NPF Avatars 5 - The Universe, Breaking Us Down

[Bailey]

Keyman spotted Mauve's shield and edged over, then put a hand over the mike of his headset. "Can you let me in? I'm all out of extra lives."

[Arhra]

"Oh really Inbred." The chocobo-man spun back to the front to find Arhra nonchalantly perched on the bear's back facing him. There was little to no evidence of how she'd gotten there. Like before, she shouldn't be there. Arhra was surprisingly adept at riding a bear bareback backwards however. "This entire world is falling apart and you just say the tournament might be compromised?" Arhra went on, "I ought to give you an award for understatement." Arhra's presence here definately gave weight to her argument.

"I'll spare you the details of how I'm here, seeing much of it hasn't even happened." the chaos being added, "Suffice to say, hijinks were involved." Arhra fluttered her hand. "Anyway, Raiden's after your blood you say?" She was somewhat more confused by this. She was fairly certain the bear was supposed to be fighting the bird... man... bird.

* * *

In the Kurosen Tower, Arhra watched Hawk get electrocuted and slump to the ground unconscious. "Well that saves a lot of tedious explanations." she said.

She'd ended up near Keyman, hearing him say. "What should I do about the funny looking brown puddle around the nice robot lady with the gravity effect -or maybe time, can't really tell from here- around her?"

Arhra's expression turned positively angelic, as she turned to him, manner friendly. "I know." She said, voice dripping honey, "Why don't you go over to the nice robot lady and ask her yourself, dear?"

Her outlook on this sort of thing was people stupid enough to believe her when she said things like this deserve to die.

* * *

Kayessa had started dejectedly tromping over the rubble strewn floor of the arena when she noticed a piece of paper wedged in between two pieces of her armour plating. Curious, she pulled it out and, unfolding it, began to read.

To Kayessa,
As there is the possibility of circumstances wildly beyond my control stopping me meeting up with you after the battle (perhaps being carried off by flying turtles or being swallowed by a dragon), I decided I should leave you a note. Don't worry about me. I assuredly will get better/save myself.

I've already told you a little about the city, but not said much closer to home. I currently have two other girls dwelling with me in my mansion (I am independantly wealthy due to reasons I will not disclose on paper). Their names are Yuri and Hydra. I've attached a map so you can find my house if need be.

Yuri was the first to join me. While in the middle of stopping Raiden being a big jerk (He was trying to destroy the universe in the most unstylish way imaginable!), we were captured by a triad of badly drawn magical girls with ties to the seedy underworld of anime. I was successful in seducing one of them and obtaining my freedom. However, guilt at my manipulation of her trust led me to assist her in a character redesign, greatly boosting artistic quality. She accompanied me for the remainder of the journey. While occaisionally vexing and cliched, she has been a great help to me.

Hydra became a companion of mine on a subsequent journey. The forces of Chaos recently attempted to induce the apocalyse. I gathered a small group of the NPFers to destroy the elemental seals isolating the Chaos Gate from the rest of the world. The plan was my small group would then proceed to the Gate and battle the Herald of the End Times (that sexy fiend!). While the details of what happened at the Gate are thankfully vague, the threat of the Herald was ended.

Anyway, back to Hydra. The guardian of the Earth Seal had fielded an army of weak but rapidly multiplying snakes, also creating a small number of snake-like hydra that could grow more heads by eating other reptiles. When faced with one, I decided to try and turn it into a more humane hydra.

The magic and I had a quarrel over the meaning of the word 'humanise'. This created Hydra and various other complications throughout the quest resulted in her current state. She's a nice girl, a stalwart defender of her friends and I'm sure you two will get along.

I will now tell you some of the other denizens of the NPF who you haven't met and who you should look out for.

If you run into anything that calls itself 'Newb', be it kindly old grandmother, golem or tree, it is not to be trusted. Similarly, any god should not be trusted. If someone tells you they are a god, smile and nod. They are probably lying. Especially if their name is Raiden, Mesden or possibly Pyros. If someone asks you if you are a god, say yes.

Kneumatic Pnight, Phoenix and Pedro O'Sullivan are all nice people. However, they are also the heads of monolithic mega-corporations and, as such, are not to be trusted. Wizards are generally not to be trusted, being subtle and quick to anger as they are. Mauve Mage and Twiddy seem pretty alright by wizard standards, although Twiddy might be mythical. Ecurt, I do not know very well. However, I know he was once a turkey and so you should probably be wary of him.

IHMN is currently a cat and TBM is a mime. Cats and mimes are not to be trusted. Hawk claims to be from The Future. I first met him as when he was cursed into bird form. He has previously worked in my employ as an emergency food supply. Surly about his occupation and prone to outbursts of threats, it may be best to avoid him.

Nikose appears to be setting up a shady underground cartel by distributing infant weapon-symbiotes. I'd advise you to steer clear of him too. Melfice seems to be his right hand man. Fenris is a mod, but he is in deep with Nikose's child labour ring. Best if you don't mention that to his face.

I do have the intent to introduce you to Rei and Phoenixbot, seeing they know more about being a gynoid than I do. I've already pointed them out to you, so if you run across one of them, explain your situation to them.

Anyone I have not mentioned is not to be trusted.

Love,
Arhra

Kayessa looked at the document in bafflement. She didn't know where Arhra had gotten the time to write all that. The two of them had escaped from a spa filled with killer robots, only to crash a ball of fembot carcasses into the arena which had been filled with other, deadlier, robots. At this point, Arhra had gotten in a fight with a dragon and subsequently was swallowed whole.

Still, this baffling document had made the world slightly less baffling to her. New purpose in her stride, she set off.

[Bailey]

Originally Posted by Arhra

In the Kurosen Tower, Arhra watched Hawk get electrocuted and slump to the ground unconscious. "Well that saves a lot of tedious explanations." she said.

She'd ended up near Keyman, hearing him say. "What should I do about the funny looking brown puddle around the nice robot lady with the gravity effect -or maybe time, can't really tell from here- around her?"

Arhra's expression turned positively angelic, as she turned to him, manner friendly. "I know." She said, voice dripping honey, "Why don't you go over to the nice robot lady and ask her yourself, dear?"

Her outlook on this sort of thing was people stupid enough to believe her when she said things like this deserve to die.

Keyman was lucky. Extremely lucky. For one thing, Arhra's suggestion was phrased as a question. For another, he managed to get a six. As such, he thought he was being tested, rather than receiving an actual suggestion.

"Be... cause... it might turn out that that is in conflict with my orders, and also because the nice robot lady isn't Mommy and can't give orders?" Keyman beamed at Arhra, sure he had answered correctly and passed the test.

[PhoenixFlame]

Phoenixbot was left in the middle of nowhere, stuck in a merging time bubble, with nowhere to go. Her nemesis exploded into candy, and her guide was now off nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, Phoenixbot was smarter than that, and knew not to take candy from strangers, especially not evil un-kawaii overlords. Yet, seeing no more need for her transformation, she quickly reverted to a normal middleschoolers uniform, and discarded her weapon.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile... at the Bus Stop outside the Kurosen tower...

Phoenix yawned and tapped a few hundred more commands out through her hand-devices sensor's overview manager, when she was informed of the recent time-bubble anomalies.

"Oh, that's odd." She grinned mischeviously, and opened a communication to Phoenixbot.

"Hay Mommy!" Phoenixbot responded, in the most sickeningly happy way at the blue holoscreen of Phoenix that had materialized in front of her. The latter simply stared in dumbfounded amazement. "Er, something wrong?"

"Yes. My comms seem to be malfunctioning... One moment." She tapped a few buttons to remodulate the transmission frequency.

"Heya!" Newb's voice came through.

She tapped the same buttons again, even more angrily.

"Mom?" Phoenixbot wibbled. "I did what you said, I defeated Ethilvira and everything, just like you wanted!"

Phoenix stared.

"You're happy, right?" tears welled into Phoenixbot's eyes from the nonexistant, never-installed tear ducts.

"... Um, yes... dear. I'm happy." Phoenix responded, in a daze. "Why don't you just, um... Stay there, until I get you out, okay?"

"Okay!" A kawaii smile accompanied this, oblivious to the danger of being trapped in a merging time-bubble.

Phoenix closed out the two communications lines, and stood up, fists clenched in rage. Throwing her head toward the sky, and pointing dramatically with her left arm, she yelled, "You're dead fates! You're all fucking dead! Just you wait!"

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Arhiyara sighted her target, and gave out her normal traditional greeting ala gigantic, crazy dragon fashion.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

Arhiyara charged forward on Arhiyara, intent on showing her - their - love for the two chummy, smug little gods that were duking it out in absolute stillness.

But... something is horribly wrong. Raiden, having clashed with Mesia, were doing it in intensely slow motion, as if temporal space and time were sluggishly slowed around the two figures that were battling it out. Arhiyara and Arhiyara found themselves charging into something that felt like an awful lot of atmospheric tension - as if they were a speeding jet fighter about to break the sound barrier...

And then Temporal Reality snapped. Like a paper tearing, Arhiylovera found her legs pedaling on thin air as time warped around her, spiralling inwards and outwards and just... everywhere. Realising too late that something is horribly wrong, both dragons plunged down into a vortex of...

*KERSPLASH!*

Arhiyara and Arhiyara landed and sank into what was obviously deemed as primordial Temporal Sludge. Both dragons plunged into the thick, viscous liquid and disappeared into the brief nothingness.

~~

It seemed like eternity (but it was all dumbed down into a few seconds) after both Arhiyara's sank into the temporal sludge pool that had gathered underneath the dormant battle between Raiden and Mesia, before the sludgy pool suddenly began to boil and bubble.
Like a viscous eruption, a forelimb burst from within the depths of the primordial sludge, waving frantically, another forelimb joining it.
Then another forelimb came up, just beside the first pair, then three more came up--- wait... WHAT?!

Up heaved the body, rising out of the surface of the boiling pool that was now tainted with chaotic energy. Heads broke the surface, roaring as they rose. 1, 2, 3, 4... 5?! 6?!

Arhiyararhiyara scrabbled frantically for land with four left feet. Her right limbs looked horribly warped, appearing, disappearing, shifting places... The abomination of time/chaos/Arhra/Rhiya/Arhiylovera/whatever managed to find purchase on solid ground just ten feet above her, all six - no, seven, no... six... it gets hard to count them as they never really seemed to exist in the first place - heads roaring in protest. With an awkward struggle, Arhiyararhiyara heaved themselves out of the primordial temporal sludge pool, drops of temporal sludge that clung to her forming into small humanoid Rhiyas that dropped or slid screaming off the abomination's back and sank back into the pool of Time.

Arhiyararhiyara stood shakily on 9 legs, a tentacle, and a hoof, and took a good look at themselves, three sinuous tails and a fluffy bunny rabbit's tail lashing wildly around. Limbs were everywhere, and they sported three - no, one, no... maybe many - wings. Arhiyararhiyara reached a decision.

One head whipped around and grabbed an extra limb. With a sickening tearing sound, the head tore off the limb and flung it back into the temporal pool. The rest of the head(s) got to work, clipping off extra bits and pieces very much like pruning. But, sometimes it was hard work, because a limb would appear, and when a head came to rip it off, it wasn't there, because it wasn't there in the first place!

Confused, angry, in pain, Arhiyararhiyara took their anger out on each other. The heads began to fight between each other, and one managed to grab another by the base of the neck. Out it came, the neck and all, torn from the body and tossed aside carelessly. Bits went everywhere.

And then there were two heads left.

In fact, there was always two heads, and two tails, and four limbs and a pair of wings. What people may have witnessed didn't happen, because Arhiyara never tore the fabric of space-time at all!

Arhiyara's two heads looked at each other. They've gone through a lot, and now this was enough. The fraying of the two souls has finally taken its toll.

One of the heads acted first, catching the other off by surprise. She bit deep into the other head's neck, eliciting a cry of anger and pain from both mouths. Then, without further ado...

The head was removed. With a careless toss, Arhra flung the head away from her draconic body.

Rhiya - disoriented and confused, suddenly realised she was hurtling through the air at a dizzying speed. She spread her wings to stop herself from hitting the ground at such a fast pace and soar to some sort of height to gain her bearings.

Rhiya frowned. The wings weren't obeying her. She turned her head awkwardly to look back at her body.

And then she hit the ground.
"Unfg!" a cloud of dirt announced her impact, and Rhiya lay there, slightly dazed. She got up, surprised that she wasn't actually that hurt, and turned around.

Her jaw dropped.

There, standing before her, was her dragon entity. It was most definitely not HER. Something is horribly wrong. Rhiya swivelled her head awkwardly to look behind her.

Nothing. Her wings were gone.

[The Kneumatic Pnight]

Renée rode, somewhat unsteadily, atop the stacked chaos dragons. How they managed to remain as steady as they were was something very close to mind-boggling. But, these things defied logic at every turn, so it wasn’t so surprising. When Arhiyara sighted her target, she responded in the way eminently typical of gargantuan beasts of all sizes, regardless of their intelligence.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"

The charge was on. Huge and earthshaking, and trampling an inordinate number of tiny beings beneath four clawed feet. Perhaps the only thing worse than being stepped on by a dragon was being stepped on by a stack of dragons.

But... something is horribly wrong. The world... felt... unusual here. And then it lurched sickeningly out of focus. Everything seemed to slow... the space around Raiden was absurdly out of time, somehow unable to keep pace with the progression of the rest of reality. A bubble of time left forgotten, straining against returning to the normal flow.

The Arhiyaras seemed to twist and go out of focus like double vision—or more, the sextuple vision of a kaleidoscope. These visions spun, half distorted, and snapped apart suddenly, in all directions.

There was the bleak, sickening feeling of weightlessness and Renée fell. But, she didn’t. The darkness—swirling purple and grey and black and acheronian—swept around her, partly. There seemed to be stars everywhere, in the infinite bleakness, but Renée couldn’t see them, even as they peaked out from behind reality. And then a form, a blur of faded colorlessness, grabbed her by the arm and wrenched her away. The unending swirl of bleakness fell away and she returned to the weightlessness of midair.

And, finally, she fell... but it was controlled, oddly safe, in the arms of whatever had grabbed her. They hit the ground lightly and Renée looked up into the face of... Renée. Except... older.

Her face was lined and grim, her hair a long (past the small of her back) flicker of spindly, ash white hair. She still wore a tuxedo, but it was faded to a colorless grey, old, and slightly tattered—much like this Renée herself. And her gun, the gun Renée loved so very, very much, was gone; this Renée had only a cane of sorts: simple and jet black.

“Wait... what? But you’re...”

“It’s better not to know,” old Renée said with a hard voice. “Suffice to say, you didn’t want to fall through time. It would have been... unpleasant for you.”

Well, this was all very confusing.

[POS Industries]

You are -so- lucky you have me around. You'd have passed out from exhaustion a few flights ago...

The warm glow of Anima's healing magic faded from around Pedro's body, rejuvenating his exhausted muscles and allowing him to quickly catch his breath as he reached the door to the space-time displacement control room. Keying in his access code, the door hissed open before him.

Proceeding onward into the room, POS found himself greeted by a smiling Doug Doukhobor.

"Ah, I'm glad to see you finally made it. Welcome to the beginning of the en--HEY!"

An emerald blade slashed harmlessly through Doug's head as Pedro reflexively assaulted his current nemesis-of-the-day, revealing the intruder to be merely a hologram.

"Yesss, as you can see, I've hacked into Rei's holoprojectio--Would you stop that already?" Doug attempted to explain as POS continued swinging Anima, who himself was looking more amused than anything. Having more or less had his fill, Pedro moved ahead through the hologram toward the nearby control console.

"Look, Dougie-Boy," he sighed as he began working to reassume control of the system, "I've been patient with you so far only because I have better things to do, but you're walking a fine line here. You're being entirely too much of a pain in my ass."

"You have got to be kidding me, O'Sullivan," Doukhobor sneered, "You're not in any position to--"

"No, seriously. Do you understand why I don't have any real competition? People who oppose me disappear. They do not come back and, what's more, they are forgotten. You are nothing to me. You are a like breed of insect, one of the hive ones. A nameless drone among countless others. You . Are. A. Pissant."

"P...Pissant?!" the hologram choked.

Pedro ignored him, focusing on his work. Keys clicked away at a random pace, his fingers almost a blur as he attempted to override the system. A small smile crossed Pedro's lips as he felt himself growing closer to success.

"Hmmm, interesting..." Doug noted, "You're attempting to open a hyperlink transfer protocol within one of the environments, and making an impressive amount of headway around my scrambler. That's cute. Let me just redirect that real quick and.... there. Yepper, I guess I'm still in control after all. Who was it you saying was a pissant, again?"

"Still you," POS chuckled, eyes fixed on the monitor, "and thanks. I just got to see your command sequence function in real time. Won't take me too long to figure out its nuts and bolts..."

Doug Doukhobor stood frozen, an eye twitching furiously as Pedro finished his sentence.

"...pissant."

------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

The white burst of energy exploded to life in front of her before suddenly being enveloped in a wave of chaotic blackness. A vortex swirled about her, whipping her bright red hair about in the wind.

Flying forth into this world from the bizarre portal came a collection of monstrous limbs, apparently draconic in nature. Claws, hooves, wings, tails, heads, and a nigh infinite number of other bizarre organics crashed to the ground around her.

Then it stopped.

But the portal remained, a gaping maw into an unsuspecting new realm...

------------------------------------------------------------

The gravity level was getting to be too much for Rei's body to handle. Her synthetic skin was beging pulled downward, her duranium skeleton buckled, and the pressure on the circuitry in her neural network threatened a complete shut down. It was time to stop.

So she did.

The sticky pool of coalesced jams sat motionless on the floor around her. Rei felt her body begin to wobble, as close to being dizzy as an android could be. Falling to her knees, she breathed in and out frantically, taking in the air around her to cool her internal systems. Rei's energy reserves were dangerously low, and she needed a moment to recharge.

Which would have been fantastic if she'd gotten it.

The brown semiliquid mess beneath her suddenly glowed a bright white, which slowly faded to reveal a myriad of swirled colors as the goo sprang to life, enveloping Rei within its translucent body and making a grab for Incendius while it was at it. Rearing back to emit a loud, gurgling roar, dozens of tendrils exploded from the creature, impacting on everything in their path with enough force to dent the thick metal walls of the chamber.

...And as the music kicked in, Marmalade was born!

[Flarecobra]

"It's time to play..." a voice said as the portal was opened and all things chaotic started rushing in. After the verious deamons and other unholy beasts left the portal, another figure stepped through, her ruby-red eyes glowing, and on her back, what appeared to be dark-colored wings on her back folded, she looked around, then started to head down the hall, taking in the area.

[Sithdarth]

Unnoticed in the shadows, as Maramalade began its rampage, a rather vague figure slowly detached itself from a wall. This figure was quite unidentifiable mostly because any attempt at direct observation resulted in some random occurrence. A fact most unpleasant for the entity. Aside from this unfortunate fact the figure was in fact poorly defined. More a haze in the basic shape of a human. A haze that directly observed, which was more or less impossible, appeared to be vibrating in several directions at once as well as shifting through various forms.

A multi-harmonic litany of voices burst from this figure. Some simply displaced in time, others in space, and a few completely unintelligible. Through this cacophony of sound a general gist could be gathered and it didn't sound too happy.

"What in the name of causality is going on here! I can't stabilize my matrix with all these distortions."

The figure, which most probably identified as Sithdarth by, now suddenly realized he'd just made on really big mistake. Someone was bound to observe him now and Heisenberg be damned if anyone knew what the hell that would do. He could only pray that they would attempt to ascertain his position instead of his momentum. Of course if one person tried to pinpoint his location while another tried to determine how fast he was going all hell was likely to bust loose.

[Inbred Chocobo]

"Well... there is a chance he might not be. But then again, like I said I am not sure this is the same Raiden. I already told you about the whole, holy crap he is so strong incident right?" IC replied to Arhra, watching behind. He rather be safe than sorry, and well Raiden was a lot to handle for anyone. "I was hoping to win this tournament too, this sucks." IC went on, now talking to himself again.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" IC said, noticing Arhra was looking at him like he wasn't sure what IC was. "You know what, nevermind. Okay, I got a plan on taking on Raiden, are you up to the task?"