly beside Arhra I. Pale purple lightning crackled over her hand, vivid gold sparks bursting wildly from it as the mage lashed out in a vicious slap. White light flared as her magic collided with the dark shapes of Arhra II spell wrought weapons. Fury enhanced chaos energy flared around Rose, edged with pale light. The wild magic tore into her dress, ripping shallow gashes into the edges of her body, before dissipating behind her.

Droplets of blood splattered around Rose.

"Let's make things worse." II murmured, steps slowing. Her ghostly after-images abruptly arrested, before snapping into synchrony with the original Arhra's body. There was a flicker, and suddenly, a book was in the Sorceress's pale hand. She raised it causally before herself, once again advancing at full speed.

"Loaded." It boomed.

Silver lines burst into life over the tome's surface. The sound of a lock unclasping suddenly rang erupted in the cavernous chamber.

"Absorption."

Silver runes began to rain around Rose and Arhra I.

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Rose suddenly snapped, gesturing sharply. A fierce wind swept up around the mage, whipping her vermillion hair around her face and throwing tugging her azure dress wildly over her body. "How can you say things like that to your own sister?"

Iridescent petals of pink lights swirled out from Rose en mass, filling the air around her and the defeated Arhra I. "She tries hard - really hard - to do what she thinks is right." Pale bursts of crackling energy began to flare from petal-to-petal, as Rose further saturated the air around I and herself with her magical power, the currents of it raging in opposition to II's rain of silver runes. "And you just..." Whatever Rose said ended in a growl.

Rose was using her magic to resist the absorption spell!

Her arm snapped up, blood still dripping from the shallow cuts made by II's attack spell. Her black and gold dagger was in her hand. "Get lost bitch." The dagger burst into white light, elongating through both sides of her grip, extending until it was nearly her height.

Surrounded by a raging storm of flower petals, hair and dress whipping around her form, Rose held the slim and elegantly curved shape of a black metal bow diagonally before herself. In its center a blue-green crystal orb glinted.

"You can't have her."

[Overcast]

Overcast smiled as Shyria tore through the winged mass, the screaming was heartening as well. The scene of invincibility quickly descending into desperation. The explosion of gooey wing was troublesome though, the sorceress reaching out in an attempt to strangle the massive reptilian deathmachine. This just would not do,

"Stop your bitching, you're hatred doesn't have any meaning."

He started walking over to Arhra's exposed torso pulling his gloves back on. Truly if she had forgotten he was here she had to be foolish,

"You're just an overemotional creep who got her hands into way too much power and is suffering some sort of existential emo breakdown from the application. It is just pathetic."

He meant to be rude, judging, unfair. Really he was sure if she was actually willing to talk to them for three seconds without trying to kill them, and were the time not running she had plenty to be hateful about. He just wanted her to be hateful about him though,

"And now you sit here amongst your betters in an attempt to justify the imaginary hate. You don't have the power to touch that dragoness."

He closed his fist and covered the box in grins,

"You don't even have the power to touch me."

And he threw a punch, just one punch, aiming for that pretty little face to give it a mar worth noting. It probably wouldn't do anything other than make her angry, but it bought some time for a much more reasonable Arhra to come by with some temporal superloot. Not that he knew about that, he was just try to give Shyria time time to escape.

After all he had completely forgotten he was on a time limit.

[PyrosNine]

Pyros did the only sane thing doable at this time, and chucked one horrid, unpleasant thing at another horrid, unpleasant thing, sending the Giant Fan going "OMG!" straight down at Arhra II.

Falling feet first, Pyros raised both hands, summoning all the force he had within himself, creating a large, red and black sphere that glowed with the intensity and foreboding doom of a dying star. Pyros was done just chucking, plain ordinary fireballs. Now was the time for him to hurl something to make others die: either of them would have been nice, though he was worried that another Arhra seemed to be in the shot as well. But there was a time limit going on, so he might as well go a little overboard.

"Nova shot!" Pyros sent a miniature, portable, long range version of the attack he never uses in Avvies the pair of Arhras, and the Giant Fan.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Shyria kept digging into Arhra II like a cat at an especially large and angry scratching post until the abomination managed to pin her limbs and wings. Now shreds of eldritch energy were clogging her nose as the demon's hands closed around her throat.

From the corners of her eyes, Shyria saw Arhra VI waving an oversized pillow stuffer as a blade, Overcast gearing up for the mother of all punches, and Pyros doing his best impression of the K-T asteroid. She decided now was as good as time as any to back off.

Her jaws snapped open just long enough to send one last jet of napalm in the direction of Arhra II's face before jerking down and grabbing one of her hands by the wrist, hoping to tear herself free.

[Steel Shadow]

Rose had just taken a stand in reckless defiance of the great evil enemy, holding fast as a beacon of hope and friendship!

“That's very nice.”

Something slammed into Arhra II's side with the force of meteor.

It was a foot.

“But it's not a very impressive threat when you don't have the means to back it up.” Steel was back! And he looked... um, upset? And redder than ever!

He brought his leg back down and gave II - who hadn't been moved even slightly by his kick - an annoyed look. “Most people have the courtesy to go flying after an attack like that. Evil I can get, but there's just no call for such rudeness.” He waved his hand in a dismissive fashion, accidentally creating a few sonic booms, before returning to the subject at hand. “That was an impressive attack, Ms. Sorceress. But you really should know, I can move faster than you can think. Especially since I took another one of these lil' pills of doom, 'cause apparently no one else wanted them. For you see-”

Steel stopped, looking up for a moment.

“Oh. Ok, there was more to this chat, but Pyros has decided to actually set something on fire finally.” There was more looking at Pyros. “Huh. Judging by the size, he's been holding that in for about 3 RPs now. So, you have fun with that, I'll go stop this from turning into a legendary Team kill.” And then he was gone.

As were Arhra I and Rose.

A large time shield enveloped the NPFers (even Bard!) like a bubble, Steel standing in the middle of it concentrating. “Ok,” he spoke. “Once Pyros is done, I am dropping this thing and commencing the long overdue beat down for II over there. If any of you want to join in, I suggest you take a few of these.” He offered up the fury pill bag to anyone interested.

The pills within glinted menacingly somehow.

“They make hitting things even more fun, and give your voice a nice clean echo! Plus they stop you feeling pain, which is handy.”

“Any takers?”

[mauve]

"Oh, is it time to unleash the unbelievably cheap super attacks now?" Mauve asked, looking suddenly very interested in this battle. No one was sure when she arrived or how she got there, and Mauve probably wouldn't explain if she was asked. Mauve thought it made her more mysterious. It probably just made her more annoying.

"Once Pyros is done, I am dropping this thing and commencing the long overdue beat down for II over there. If any of you want to join in, I suggest you take a few of these.” The time knight held out a bag of fury pills. Mauve reached over and pulled one out of the bag. She eyed it critically.

"Are they candy flavored?" she asked suspiciously. "Oh well. We'll make do with what we have, I guess." She weighed the pill in the palm of her hand, eying Pyros and his Nova Doom Attack of Fiery Nova Doom. Once Steel dropped the time shield, Mauve would unleash hell. Or something. She wasn't quite sure yet. This sort of thing required careful consideration. Mauve had an arsenal of destructive magics at her command. She had to pick the right spell for the right occasion----the one that would make herself look the most badass, probably.

[Arhra]

Because sorceresses were worse even than kangaroos, Geist had quit.

He'd found a pizzeria. Despite an entire section of the forum being levelled, killer robots running amok and an ominous countdown, it was still open. Its staff knew they had been chosen; their scared mission was to save the planet, one delicious pizza at a time.

In the bright and open interior Geist found himself confronted by five counters manned by teenagers in fast food wage-slave attire, three boys and two girls.

The ghostly summon placed his order.

"Cheese!" his server punched up and outwards, yellow energy shooting from his ring.

"Tomato!" the boy at the register next to him responded, a red beam joining the yellow.

"Dough!"

"Toppings!"

"Meat!"

"By your ingredients combined, I am CAPTAIN PIZZA!" A heroic man in red tights appeared where the beams converged. A stylised pizza was on his chest and a chef's hat on his head.

"Captain Pizza, he's our hero
Gonna take your hunger down to zero
He's delicious magnified
And he's fighting on this restraunt's side.
Yaaay, Pizza!"

"You look ghastly," Captain Pizza told Geist with a grin, "but this'll soon put that hunger of yours to rest." With his incredible powers, he tossed the dough, added toppings and cooked the pizza with his heat vision in under a minute.

"That'll be 9.95."

Geist paid the man.

"The pizza is YOURS." Captain Pizza returned to the Pizzareers' pizza power rings.

"Hey, aren't you that guy's summon?" a girl polishing off a last slice of pizza asked, spotting him as he moved into the dining area.

The girl was pale, black haired, red eyed and possessed the three pronged sidelock profile unique to Arhra. Stubby horns, faintly unsettling sex appeal, vaguely draconic wings and a ridiculous outfit confirmed her identity as the newly dubbed Gestalt Arhra. Still mostly succubus, her absurd mixture of traits hadn't yet reached equilibrium.

"Where are all the other jerks?" she asked of Geist.

* * *

"Stop your bitching, your hatred doesn't have any meaning." Overcast said, trying psychological warfare on the winged monster that appeared to be Arhra II. "You're just an overemotional creep who got her hands into way too much power and is suffering some sort of existential emo breakdown from the application. It is just pathetic."

Arhra II did not seem to be listening to him: she was too busy strangling a dragon with her bare hands.

"And now you sit here amongst your betters in an attempt to justify the imaginary hate. You don't have the power to touch that dragoness."

She seemed to be managing that just fine.

He closed his fist and the box that was his head covered itself in grinning mouths. "You don't even have the power to touch me."

Arhra VI was sneaking up with hopefully soylent-Arhra based weaponry stolen from the future-past to deal chrono-mechanically assisted damage and Shyria needed a hand.

Overcast struck!

He threw a punch, just one punch, smashing into her cheekbone. The false Arhra II's head seemed to move too far, neck stretching bonelessly from the impact before snapping back. She shrieked in outrage and bristled with spines, wing tips morphing into spears that stabbed out in every direction.

A pained gasp came from the side, Arhra VI had gotten shish-kabobed. Her Duster Sword clattered to the ground as she swayed.

"How dare you." Arhra VI breathed heavily, pressing one pitch black hand against the wound. Her blood was almost black. She looked up, murder in her crimson eyes. "I'll make you pay with that body of yours."

She moved like lightning, lunging forward, ducking under a flailing wing and inside II's guard, raking an open hand across her body, hungry nothingness in the blow. Lesser wings released Shyria to entangle her in an embrace of death but she disengaged immediately, leaping skywards through the feathery dome closing about her to land safely at a distance.

A handful of II's wings shimmered and shrank to nothing. The large set she was using to keep Shyria's head out of play moulted and vanished too. Identical wings erupted out of VI's back, tearing through the trait stealing Arhra's shirt as a hodgepodge of other wings grew out of her body along with them.

She stooped and recovered the Duster Sword.

Shyria breathed flame down at Arhra II and jerked her jaws down to snap like a beartrap on her forearm. Enhanced by Overcast, they sliced right through. Arhra II released Shyria and shrank back, trying to get some distance to recover. A new arm was forming out of the stump.

VI jumped back in, awkwardly swinging the Duster Sword one handed. Things seemed to slow down just before she hit, arcs of energy crackling between II and the sword. Space tore apart in a blast of light and then swirled and collapsed again with a thunderclap.

Both of them were gone.

* * *

Rose was calling a sorceress out. Arhra II had driven her own 'sister' to the breaking point. Arhra I had fallen into a profound depression and passed out instead of having a massive psychotic episode fortunately. Her darker twin had then tried to absorb her with alien magic, intending to add a second source of seemingly limitless energy to her arsenal. And perhaps more worryingly, healing spells: she was a wreck right now.

Rose had jumped into the fray, heedless to the spell-missiles Arhra II had been tossing off, setting magic of wind and petals in opposition to interfer with the absorption capture.

"Get lost bitch." Rose said, the magical dagger she held turning into light and recasting itself into a black metal bow. "You can't have her."

"Normally, yes." the sorceress replied. "The hearts of others are not easily overcome. But her soul is in hiding and so she is vulnerable. You can't save her. You can't even save yoursel-"

She got roundhouse kicked by Steel, the images around her flying into wild confusion for a second.

“That's very nice.” the Time Knight said to Rose. “But it's not a very impressive threat when you don't have the means to back it up.”

“That was an impressive attack, Ms. Sorceress. But you really should know, I can move faster than you can think. Especially since I took another one of these lil' pills of doom, 'cause apparently no one else wanted them. For you see-”

Steel decided to get out of there since Pyros was on the warpath.

A Giant Fan was flung into the fray. "Woot!" the Fan shouted as he flew through the air with the greatest of easy. "PYROS NINE actually touched me! I'm so happy I coul-"

He burst. Reams of fanfiction drifted down like radioactive fallout.

Such shipping.

Arhra II lowered her hand.

"Nova shot!" Pyros shouted. His second projectile was something even worse than a Giant Fan: a ball of material so energetic it was a fourth state of mattter, heat and pressure collapsed so far in on itself it had no choice but to explode forth once more.

Inside the absolutely static, perfect protective shell that was Steel's Time Shield, the NPFers did not feel the wash of heat or blast of overpressure as the forbidding black and red sphere of solar extinction noiselessly expanded into a brilliant pyre rose.

The NPFers were ready to strike when Steel dropped his shield. The air was a murky, opaque red, sparks and tongues of fire tumbling through the air.

Impossibly, they heard a distant screaming. The burning air parted, fleeing out of the way of a juggernaut of blue light. It bulled into the spherical cross section of the field of frozen time and forced it inwards, bulging in with angular shadows flickering through it like demented ghosts.

The sublime order of stopped time was thrown into chaos and the shield ceased to exist.

Devouring light flooded in.

1:18

[mauve]

The raging storm of blue light battered Mauve's shield. The mage grit her teeth in annoyance as she struggled to maintain the barrier of purplish light she had hastily conjured as Steel's shield imploded.

A single, smoldering manuscript had landed on the top of the shield. It was quickly burned away to cinders from the onslaught of Nova fire and Arhra's attack, but not before Mauve could read the title and the first few lines. Fanfiction?!?!

"What the... WHY WOULD ANYONE PAIR ME WITH HIM?!?!" she cried in disgusted horror. Eeuuughgghh... Oh that's it. Something had to die now. And since the Fan was already-- supposedly--- dead and vaporized into his primal form, bad fanfiction, that left Arhra. Assuming she was still here somewhere.

Mauve looked around. The room was full of burnination and light. She didn't really see anyone anymore. Her shoulders sagged. So much for that. Mauve hated when enemies used self-destruct attacks to end battles.

"Sooooo.... is anybody still alive out there? Hello?" she paused, listening for a reply over the screaming blue fire. "If you guys are dead, can I have your stuff?"